DRACULA: The origin story of the most famous vampire might not be Transylvania - but India
Own digital image using “Vetala” by svetlanarib79 (Source)
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A twisted translation of an ancient Hindu text is an often ignored inspiration for Bram Stoker’s iconic Vampire tale that turned the mischievous Vetala into a bloodsucking monster.
We all know vampires. Those undead creatures of folklore have been feeding on the vital essence of the living, usually in the form of blood, in most cultures across the world for as long as anyone can remember.
For most of us, just the mention of the word vampire conjures up the classic vision of the black cape, gleaming fangs and bloodshot eyes – the iconic “Dracula”. Characterised by Bela Lugosi in the movie of 1931, we’ve seen a myriad of incarnations in popular culture ranging from gothic romantics like Lestat de Lioncourt to shimmery heartthrob Edward Cullen.
But vampires haven’t always been the pale, elegant goths that haunt popular culture and horror movies nowadays. In fact, before the 19th century, they were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark complexion, with blood seeping from the mouth and nose, their left eye often open and staring, whilst still wrapped in their linen burial shroud – more like a zombie, really.
The sophisticated and charismatic vampire didn’t appear until gothic literature became popular in the 1800s with John Polidori’s 1819 story “The Vampyre”, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novel “Carmilla” and of course Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula”, which is recognised as the quintessential vampire novel that spawned an entire genre.
So what inspired Stoker’s distinctive take on the legend? Let’s uncover a lip-licking bit of mythology that turns the origins of the modern vampire as upside down as a sleeping bat.
The Dragon Son with a taste for torture
Vlad the Impaler woodcut
It’s long been believed that Stoker’s main inspiration was Vlad III, more commonly known as Vlad the Impaler or even Vlad Dracula – meaning ‘son of dragon’. In the 15th century, Vlad was the brutal ruler of Wallachia, which is now modern-day Romania. As you probably already know, he was a despot with a real taste for torture, impaling hundreds of enemy soldiers, noblemen and their families. It would take days for them to die, which sent a terrifying message to anyone who was even thinking about crossing him.
At the time and even long after, Vlad was described by the rest of Europe as a sadist who would drink the blood of his enemies, enjoy his meals while watching tortured bodies slowly dying and even eating human flesh. Although this would have been a huge insult to an Orthodox Christian ruler like him, no one can know for sure whether these were slanderous lies or gruesome truths.
However, whilst the name and geography connect Stoker’s Dracula to Vlad, there is another source of inspiration for his classic supernatural bloodsucker that is rooted in Hindu mythology and which may have cast an even more powerful spell over Stoker’s story.
The haunting Hindu trickster that cast a spell on Bram Stoker
“Vetala” (Source)
The vetala (also betaal or baital) is a ghoulish trickster spirit that haunts cremation grounds, cemeteries and forests. It comes into being when a body has not had proper funerary rites performed over it. Like a bat, it hangs upside down from trees and waits for humans to play tricks and riddles on.
Trapped in the twilight zone between life and afterlife, it not only taunts and troubles the living, but it also possesses the dead, entering and leaving their corpses at will. Unlike a rotting zombie though, a corpse inhabited by a vetala will no longer decay, making it truly undead.
Because they’re unaffected by the laws of space and time, they have unnerving knowledge about the past, present and future and can display a terrifyingly deep insight into human nature – even detecting the good or bad inside of you. With this they have the power to drive people mad, as well as the ability to kill children, bring about severe illness and cause miscarriages. But if correctly appeased, they can occasionally be persuaded to do good deeds such as guarding villages.
And because of their supernatural powers and telepathic insights, they were a tantalising target for occultists and sorcerers, because they would try to capture vetalas to turn them into their slaves.
They can sometimes be appeased by offering gifts, but if that fails, you might be able to repel them by chanting mantras. The only way they can be truly destroyed by freeing them from their disembodied state is by finding the vetala’s original body and performing funerary rites over it.
The origins of the vetala date back to an 11th century text known as Vetala Panchavimshati or Baital Pachisi. It consists of a collection of 25 tales, many of which have been passed down through the ages to Indian children today. More commonly known today as Vikram-Betal, the tales appear in storybooks, graphic novels and TV series.
Book of the “Vetala Panchavimshati” or “Baital Pachisi” in Urdu
Originally written in Sanskrit, the legend goes as follows:
A vamachari, or tantric sorcerer, sweet-talks the good King Vikrama into bringing him a corpse hanging in the southern cremation grounds.
The king may have been a little swayed by the sorcerer’s gifts of fruit and many compliments about his courage, but the king is a man of honour and he agrees to fulfil the sorcerer’s request.
When the nightfall came on the fourteenth day of the dark half of the lunar month, King Vikrama set out with his sword in hand to the cremation grounds to the south. As instructed, he found the rosewood tree from which a corpse was hanging upside down. He climbed up to cut the rope, but as the body dropped to the ground, he wondered if it might still be alive. Overcome with concern, he checked the body for signs of life. Immediately, the corpse roared with laughter.
The king realised that this dead body was possessed by a vetala. Instead of showing any fear, he said, “What are you laughing for? Come on, let’s go.”
But as soon as he’d finished his words, the corpse had vanished. He looked up to find that it was exactly where it was before, hanging from the tree.
