Legends of vampires have existed for millennia; cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demonic entities and blood-drinking spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. Despite the occurrence of vampire-like creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity known today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century Central Europe,Silver & Ursini, pp. 22–23. particularly Transylvania as verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, vampires are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or a living person being bitten by a vampire themselves. Belief in such legends became so rife that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires.Cohen, The Encyclopedia of Monsters, pp. 271- 274.
Tales of the undead consuming the blood or flesh of living beings have been found in nearly every culture around the world for many centuries. Today these entities are predominantly known as vampires, but in ancient times, the term vampire did not exist; blood drinking and similar activities were attributed to demons or spirits who would eat flesh and drink blood; even the devil was considered synonymous with the vampire.Marigny, Vampires, pp. 24–25. Almost every nation has associated blood drinking with some kind of revenant or demon, from the ghouls of Arabia to the goddess Sekhmet of Egypt. Indeed, some of these legends could have given rise to the European folklore, though they are not strictly considered vampires by historians when using today's definitions.Marigny, Vampires, p. 14.Summers, "The Vampire in Greece and Rome of Old", in The Vampire in Europe.
Asia
West Asia
Ancient Mesopotamia Many cultures in ancient Mesopotamia had stories involving blood-drinking demons. The Persians were one of the first civilizations thought to have tales of such monsters; creatures attempting to drink blood from men are depicted on excavated pottery shards. Ancient Babylonia had tales of the mythical lilu and lilitu,Hurwitz, Lilith. that gave rise to Lilith (Hebrew ) and her children lilin from Hebrew demonology. They were ghosts of unsatisfied mortals who sought their mate among the living.
Other Mesopotamian demons such as the Babylonian goddess Lamashtu, (Sumerian Kamadme/Dimme) and Gallu of the Utukku group are mentioned as having vampiric natures.Hurwitz, Lilith, pp. 40–41. Lamashtu is another demoness that left a mark on the figure of Lilith.Hurwitz, Lilith, pp. 34–35. Many incantations invoke her as a malicious "Daughter of Anu/Heaven", and she is often depicted as a terrifying blood-sucking creature with a lion's head, riding on a donkey.Hurwitz, Lilith, p. 36. Lamashtu primarily preyed on newborns and their mothers. She was said to watch pregnant women vigilantly, particularly when they went into labor. Afterwards, she would snatch the newborn from the mother to drink its blood and eat its flesh. In the canonical Lamaštu incantations, she is described; "Wherever she comes, wherever she appears, she brings evil and destruction. Men, beasts, trees, rivers, roads, buildings, she brings harm to them all. A flesh-eating, bloodsucking monster is she." Gallu was a demon closely associated with Lamashtu, though the word (like "Utukku") is also used as a general term for demons, like "evil Utukku" or "evil Gallu".
Gallu is theorized to have influenced the Graeco-Byzantine myth of Gello (also spelled Gyllou or Gyllo). There she appears as a child-stealing and child-killing female demon, in the manner of Lamia and Lilith.
Judaism The Hebrew word Alukah (literal translation is 'leech') is synonymous with vampirism or vampires, as is (literally, 'blood sucker'). The most detailed description of the alukah appears in Sefer Hasidim, where the creature is understood to be a living human being, but can shape-change into a wolf. It can fly (by releasing its long hair) and would eventually die if prevented from feeding on blood for a long enough time. Once dead, a vampire can be prevented from becoming a demon by being buried with its mouth stuffed with earth.
Lilith was considered a demon and was often depicted as a threat to women and children. The legend of Lilith was included in some traditional Jewish texts: according to the medieval text The Alphabet of Ben Sira, she was considered to be Adam's first wife before Eve. In this text, Lilith pronounced the Ineffable Name and left Adam in the Garden of Eden, and later (mainly in the Zohar) become the queen of the demons. Much like the Greek striges, Lilith would prey on young babies and their mothers at night, as well as males. Because Hebrew law absolutely forbade the eating of human flesh or the drinking of any type of blood, Lilith's blood drinking was described as exceptionally evil. To ward off attacks from Lilith, parents used to hang amulets around their children’s cradles.Marigny, Vampires, pp. 17–19.
Later vampire traditions appear among diaspora Jews in Central Europe, in particular the medieval interpretation of Lilith.Schwartz, Lilith's Cave, p. 15. In common with vampires, this version of Lilith (in Sefer Hasidim) was held to be able to transform herself into an animal, usually a cat, and charm her victims into believing that she is benevolent or irresistible. Another depiction of a cat-witch equated with Lilith is the Sephardic La Brusha/Broosha. However, Lilith and lilin usually strangle rather than drain victims, and in the Kabbalah, she retains many attributes found in vampires.
