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La presente edición, Vikram y el vampiro (1870), es una
traducción libre del sánscrito («la lengua de los dioses», el latín de
la India) de los once mejores relatos de Baital-Pachisi (Veinticinco
cuentos de un Baital), una leyenda antigua y genuinamente hindú,
precursora de Las Mil y una Noches, que narra la historia de un
murciélago, vampiro o espíritu maligno que habitaba y animaba cuerpos
muertos.
La historia gira principalmente en torno a un gran rey
llamado Vikram (un personaje histórico, el Rey Arturo de Oriente), que
para cumplir la promesa hecha a un yogui o mago debe capturar y llevar
ante él al baital (vampiro) que vive colgado de un árbol. Las
dificultades que tienen que superar el rey Vikram y su hijo para llevar a
cabo su objetivo tejen una serie de relatos de aventuras, magia y amor,
independientes pero unidos «como perlas recorridas por un hilo común»,
que «aún hoy siguen formando parte del repertorio de cuentacuentos
vagabundos, bardos y rapsodas de Persia y Asia central», apuntaba Burton.
English
The genius of Eastern nations,’ says an established and
respectable authority, ‘was, from the earliest times, much turned
towards invention and the love of fiction. The Indians, the Persians,
and the Arabians, were all famous for their fables. Amongst the ancient
Greeks we hear of the Ionian and Milesian tales, but they have now
perished, and, from every account that we hear of them, appear to have
been loose and indelicate.’ Similarly, the classical dictionaries define
‘Milesiæ fabulæ’ to be ‘licentious themes,’ ‘stories of an amatory or
mirthful nature,’ or ‘ludicrous and indecent plays.’ M. Deriége seems
indeed to confound them with the ‘Mœurs du Temps’ illustrated with
artistic gouaches, when he says, ‘une de ces fables milésiennes,
rehaussées de peintures, que la corruption romaine recherchait alors
avec une folle ardeur.’ My friend, Mr. Richard Charnock, F.A.S.L., more
correctly defines Milesian fables to have been originally ‘certain tales
or novels, composed by Aristides of Miletus;’ gay in matter and
graceful in manner. ‘They were translated into Latin by the historian
Sisenna, the friend of Atticus, and they had a great success at Rome.
Plutarch, in his life of Crassus, tells us that after the defeat of
Carhes (Carrhæ?) some Milesiacs were found in the baggage of the Roman
prisoners. The Greek text and the Latin translation have long been lost.
The only surviving fable is the tale of Cupid and Psyche, which
Apuleius calls “Milesius sermo,” and it makes us deeply regret the
disappearance of the others.’ Besides this there are the remains of
Apollodorus and Conon, and a few traces to be found in Pausanias,
Athenæus, and the scholiasts. I do not, therefore, agree with Blair,
with the dictionaries, or with M. Deriége. Miletus, the great maritime
city of Asiatic Ionia, was of old the meeting place of the East and the
West. Here the Phœnician trader from the Baltic would meet the Hindu
wandering to Intra, from Extra, Gangem; and the Hyperborean would step
on shore side by side with the Nubian and the Æthiop. Here was produced
and published for the use of the then civilised world, the genuine
Oriental apologue, myth and tale combined, which, by amusing narrative
and romantic adventure, insinuates a lesson in morals or in humanity, of
which we often in our days must fail to perceive the drift. The book of
Apuleius, before quoted, is subject to as many discoveries of recondite
meaning as Rabelais. As regards the licentiousness of the Milesian
fables, this sign of semi-civilisation is still inherent in most Eastern
books of the description which we call ‘light literature,’ and the
ancestral tale-teller never collects a larger purse of coppers than when
he relates the worst of his ‘aurei.’ But this looseness, resulting from
the separation of the sexes, is accidental, not necessary. The
following collection will show that it can be dispensed with, and that
there is such a thing as comparative purity in Hindu literature. The
author, indeed, almost always takes the trouble to marry his hero and
his heroine, and if he cannot find a priest, he generally adopts an
exceedingly left-hand and Caledonian but legal rite called
‘gandharbavivaha.’ The work of Apuleius, as ample internal evidence
shows, is borrowed from the East. The groundwork of the tale is the
metamorphosis of Lucius of Corinth into an ass, and the strange
accidents which precede his recovering the human form. Another old Hindu
story-book relates, in the popular fairy-book style, the wondrous
adventures of the hero and demigod, the great Gandharba-Sena. That son
of Indra, who was also the father of Vikramajit, the subject of this and
another collection, offended the ruler of the firmament by his fondness
for a certain nymph, and was doomed to wander over earth under the form
of a donkey.