When civilisations end, stories also end. In the Vikram and Vetal cycle of stories, the closure, non-meaning and silence ensures the evocation of the incest taboo in a Freudian sense. Both totemism and taboo, according to Freud, are closely related and it is also the origin of religion, society, civilisation and art. In his brilliant analysis of the individual psyche to society and culture, Freud concluded that totemism and its accompanying restriction, exogamy, derive from the dread of incest, and that taboo customs parallel the symptoms of neurosis closely. Sigmund Freud wrote in his classic Totem and Taboo (written in 1912–13), the horror of incest and its taboo in primitive societies provided the basis for the civilisations to evolve. In the ensuing silence and the closure of the cycle of tales, Vikramaditya successfully carries Vetal to the sorcerer. So, there are no kinship terms in any language to name and describe the relationships. The relationships described in the story is one of incest and the children born out of such relations are outside the civilisational meanings. Now, Vetal's question to Vikramaditya is: If these couples were to beget children, what would be their kinship relations? Vikramaditya keeps quiet not because he does not know the answer, but because there is no answer. As per their agreement, the king marries the daughter and his son marries her mother. They do meet the women in the forest, but the larger feet belong to the daughter and the smaller feet to her mother. The king and the prince agree that if they were to meet the women, the father would marry the woman with the larger feet and the son would marry the woman with the smaller feet. In the woods, they see human footprints and assume they belong to women. In Vetal’s final tale, a king and his son go to the forest for a hunting game. But if you break your silence and speak I will fly back to the tree.'" If you do not know the answer also your head will burst into hundreds of pieces. If you know the answer and keep quiet your head will break into hundreds of pieces. “After narrating the tale, I will ask you a question. As he was walking with Vetal on his back, Vetal began to tell a story with a warning. The second statuette, Chitracintamani, begins its 24th final tale like this: ‘Oh King Bhoja, listen! The tireless Vikramaditya again climbed on the tree and cut down Vetal that was hanging upside down.
Despite the popularity of ‘Vikram and Vetal’ stories, the end of the cycle of stories is not common knowledge.Ī new series on the stories of Vikram and Vetal is being broadcast on &TV They provided the source for children's stories published in magazines such as Ambulimama. The ‘Big Lettered Vikramaditya’ (literal translation of the Tamil Periya Ezhuthu Vikramathithan Kathai) stories are famous as chapbook publications. Since the Vetal stories end with a question, often leading to a proverb, the corpus of tales gained currency in multiple ways in the oral cultures, and they continued with the advent of print medium and television. In some of the Tamil versions, the King Vikramaditya and Vetalam stories are often presented as a set of tales complete in themselves, without any reference to the stories of the other statuettes. The 24 stories of Vetal are emboxed within the story of the second statuette. The master tale in the original Sanskrit version of King Vikramaditya's adventures ( Vikramacarita) is the story of 32 statuettes stopping King Bhoja from ascending the proverbial throne of King Vikramaditya, and each statuette narrating a tale to exemplify the latter's wisdom. However, when they do end, they indicate how cultures provide closures to meaning-making endeavours and reflective listening experiences. Eminently placed in the oral tradition, the linked tales are precursors to the modern genre of the novel, but they can elastically expand in every retelling, every version and every interpretation.
Among the Indian tales, Kathasaritsagara, Panchatantra and Jataka tales are also linked stories, and sometimes one wonders when would these tales end. The famous works in this category of tales are One Thousand and One Nights and Boccaccio's The Decameron.
Narratologists categorise the King Vikramaditya and Vetalam stories as emboxed linked stories with one master tale framing the other tales within the tales.
In 1989, the stories of Vikram Aur Betaal captured everyone’s imagination with the release of a TV series starring Arun Govil (King Vikramaditya) and Sajjan (Betaal) The famous tale of Vikram and Vetal is one such example. Eminently placed in Indian oral tradition, linked tales are precursors to the modern genre of the novel, but they can elastically expand in every retelling.