On the day of the festival thousands of Brahmans, each with his pole thus ornamented, accompanied by musicians and dancing-girls, the former playing on their instruments and the latter keeping time to the music and performing a mystic circular dance, surrounded by half-naked fakeers and gossains, who keep shouting and leaping about, traverse the length and breadth of the native town till they reach their temples. Entering these, they plant their poles in front of the shrine of Siva, after which they make over the clay serpent a wave-offering of fire, pouring over it the oil pressed from the "telah," or sesamum-seed, sacred to the serpent, and repeat the prayer, "Life has sway over all in earth and heaven; protect us as a mother her children; grant us life, prosperity, wisdom," etc.
On this day every Hindoo and Brahman woman places seven wicks in a dish of silver or other metal, fills the dish with telah oil, and at nightfall waves it around the portals and windows of her house. When her husband returns he makes her a present, generally of a scarf, and she then performs a curious and very mysterious rite: placing her hands on her own hip-joints, and touching his with the tips of her fingers, she prostrates herself before him and implores for him, from the god of the day, renewed vigor, health, and strength.
The Nagas, or low-caste serpent-worshippers, assemble with the snake-charmers in open plains, where all the tame snakes in the country are brought together. After having fed these creatures, they offer up prayers, each to his own deity, but mostly to the god Siva, for long life and for protection from its deadly bite, making offerings of the snake-plant, and to the priests of little lamps lighted with one or two wicks for the altars.
The common people in the Hindoo villages also make clay images of the cobra and pray to them. Most of the abandoned characters turn out on the occasion of these festivals, and the night is spent in licentious merriment, music, and song, while the snake-charmers, jugglers, and Yogees obtain large sums of money and presents from the people, who regard them in the light of divine benefactors to their race.
To understand the worship paid to serpents we must remember that the earliest feeling which mankind had of a relation to invisible powers must have been a compound of dread and gratitude, and in the mingling of these emotions dread predominated. The dreaded serpent alone, says Fergusson,[9] without arms or wings or any of the usual appliances of locomotion, still moves with singular celerity and grace; its form is full of elegance, its colors are often very beautiful, its eyes are bright and piercing. A serpent can creep, spring, climb, swim, expand, constrict, suspend itself by the tail, burrow in the ground, and even raise its body almost erect. Its muscular irritability is remarkably great and persistent, depending on its nervous energy. The heart palpitates long after death; the jaws open and shut even when the head is severed from the body; the outer skin is shed more than once, and the ancients believed that by this means the snake renewed its youth. It does not need food for long periods when casting its skin. It often changes color at will, and, above all, its longevity is so great as still to make the superstitious ascribe to it immortality. It makes no nest (except in the case of the python, who hatches her eggs by the heat of her own body); no food is stored for the young, who are born with all powers in full perfection. Then the poison of a serpent is so deadly and subtile that it excites in the heart of the savage the greatest dread and mystery, and even more startling and terrible than the poison of the cobra is the flash-like spring and fascination of the boa constrictor, the instantaneous embrace, the crushed-out life,—all accomplished faster than the human eye can follow. These are the powers that must have impressed the primitive races of the East with dread and terror, and wherever the serpent was found, there he seems to have been propitiated by man with prayers, supplications, and all forms of worship. It is perhaps strange that the serpent in the early period of the worship was not so much dreaded as loved—whether from a feeling that it was not as deadly as it has in its power to be, or for some other reason, it is now impossible to determine. However, in the history of this peculiar religion it is found that in course of time the serpent began to be regarded as the harbinger of good gifts, the teacher of wisdom, the symbol of subtlety, the oracle of the future, and even the healer of all diseases.
All the gods, and even the kings and queens, of the old world are usually represented with serpents coiling about their heads or arms. The Hindoos most probably adopted this symbol of the serpent from the aboriginal populations among whom they settled. "Sanee," the oldest rock-sculpture of the Hindoo "Saturn," the presiding deity of the seventh day of the week, has serpents for her belts or rings. She rides on a raven, a bird of ill omen sacred to her, and no Hindoo will undertake any new enterprise on the day over which she presides. As one wanders through the forests of India one finds that many of the finest trees served as altars to a generation long gone by. Their huge old trunks have been hollowed out and carved in the form of oriel chapels or windows, in the inmost recesses of which may be still traced the faint remains of what was intended to represent the cobra de capello or hooded serpent of India.
Sacred trees have from very early times shared a portion of the homage paid to serpents. It would appear that while the serpent was made to symbolize both the beneficent and dreaded powers of nature, the tree represented man. The wondrous spectacle of a new creation every year, the forest trees gathering their fresh leaves every spring, became to the primitive man a steadfast promise of a similar resurrection, and perhaps caused him to associate the tree with the serpent because of the analogies that exist between them. The one shedding its leaves, the other its skin, their mutual inactivity in winter, their awakening to life in the spring, their longevity, the twig-like form of the serpent, and a last, but not least, important fact is this, that wherever, in India, the deadly serpent is found, there also abounds the mungoose,[10] or snake-plant, with convex flower-clusters and long serpentine roots, possessing the mysterious power to cure the deadly bite of a snake.
Thus, in the course of time, the serpent became an endless writing on the wall, so full was it of mysterious significance and dread to the ancient races of the world. In fact, serpents play an important part in the mythology of every nation of the earth. Even to-day the snake-charmers will tell you that the circles on the head of the cobra de capello are spiritual eyes which enable it to distinguish between good and bad men. If a good man is bitten to death, they account for it by declaring that he must have committed some deadly sin in a former state of existence, hence his punishment in this.
It will not be amiss to conclude this chapter with a mention of some of the symbols for which the serpent stood in ancient times. It stands for the higher and lower forms of the creative energy of nature; for the emblem of evil; for wisdom and subtlety, as we all know, being self-supporting from the moment of birth; for immortality, because of its fabled longevity; for death, for new birth, and resurrection, from its casting its skin and from its awakening in spring from the torpor of winter. In the oldest hieroglyphics the serpent with its tail in its mouth stood for cycles of time, for the horizon, for eternity, and for life to come. Twined around the crown of ancient Oriental kings and queens, it symbolized the fatal sting lurking beneath the power entrusted to them; and bound round the royal sceptre, it typified national life, vigor, and strength.