Vetālas in Sanskrit Religious and Literary Texts

What is it about?

This paper attempts to outline the evolution and taxonomy of vetālas, one of the fabulous creatures that populate the religious culture of ancient and early mediaeval India. Sometimes misleadingly identified as “vampires”, vetālas had an important role in tantric rituals aiming at magical powers and performed in cremation grounds. Three such rituals are examined in this paper on the basis of both tantric and literary texts, all involving vetālas who sometimes appear as animated corpses, sometimes as jinn-like servants, sometimes as fully developed fabulous creatures bearing the char- acteristic marks of their species, which marks can also be assumed by deities. In the appendices a Kashmirian stotra to Bhairava appearing as a vetāla is edited and translated, and two vetāla door- keepers are presented from a 12th-century Hoysala temple.

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