The story had, therefore, ample time to reach the ears of the learned African Apuleius, who was born a.d. 130.
The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five (tales of a) Baital[1] ― a Vampire or evil spirit which animates dead bodies ― is an old and thoroughly Hindu repertory. It is the rude beginning of that fictitious history which ripened to the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, and which, fostered by the genius of Boccaccio, produced the romance of the chivalrous days, and its last development, the novel ― that prose-epic of modern Europe.
Composed in Sanskrit, 'the language of the gods,' alias the Latin of India, it has been translated into all the Prakrit or vernacular and modern dialects of the great peninsula. The reason why it has not found favour with the Moslems is doubtless the highly polytheistic spirit which pervades it; moreover, the Faithful had already a specimen of that style of composition. This was the Hitopadesa, or Advice of a Friend, which, as a line in its introduction informs us, was borrowed from an older book, the Panchatantra, or Five Chapters. It is a collection of apologues recited by a learned Brahman, Vishnu Sharma
- ↑ In Sanskrit, Vétála-pancha-Vinshati. 'Baital' is the modern form of 'Vétála'.
