The Panjâb Snake Tribe.
In the Panjâb there is a special snake tribe. They observe every Monday and Thursday in the snake’s honour, cooking rice and milk, setting a portion aside for the snake, and never eating or making butter on those days. If they find a dead snake, they put clothes upon it, and give it a regular funeral. They will not kill a snake, and say that its bite is harmless to them. The snake, they say, changes its form every hundred years, and then becomes a man or a bull.[12] So, in Senegambia, “a python is expected to visit every child of the Python clan within eight days after birth; and the Psylli, a snake clan of ancient Africa, used to expose their infants to snakes in the belief that the snakes would not harm true-born children of the clan.”[13] So, in Northern India the Bais Râjputs are children of the snake, and supposed to be safe from its bite, and Nâga Râja is the tribal godling of the Bâjgis. There is a well-known legend of a queen of India, who is said to have sent to Alexander, among other costly presents, a girl, who, having been fed with serpents from her infancy, partook of their venomous nature. The well-known tale of Elsie Venner has been already referred to in the same connection.