ИСТИНА

Sir Richard Burton’s “Vikram and the Vampire”, a free abridged rendering of “The 25 Tales of Vetala”, was published in 1870. The author was acquainted with Sanskrit and with the literature conventions that constitute much of the clichés and templates both for plot formation and for artistic descriptions in classical Sanskrit literature. On the other hand, what he did was not a proper translation of some recension of Vetalapanchavimshati, but an artistic reworking of a preset plot. On the one hand, the author preserved many elements of the original Sanskrit text (he even quotes some of the subhashitas from the Sanskrit version practically to the letter). Secondly, he augments the text by retelling stories from other Sanskrit texts (such as Simhasanadvatrinshika) and by introducing, by way of explanation or detailed description, an outline of some traditional Indian concept, such as a raja’s day schedule or a beauty’s appearance, which, though not traceable to one particular source, is very much in accordance with the Sanskrit literary conventions in general. And, thirdly, the text is further enlarged by numerous additions of matter perfectly alien to the Sanskrit original, namely, by elements of the Victorian English literary canon. That includes a range of moral maxims and paradoxes quite akin (functionally, by the mode of their use in the text) to Sanskrit subhashitas but dealing with situations and dilemmas of a Victorian-era philosopher, moralist, politician, or gentleman in love, etc. Half-mocking, half-seriously, Burton introduces into the medieval story many of the common elements of the XIX century English novel. The present paper is an attempt to unwind these three strings of the narration, separate in their origin, and to discern just how the “translator” reworks his initial source. For comparison we shall refer to Shivadasa’s recension of Vetalapanchavimshati in Sanskrit (providing the original elements; though we are quite conscious of the fluid, changeable nature of the tale collections of this genre, and can’t pretend that Burton worked with this precise version and none other). Also, we will compare the additional Indian-style cliché descriptions with similar (though not literally same) descriptions from various Sanskrit sources, such as the descriptions of raja-dharma in Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsha and Ashvaghosha’s Buddhacarita. Lastly, we may find parallels in the added psychological motives, situations in the plot, and the moral/paradoxal-moral witticisms that Burton generously uses to embellish his text, to the XIX-century English belle-lettres canon, represented by Charles Dickens and other authors we may venture to quote here.