Tree and Serpent Worship.
In the story of the king and his son, told in the Baitâl Pachîsi, the king supplicates the sacred tree to give him a son. The request is granted, and the king then implores the tree to make his people happy; the result was that poor wretches, hitherto living in the woods, came forth and concerted measures to seize his kingdom. Rather than shed blood, the old king, his queen, and his son retired to a lofty mountain. There the son finds something white lying under a mimosa tree. On inquiry he learnt that it is a heap of serpents’ bones left there by Garuda, who comes daily to feed on serpents. On hearing this, the king goes towards a temple, but is arrested by the cry of a woman, who says: “My son to-day will be eaten by Garuda.” She and her people were, in fact, serpents in human shape. The king was moved to pity, and as in the famous legend of Buddha and the tigress, he offered to expose himself to Garuda in the room of her son. This is discovered; Garuda releases the king, and at his request re-animates the serpents to whom the bones belong.[88]
Here we have an example of the combination of tree and serpent worship, and it would be easy to adduce more instances, as has been done by Mr. Ferguson and other writers of his school. But in dealing with this phase of belief much caution is required. As Dr. Tylor observes: “Serpent-worship unfortunately fell years ago into the hands of speculative writers, who mixed it up with occult philosophies, Druidical mysteries, and that portentous nonsense called the Arkite symbolism, till now sober students hear the very name of ophiolatry with a shiver.”[89]
It is almost needless to say that snake-worship prevails largely in Northern India. The last census showed in the North-Western Provinces over twenty-five thousand Nâga worshippers; one hundred and twenty-three persons recorded themselves as votaries of Gûga, the snake god. There are also a certain number who worship Sânp Deotâ, or the snake godling, and Ahîran, another deity of the same class, who is worshipped in Sultânpur by daily offerings of red lead, water, and rice. Sokha, said to be the ghost of a Brâhman killed by a snake, has nearly fourteen thousand worshippers. In the Panjâb, again, there are over thirty-five thousand special votaries of the snake godlings, of which the great majority worship Gûga.
That the cultus of the snake has been derived from aboriginal beliefs appears tolerably certain. The Hindus of Vedic times looked on the serpent with fear and dislike. It was impersonated as Ahi or Vritra, the snake demon which brings darkness and drives away the kindly rain. The regular snake-worship, as we now find it, was obviously of a later date.
It does not appear difficult to disentangle the ideas on which snake-worship is based. To begin with, the snake is dreaded and revered on account of the mysterious fear which is associated with it, its stealthy habits, its sinuous motion, the cold fixity of its gaze, the protrusion of its forked tongue, the suddenness and deadliness of its attacks. It would be particularly dreaded by women, whose habits of walking barefoot in fields in the early dawn, and groping in dark corners of their huts, render them specially exposed to its malice. The chief basis of the cultus would then be fear, as in the case of the tiger and other beasts of prey.
It would soon be discovered that there were various harmless snakes which would, as house-hunters, come to be identified with the ancestral ghosts as the protectors of houses and goods. The power of controlling and taming the more venomous snakes would then be discovered, and the snake-charmer would come to be regarded as the wisest of mankind, as a wizard, and finally as a priest. We have thus three aspects under which the snake is worshipped by many savage races—as a dreaded enemy, as the protector of home and treasure, as the accompaniment and attribute of wisdom. The village temple would be often in early times a storehouse of treasure, and the snake, respected as its guardian, would finally, as in Kashmîr, be installed there as a god.
Next, we have the early connection between the serpent and the powers of nature, the cloud and the rain, as appears in the familiar Vedic legend of Indra and the Dragon Ahi, and Seshanâga, the great world serpent, which appears in so many of the primitive mythologies.
The serpent would again receive respect as the emblem of life; his shape would, as in many forms of primitive ornament, be associated with the ring, as a symbol of eternity; he is excessively long-lived, and periodically renews his life.
He has, further, as in the Saiva cultus, become associated with phallicism, and with the sexual powers, as in the Adam legend. “The serpent round the neck of Siva denotes the endless cycle of recurring years, and a second necklace of skulls about his person, with numerous other serpents, symbolizes the eternal revolution of ages and the successive dissolution and regeneration of the races of mankind.”[90]
Lastly, the cultus may have a totemistic basis. As Strabo describes the Ophiogeneis or serpent races of Phrygia actually retaining physical affinity with the snakes to whom they were to be believed to be allied, the Cheros of the eastern districts of the North-Western Provinces and the Bais Râjputs of Oudh profess to be descended from the Great Serpent. Gautama Buddha himself is said to have been of serpent lineage.
SIVA AND THE COBRA.
But the great serpent race was that of the Nâgas, to whom much ill-considered argument and crude speculation have been devoted. According to one theory they were Skythic emigrants from Central Asia, but whether antecedent or subsequent to the so-called Aryan inroad is disputed. They seem to have been accustomed to use the serpent as a national symbol, and hence became identified with the snake. Some of the myths seem to imply that they suffered persecution at the hands of the Brâhmans, such as the tale of the burning of the Khândava forest, the opening scenes of the Mahâbhârata, and the exploits of the youthful Krishna. They are, again, associated with Buddhism on monuments like those of Ajanta, and another theory would make them out to be the Dasyus, or aboriginal races of Upper India, who were the first to adopt Buddhism and were exterminated in the Brâhmanical revival. Little, in fact, is known of them, save that they may have been early worshippers of the snake, may have embraced Buddhism, and may have introduced the worship into India from some northern home.[91] But Mr. Ferguson’s theory that snake-worship was of purely Turanian origin is, to say the least, very doubtful, and his belief that Saivism is antagonistic to snake-worship, and that Vaishnavism, which he regards as a modification of Buddhism, encourages it, is opposed by the numerous examples of the connection of the serpent with the Lingam.