Hakuin heard someone comment that the room was much smaller than expected. Jowo, a tea master of the 15th century, had determined that the proper size for a tea room was four and a half tatami mats, or ten square feet. This was the precise size of the room to which Vikramaditya had invited Saint Manjushiri and eighty-four thousand disciples of Buddha - the small size being sufficient since space has no meaning for the truly enlightened. "We could probably fit in another 83,993 people," Hakuin muttered. Catching the puzzled looks he told them about Jowo and Vikramaditya's invitation. "Vikramaditya," he continued, "or Vikram for short, was one of the greatest figures of Indian legend. He was a master warrior, an enlightened king, and an expert on virtually every subject on earth. "The one thing he wasn't very good at was catching vampires. "Well, that's not quite true. He could capture them. What he couldn't do was hold onto them. "Vampires in India were called Baital and hung from trees. There was a certain magician who sorely wanted to get his hands on one since they had magical powers, including the ability to animate dead bodies. Vikram promised to help, and with little difficulty he and his son soon located a Baital hanging head down from a tree and captured it using a cloth. "Now it is common for captured magical beings to gain their freedom by posing a riddle which their captor is unable to answer correctly. It seems to be some kind of standard escape clause. This Baital made a similar deal but since Vikram was the wisest man on earth he incorporated a small twist: only an incorrect answer would permanently restrain the Baital. To make sure Vikram couldn't cheat there was a further agreement that his head would explode if he knew the answer but refused to speak. "Life had its complications back then. "The result was that the king and his son captured and recaptured the same Baital 25 times, and in the process heard 25 tales, of which only the last succeeded in baffling him. Originally written in Sanskrit and passed on for thousands of years, these stories were eventually collected in the 19th century under the title The 25 Tales of a Baital by Sir Richard Burton, who believed they may have been the seed for the 1001 Arabian Nights."