perhaps even more than any other demon or phantom of the night is that he infects with his pollution his luckless victim who in his turn also becomes a vampire. In China this does not appear to be a feature of the Vampire manifestation. Something of the kind, however, may be traced among the Karens of Burma. For a Karen wizard will snare the wandering soul of a sleeper and by his art transfer it to the body of a dead man. The latter, accordingly, returns to life as the former expires. But the friends of the sleeper in their turn engage another sorcerer who will catch the soul of another sleeper, and it is he who dies as the first sleeper comes to life. Apparently this process may be continued almost indefinitely, and so it may be presumed that there takes place an indeterminate succession of death and resuscitations.
With regard to another Chinese Ghoul, Mr. Willoughby-Meade tells us: “the Prêta, or suffering soul of a suicide seeking a substitute, is not quite a parallel to the true vampire.”[43]
The Prêta also appears in Southern India, but the Indian Vampire which may now be briefly considered, however interesting, will hardly be found to have those features in common with the Western Vampires as are so strikingly to be noticed in the Chinese variety. Indeed, it may be said that the Indian Vampire is practically a demon, and that only in a few minor details does he essentially approximate to the true European species. Mr. N. M. Penzer in a note upon The Ocean of Story says: “As far as the Ocean of Story is concerned, the ‘Demons’ which appear are Rakshasa, Pisacha, Vetala, Bhuta, Dasyus, Kumbhaṇḍa and Kushmaṇḍa. Of these that most resembling the European Vampire is probably the Rakshasa,” of which a very horrible description is given.
“Now the Vetala, which is seen in all its glory in the present work (The Ocean of Story) is a curious individual. He is the Deccan Guardian, in which capacity he sits on a stone smeared with red paint, or is found in the prehistoric stone circles scattered over the hills. In fiction, however, he appears as a mischievous goblin, and that is how we find him in the Ocean. A study of his actions will show him to be quite above the ordinary run of such demons. He is always ready to play some rather grim practical joke on any unwary person who chances to wander near burning-ghats at night, for here are corpses lying about or hanging from stakes, and what
