ABSTRACT
India has always had its ghosts, though how the living relates to the dead in India is often narrated a bit differently in Indian ghost stories. The reader can trace ghosts to early narratives, including those associated with Hindu religious traditions and rooted in oral cultures which are notoriously difficult to date. In many traditional Indian stories about supernatural beings, this might not necessarily happen—especially in the case of stories about ghosts. Ghosts have been part and parcel of Indian narratives, from the ancient and medieval periods. A Digit of the Moon, elaborately footnoted, was the first of a series of books published by Bain, who had been born in England, educated at Oxford, and worked for many years in colonial India. It is fascinating that the dimensions are revealed even in modern Indian ghost stories—where desire is not necessarily opposed to death but conjoined with it, the living and the dead fall in love.