Undiscouraged, the king climbed the tree again and cut the rope. But this time, he placed the body over his shoulder and began walking. After a few minutes, the corpse began to speak.
It said, “King! To entertain you on your journey, let me tell you a story. Listen!”
And so begins the first of the 24 tales that the vetala will tell the king, the final part being the conclusion of the whole story. But the twist is that at the end of each story the vetala will present him with a riddle, that comes with some unusual rules: If the king knows the answer to the riddle, he must say it out loud. Unfortunately, as soon as he does, the vetala will immediately fly back to his starting position in the tree and the king will have to cut him down again.
Seems unfair right? Why doesn’t the king just pretend then that he doesn’t know the answer?
The vetala explains that the sorcerer is plotting to trick the king. He wants to enslave the vetala for its magical powers and to take control of the kingdom, and he will try to kill the king as a sacrificial offering. So, the vetala reveals to him how to defeat the sorcerer, saying, “He will ask you to lie face down on the ground and salute the deity. Great King! At that time, you tell that wicked man - 'I do not know how to salute. Please show me how to do it.' When he is lying face down on the ground to demonstrate, you take your sword and slice off his head.”
The final 25th story then recounts the events of the showdown with the sorcerer, who King Vikrama successfully tricks and kills as planned. As a reward, the vetala offers to protect the kingdom and come to the king’s aid whenever he needs it. The king is even visited by the god Shiva who gifts him a magical sword, a long life and a peaceful rule over his kingdom.
But what’s all this got to do with vampires?
We’re getting to that. While this popular story paints the vetala as a trickster with the capacity to do good, in time, the vetala morphed into a much more demonic creature – a creature that much later may have strongly influenced Bram Stoker’s vision of what has become the archetypal vampire.
Over the centuries, the vetala evolved from not only being able to enter a corpse and animate it, to possessing and transforming it into a hideous monster as well. It gained the ability to force the corpse’s feet and hands to twist backwards, turn its skin green, light brown or white, turn the fingernails into long poisonous talons and twist the face until it resembles a fruit bat with slitted eyes. Its natural ability to keep the body from decomposing became possible only by using its magic to find human blood to drink.
No longer bound to the cremation grounds or forests alone, it gained the ability to access people’s homes by using an enchanted thread that it fed down the chimney. It loved to prey on the sleeping, or passed out drunks, or women who have gone insane – after all who’d believe them? But above all, its favourite prey became children.
“Vetala” 18th Century art print via Sothebys
How the tale got twisted
This wild transformation from its trickster roots in the Vetala Panchavimshati to a monster that could surely terrify children into doing as they’re told was in part down to British explorer and writer Sir Richard Burton. An enthusiast of Indian occultism and folklore, Burton was the first to bring the Kama Sutra and the Vetala Panchavimshati to Western audiences.
The snag was that his translation of the book, which he titled Vikram and the Vampire was not only pretty liberal, but a major reimagining of the original. Although he never strictly claimed that it was a faithful translation, it was marketed to English audiences as the Vetala Panchavimshati. Inevitably, readers took this depiction of what they understood to be an Indian vampire as authentic.
He didn’t even preserve the name vetala, using instead the term vampire with its existing Eastern European connotations of a bloodsucking predator. Complete with illustrations of a long-tailed and taloned creature with bat-wings, bulging eyes and pointed ears, this changed the concept of a paradoxical trickster spirit into a devilish creature that people read as an evil monster.
“Vikram and the Vampire” (1870) Illustrated by Ernest Griset
One such reader was Bram Stoker. Because his family had served in India, Stoker was fascinated with Indian occultism and tales of magic. To him, India was an exotic land of sinister magic. He greatly admired Sir Richard Burton and his work on Indology, and spent much time with him discussing what he knew of Hindu mythology and Indian occultism. In particular, Stoker dedicated much study to the Vetala Panchavimshati before writing Dracula.
It’s hardly surprising then that Burton’s ideas seeped into Stoker’s iconic vampire character. The combination of Dracula’s transformation into a leather-winged bat that hangs upside down, his reptilian climbing abilities, magical powers and ancient wisdom may well have been drawn from Burton’s adaptation.
And although it should never have been presented as a directly translated Indian vampire story, one could argue that it would have been a shame if Stoker had never been inspired to create his Dracula from it. The idea of vampires remains so pervasive and compelling that in some ways a culture without our most prolific bloodsucker would be lacking a certain something, wouldn’t it?
“Vetala” (Source)
Immortal and ever-transforming Vampires
Myths and monsters will keep evolving and cross-pollinating with other cultures and ideas. In the 2020 series titled Betaal (streaming on Netflix at time of writing), Indian production companies are reclaiming the vetala as a more homegrown movie monster, reimagining the vetala as a vampire-zombie hybrid. In it, a remote village serves as the battleground between a battalion of possessed corpses from the British East India Company left over from the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and a fictional Indian elite police force called CIPD, who brings them down.
While the vetala has morphed over the centuries into something quite different from where it began, it’s remained alive and well in the consciousness of Indian culture in both children and adults alike. And you could say that through Dracula, it lives on in a mutated form in Western consciousness too.
And ultimately, whether in the shape of a vampire, zombie, spirit or a hybrid of all three, isn’t that what immortality is all about?
“Just a Hungry Vampire” by Natasja Delanghe (Source)
