The Alligator.
The alligator and crocodile are revered because of their habit of killing human beings. Writing of South Africa, Mr. Macdonald says: “To the Bathlapin the crocodile is sacred, and by all it is revered, but rather under the form of fear than of affection. I have often thought that the ‘river calling’ of South Africa, where there are no crocodiles, is the survival of an ancient recollection of the time when the ancestors of the present Kaffirs dwelt on the margins of rivers infested by these murderous brutes, and where they often saw their women drawn underneath when going to the river to fetch water.”[148] The crocodile may thus be the type of many of the Indian water demons to whom reference has been already made. Hence, it is a general rule among savages to spare crocodiles, or rather only to kill them in obedience to the law of blood feud, that is, as a retaliation for the slaughter of men by crocodiles. In India it became a favourite form of religious suicide to be devoured by the crocodiles at Gangasâgar. Makara, a sort of marine monster, half crocodile and half shark, is the vehicle of Kâmadeva, the god of love, and Gangâ Mâî is depicted as riding on an alligator. They are sometimes put into tanks and worshipped, and fishermen have a tradition that, if duly appeased, they never attack them.[149]