A late 17th- or early 18th-century Kabbalah document was found in one of the Ritman library's copies of Jean de Pauly's translation of the Zohar. The text contains two amulets, one for male (), the other for female (). The invocations on the amulets mention Adam, Eve, and Lilith, Chavah Rishonah and the angels—Sanoy, Sansinoy, Smangeluf, Shmari'el, and Hasdi'el. A few lines in Yiddish are shown as dialog between the prophet Elijah and Lilith, in which she has come with a host of demons to kill the mother, take her newborn and "to drink her blood, suck her bones and eat her flesh". She informs Elijah that she will lose power if someone uses her secret names, which she reveals at the end.
Other Jewish stories depict vampires in a more traditional way. In "The Kiss of Death", the daughter of the demon king Ashmodai snatches the breath of a man who has betrayed her, strongly reminiscent of a fatal kiss of a vampire. A rare story found in Sefer Hasidim #1465 tells of an old vampire named Astryiah who uses her hair to drain the blood from her victims. A similar tale from the same book describes staking a witch through the heart to ensure she does not come back from the dead to haunt her enemies.Schwartz, Lilith's Cave, p. 20, note 38.
South and East Asia Rooted in older folklore, the modern belief in vampires spread throughout Asia with tales of ghoulish entities from the mainland, to vampiric beings from the islands of Southeast Asia. In the 1980's in South-east Asia the Laotian Hmong people were suffering from a strange epidemic where they would die at night on their backs with faces full of terror and people believed it was the night-mare spirit. India also developed other vampiric legends. The Bhūta or is the soul of a man who died an untimely death. It wanders around animating dead bodies at night, attacking the living much like a ghoul.Bunson, Vampire Encyclopedia, pp. 23–24. In northern India, there is the BrahmarākŞhasa, a vampire-like creature with a head encircled by intestines and a skull from which it drank blood. Japan has no native legends about vampires. However some Japanese mythical creatures bear some similarities to vampires, such as the Nure-onna who is a snake-like woman that feasts on human blood. Japanese vampires made their first appearances in the cinema of Japan during the late 1950s.Bunson, Vampire Encyclopedia, pp. 137–38.
China Jiangshi, sometimes called "Chinese vampires" by Westerners, are corpses that are usually reanimated due to magical reasons. In ancient China, people always had the preference of being buried in their hometowns, and when a person dies in a land that is not their hometown, their family members hire a sorcerer to bring back their deceased family member. The family commissions the sorcerer in their village to travel to the place of the person's death, locate the corpse, and to write a spell and stick it upon the corpse's face. The spell-paper contains their name, birthdate, and some other words to reanimate the corpse. Once the paper is stuck upon the corpses' face, the newly created would follow the sorcerer by hopping around, and the sorcerer would lead it back to its hometown for burial (this was often a last-resort choice used by families with not enough money to hire a cart to carry the corpse back). Usually, the sorcerer would travel by night, and would at least have around three traveling with it. But when the written spell-paper falls or is pulled off of the (in the case the sorcerer is not paid the agreed amount for his doings, he might rip off the s spell-paper), it gains its own consciousness, and all the power that the sorcerer formerly had over it would be lost. Instead of being an obedient corpse that followed the sorcerer, the would be rampant and dangerous. The freed would begin killing living creatures to absorb life essence (qì) from their victims. They are said to be created when a person's soul ( pò) fails to leave the deceased's body.
Some unusual features of the Chinese vampire include its long, curved fingernails, perhaps derived from the appearance of growing fingernails on corpses due to flesh recession, and its greenish-white furry skin, perhaps derived from fungus or mould growing on corpses. legends have inspired a genre of jiangshi films and literature in Hong Kong and East Asia. Films like Encounters of the Spooky Kind and Mr. Vampire were released during the cinematic boom of the 1980s and 1990s.
The motif of the Western-style vampire entered China in the early 20th century.
India In India, tales of vetalas, ghoul-like beings that inhabit corpses, are found in old Sanskrit folklore. Although most vetala legends have been compiled in the Betal Panchabingshati, a prominent story in the Kathasaritsagara tells of King Vikramāditya and his nightly quests to capture an elusive one. The Betal is described as an undead creature who, like the bat associated with modern-day vampirism, hangs upside down on trees found on cremation grounds and cemeteries. Pishacha, the returned spirits of evil-doers or those who died insane, also bear vampiric attributes.Bunson, Vampire Encyclopedia, p. 200.
Malaysia and Indonesia