What’s in the box: Emboxed narratives, horror, and ethics in the Vetala Tales

The narrative popularly known as the Vetala Tales has unknown origins and prolific variations, including four Sanskrit recensions and several regional linguistic variations. In more recent times, the Vetala Tales have taken the form of children’s stories in Amar Chitra Katha comics and Chandamama magazines, two televised serials, at least three films (with a fourth in the making), and innumerable adaptations in print, including a Vikram and Vetala management training manual. In this paper, I ask two questions pertaining to this narrative: What makes this narrative possess such lasting influence and popularity? Secondly, why is a didactic narrative about ethics presented with the stylings of horror? I will explore two modern adaptations of the Vetala Tales to answer these questions – the long-running serialized children’s stories in the Chandamama magazines (specifically English and Tamil), and the Ramanand Sagar television serial Vikram aur Betaal (1985) telecast on Doordarshan.