In today’s mini-episode, we’ll meet a popular character we’ve encountered in this podcast before. And that is a Betaal. A Betaal is a reanimated corpse, often approximated to a Vampire or sometimes to a Zombie. But in reality, a Betaal has very little in common with either. The word Revenant fits better.
A Vampire is basically just an undead creature, popularized by Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. He added a bunch of weird things like the repulsion to Garlic, and to Crosses, as well as helplessness if not invited inside your home. A Vetala has no need of all that.
A Zombie is closer to a Vetala in the sense that both are reanimated corpses. The difference is that the Vetala does not want to eat brains. And the Vetala is intelligent, knowledgeable and in full possession of speech and hearing.
The most well-known version of the Betaal appears in the Vikram and Betaal stories.
A poor word choice led to the inappropriate comparison between a Betaal and a Vampire. Sir Richard Francis Burton, a British explorer in India wrote up the Vikram and Betaal stories as Vikram and the Vampire, despite the dissimilarities between the two.
All a Betaal really wants to do is to hang upside down from a tree in a Cemetry. And since they are already dead, there is no worry of blood rushing to the top of their heads.
Besides being able to hang indefinitely from a tree, a Betaal possesses another superpower. It can predict the future. And it knows a lot of stories. Both of these help King Vikramaditya or Vik out as we’ve seen in a few previous episodes on this podcast.
Now, there is a hill in the city of Pune called the Vetal Tekdi or Vetal hill. This is not the same as the Betaal we’re talking about. There’s a temple at the top called the Vetala temple.
Confusingly there’s a god named Vetala as well, and the temple is named after him. The temple is not after a revenant. Because that’d be super weird.
The god Vetala is more well known in the Indian state of Goa.
If you wonder how the Betaal became a Betaal the answer is “Magic!”
Yes quite literally. There was a couple who prayed for a child for a long time. They went to the local witch doctor. The witch doctor actually pulled it off. But on condition that the soon to be born twin boys would stay with him. Which may make you question why the couple agreed to the deal at all. The guy was obviously evil.
But they did, and they did have twin boys. When the boys were past the diaper stage and were old enough to start doing chores, the witch doctor claimed them and had them do chores. He also subjected them to some experiments – both psychological and physical. He ill-treated one boy but gave him unlimited access to knowledge basically his extensive library.
He treated the other boy well but fed him very limited information, just enough to survive and communicate with the world.
Ultimately, one of the experiments changed the knowledgeable but ill-treated boy into a Betaal. More on that in future episodes.
The Vikram and Betaal stories may remind you of the One thousand and one Arabian nights. But the similarity is superficial only. Yes, there’s a common framing narrative, but the Princess’s priority was to keep herself alive by spinning up cliffhanger after cliffhanger. The Betaal on the other hand was testing King Vikram’s analytical skills. The stories the Betaal narrates are like case studies with a tricky question that the audience is invited to participate in. But typically Vikram is the one who always provides the right answer. Except once. More on that in a future episode.
That’s all for this mini-episode.
Notes
The other Vikram and Betaal episodes are here:
Episode 5 – Kingly duties
Episode 8 – Vik and the Vampire Redux
Episode 32 – The Call of Duty
Episode 34 – A Damsel in Distress
Next Time
In this weekend’s full episode we’re going to explore a tale from Tamil Nadu. It’s a tale of heartache, of poor decision making, a case of mis-identity and revenge served toasty warm.