Vikramaditya and Betaal

Vikramaditya and Betaal stories are based on Betaal Pachcheesee, written nearly 2,500 years ago by Indian Scholar and author Mahakavi Somdev Bhatt. These spell-binding stories are apparently told to the wise King Vikramaditya by the wily ghost Betaal. At the beginning, the Vikramaditya king receives, among other visitors, a yogee (sage), who presents the king a fruit on every visit. In the fruits, king later discovered a small ball shaped object. Upon this discovery, he decides to visit the yogee who arranges a meeting under a tree in a cremation ground beyond the city, at night, on the 14th day of the dark half of the month. At the meeting, the yogee requests the King Vikramaditya to bring him a corpse hanged from another tree, with which the sage might achieve occult powers. Upon Vikramaditya doing so, the corpse is identified as Betaal, the ghost, who narrates a series of stories to the king. On completion of each story, Vikramaditya must answer a moral question pertaining to the story's characters, on pain of his own death; and upon King answering the question, Betaal returns to his tree. This sequence repeats many times Betaal reveals that the yogee's plan was to kill the king der obtaining power from Betaal himself. At the end wise King Vikramaditya kills the yogee. These stories have been translated into nearly all languages in the world that has a script. Here we try to retell these great jewels of Indian literature without losing its essence.

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