I will cause the dead to rise and devour the living;
I will give to the dead power over the living.”
The same belief appears also to have existed in Egypt. The same author observes (p. 92). “These formulæ also kept the body from becoming, during its separation from the soul, the prey of some wicked spirit which would enter, re-animate, and cause it to rise again in the form of a vampire. For, according to the Egyptian belief, the possessing spirits, and the spectres which frightened or tormented the living were but the souls of the condemned returning to the earth, before undergoing the annihilation of the ‘second death.’”
[19] Cp. Ralston’s account of the Vampire as represented in the Skazkas. “It is as a vitalized corpse that the visitor from the other world comes to trouble mankind, often subject to human appetites, constantly endowed with more than human strength and malignity.”—Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 306.
[20] Cp. the way in which the witch treats the corpse of her son in the VIth book of the Æthiopica of Heliodorus, ch. 14, and Lucan’s Pharsalia, Book VI, 754–757.
[21] I. e., the corpse tenanted by the Vetála or demon.
[22] Cp. Simrock’s Deutsche Volksbücher, Vol. III, p. 399.
[23] Lakshmí or Śrí the goddess of Prosperity appeared after the churning of the ocean with a lotus in her hand. According to another story she is said to have appeared at the creation floating on the expanded leaves of a lotus-flower. The hand of a lady is often compared to a lotus.
[24] I. e., rising; the eastern mountain behind which the sun is supposed to rise.
[25] I. e., semi-divine beings supposed to be of great purity and holiness.