A great many other feats and tricks were performed, such as throwing up a top, and not only catching it on the end of a slender stick, but balancing it on the point of the nose, and causing it, without any new impetus to stop or to go on spinning at the request of the spectator.
Some of the tricks are called nuzzerbund, "blindfolding" or mesmerizing the spectator. A ring is placed in your hand and you are requested to hold the hand tightly between your folded knees, and when you look again you find a little dust. One of these tricks, called khano-nuzzerbund, "ears and eyes bound," is that of a small boy being put into a basket and made to disappear and reappear. Our juggler produced a small basket and beckoned to the boy to get into it, which he did; two of the men then produced instruments that looked like flageolets and began to play, moving round the head of the child. This seemed to have a peculiar effect on the boy, who appeared like one in paroxysms of pain. It was very distressing to witness his convulsions, and even while we looked the child began to disappear in the basket. The moment he was out of sight the musicians seized long knives and fell upon the basket and pierced it with many thrusts, and it seemed certain that the child was not in it, nor could we see him anywhere. Presently they straightened out the basket and resumed their music, when, all at once, from afar the clear answering voice of the child was heard; nearer and nearer came the sound, until the basket swelled and distended, and, lo! there was the boy peering from under the lid serene and smiling.
These jugglers call themselves Jâdoo-wallahs, and are of the same tribe as the Yogees who follow the Mohammedan processions and cut themselves with knives and sharpened flints in order to extract money from the more tender-hearted of the crowds who always frequent such spectacles. The name of Jâdoo-wallah is a corruption of the words Yahdèo-Wallah, "filled with god-power." The common people believe that these powers are bestowed upon them by the gods, and thus do everything and anything in their power to propitiate the goodwill of the Jâdoo-wallahs. As acrobats they far surpass the Europeans. One of the men who performed for us received on his right shoulder, as lightly as if it had been a feather, a heavy weight which was dropped from an over-hanging branch of a tree above.
It was dusk before the jugglers and serpent-charmers finished their astonishing feats and performances. We handed them five rupees, and they were delighted with this liberality, though I had feared they would not think it enough. They departed with the usual benediction, "Both burrus Jeho Sahib loke. Tumarra bucha kè bucha Ingrage kè guddee per bait jowoh" ("Long may you live, gentlefolk, and may your children's children seat themselves on the British throne").
Not long after we had an opportunity of witnessing the grand serpent-festival held in Bombay and other parts of Hindostan in the months of July and August. It is called "the naga-poojmi," literally, "serpent-worship." There are many tribes in India who have assumed the name of Nagas or Serpents from the earliest times. Diodorus supposes that the snake had been used as their crest or banner. There are three kinds of serpent-worship practised in India, and each is peculiar to a distinct class of people, although all the natives of India, except the Mohammedans, either from dread of the deadly serpent or from a feeling of veneration, join in the festival of the naga-poojmi.
The first of these is the worship paid to the serpent by the high-caste Brahmans, who adopted the early serpent-worship from the non-Aryan populations, placing the serpent, as a symbol of the masculine energy of the world, in the hand and sometimes around the head of Brahma, the chief god of their trinity; they adroitly represent that on the day sacred to the serpent, Krishna, their last incarnation, slew the great serpent Kali, who was just in the act of swallowing up the sun and moon. The second is the worship made to the serpent-gods carved in their temples by the non-Aryan and low-caste races of India, by whom the serpent is regarded in the light of a benefactor and friend, and to whom it was at one time customary to offer annually a human victim to propitiate its deadly sting. And, last of all, is the worship paid to it by the professional snake-charmer, to whom the art of taming the serpent has been transmitted from father to son, and in whose eyes the serpent is an oracle of wisdom, the harbinger of all good things, and last, but not least, a means of livelihood to the tribe.
On the last day of the waning moon at the end of July we rode out, accompanied by a party of friends, to the native part of the city, where we were told the chief of the serpent-worshippers were assembled. Here we found an immense throng of men and women gayly dressed, bands of handsome dancing-girls in flowing veils and glittering jewels, and rows of young maidens beautifully attired, with offerings of rice and milk, and some with fruit and flowers tastefully arranged in baskets which they carried on their heads; others with baskets filled with such flowers as serpents are reported to delight in—the champu, the marigold, the water-lily, the tuberose, and quantities of the snake-plant commonly called sampkèmah, "the mother of the serpent." We passed through the crowd and succeeded in reaching the centre of a great maidan, or open plain, where we stood.
Not far off clustered a vast number of serpents, with their charmers and worshippers. Immediately behind this curious assembly was a temple dedicated to the snake-god. From within these walls the lights, kept burning in great numbers, could be seen pale and ghastly amid the daylight, and the sounds of the tomtom and gongs beat in honor of the idol were heard; some noble old peepul trees surrounded the temple. Right in front of the temple were placed great basins containing milk and a preparation of rice and milk called khir, for the serpents. Those, however, that fed out of the basins were mostly all tame; they coiled in and out and round about the worshippers in a careless and easy manner. But farther on, beyond the stone basins and amid flowers and floods of sunshine, women dancing and men and boys singing, might be seen the deadly cobra de capellos now and then inflating their hoods and keeping time to the music.
The Brahman worship of the serpent is characteristic. Regarding the snake purely as a symbol, each priest prepares a clay figure of a cobra and winds it when in a plastic state round a tall pole, the upper part of which is ornamented with a ring, which in its turn typifies the feminine powers of nature.