The story of the parentage of Vikramaditya may point to a line of kings who had the ass for their crest or totem. Similarly the Maharajahs of Nagpur have the cobra for their crest and the origin of the crest is explained by a story of the type of Beauty and the Beast.
It would, no doubt, be a mistake to suppose that totemism, or a system of taboos resembling it, must have existed wherever such stories are told; for it is certain that popular tales spread by diffusion from tribe to tribe and nation to nation, till they may be handed down by oral tradition among people who neither practise nor even understand the customs in which the stories originated. Yet the legend of the miraculous parentage of Vikramaditya may very well have been based on the existence at Ujjain of a line of rajahs who had the ass for their crest or totem.[373] Such a custom is not without analogy in India. The crest of the Maharajah of Nagpur is a cobra with a human face under its expanded hood, surrounded by all the insignia of royalty. Moreover, the Rajah and the chief members of his family always wear turbans so arranged that they resemble a coiled serpent with its head projecting over the wearer's brow. To explain this serpent badge a tale is told which conforms to the type of Beauty and the Beast. Once upon a time a Nag or serpent named Pundarika took upon himself the likeness of a Brahman, and repaired in that guise to the house of a real Brahman at Benares, in order to perfect himself in a knowledge of the sacred books. The teacher was so pleased with the progress made by his pupil that he gave him his only child, the beautiful Parvati, to wife. But the subtle serpent, though he could assume any form at pleasure, was unable to rid himself of his forked tongue and foul breath. To conceal these personal blemishes from his wife he always slept with his back to her. One night, however, she got round him and discovered his unpleasant peculiarities. She questioned him sharply, and to divert her attention he proposed that they should make a pilgrimage to Juggernaut. The idea of visiting that fashionable watering-place so raised the lady's spirits that she quite forgot to pursue the enquiry. However, on their way home her curiosity revived, and she repeated her questions under circumstances which rendered it impossible for the serpent, [pg 133] as a tender husband, to evade them, though well he knew that the disclosure he was about to make would sever him, the immortal, at once and for ever from his mortal wife. He related the wondrous tale, and, plunging into a pool, disappeared from sight. His poor wife was inconsolable at his hurried departure, and in the midst of her grief and remorse her child was born. But instead of rejoicing at the birth, she made for herself a funeral pyre and perished in the flames. At that moment a Brahman appeared on the scene, and perceived the forsaken babe lying sheltered and guarded by a great hooded snake. It was the serpent father protecting his child. Addressing the Brahman, he narrated his history, and foretold that the child should be called Phani-Makuta Raya, that is, “the snake crowned,” and that he should reign as rajah over the country to be called Nagpur. That is why the rajahs of Nagpur have the serpent for their crest.[374] Again, the rajahs of Manipur trace their descent from a divine snake. At his installation a rajah of Manipur used to have to pass with great solemnity between two massive dragons of stone which stood in front of the coronation house. Somewhere inside the building was a mysterious chamber, and in the chamber was a pipe, which, according to the popular belief, led down to the depths of a cavern where dwells the snake god, the ancestor of the royal family. The length and prosperity of the rajah's reign were believed to depend on the length of time he could sit on the pipe enduring the fiery breath of his serpentine forefather in the place below. Women are specially devoted to the worship of the ancestral snake, and great reverence is paid them in virtue of their sacred office.[375]
The parallelism between the legends of Nagpur and Ujjain may be allowed to strengthen my conjecture that, if we have a race of royal serpents in the one place, there may well have been a race of royal asses in the other; indeed such dynasties have perhaps not been so rare as might be supposed.
Chapter IV. The Supply Of Kings.
Stories of the type of Beauty and the Beast are not mere fictions, but rest on a real basis of belief and custom. Similarly the legend of kings who were sacrificed after a reign of a single day has its analogy in actual custom. Such stories indicate that the supply of kings may have been maintained by compelling men to accept the fatal sovereignty.
Tales of the foregoing sort might be dismissed as fictions designed to amuse a leisure hour, were it not for their remarkable agreement with beliefs and customs which, as we have seen, still exist, or are known to have existed in former times. That agreement can hardly be accidental. We seem to be justified, therefore, in assuming that stories of the kind really rest on a basis of facts, however much these facts may have been distorted or magnified in passing through the mind of the story-teller, who is naturally more concerned to amuse than instruct his hearers. Even the legend of a line of kings of whom each reigned for a single day, and was sacrificed at night for the good of the people, will hardly seem incredible when we remember that to this day a kingdom is held on a similar tenure in west Africa, though under modern conditions the throne stands vacant.[376] And while it would be vain to rely on such stories for exact historical details, yet they may help us in a general way to understand the practical working of an institution which to civilised men seems at first sight to belong to the cloudland of fancy rather than to the sober reality of the workaday world. Remark, for example, how in these stories the supply of kings is maintained. In the Indian tradition all the men of the city are put on a list, and each of them, when his turn comes, is forced to reign for a day and to die the death. It is not left to his choice to decide whether he will accept the fatal sovereignty or not. In the High History of the Holy Grail the mode of filling the vacant [pg 135] throne is different. A stranger, not a citizen, is seized and compelled to accept office. In the end, no doubt, the dwarf volunteers to be king, thus saving Lancelot's life; but the narrative plainly implies that if a substitute had not thus been found, Lancelot would have been obliged, whether he would or not, to wear the crown and to perish in the fire.
Our conceptions of the primitive kingship are apt to be coloured and falsified by ideas borrowed from the very different monarchies of modern Europe.
In thus representing the succession to a throne as compulsory, the stories may well preserve a reminiscence of a real custom. To us, indeed, who draw our ideas of kingship from the hereditary and highly privileged monarchies of civilised Europe, the notion of thrusting the crown upon reluctant strangers or common citizens of the lowest rank is apt to appear fantastic and absurd. But that is merely because we fail to realise how widely the modern type of kingship has diverged from the ancient pattern. In early times the duties of sovereignty are more conspicuous than its privileges. At a certain stage of development the chief or king is rather the minister or servant than the ruler of his people. The sacred functions which he is expected to discharge are deemed essential to the welfare, and even the existence, of the community, and at any cost some one must be found to perform them. Yet the burdens and restrictions of all sorts incidental to the early kingship are such that not merely in popular tales, but in actual practice, compulsion has sometimes been found necessary to fill vacancies, while elsewhere the lack of candidates has caused the office to fall into abeyance, or even to be abolished altogether.[377] And where death stared the luckless monarch in the face at the end of a brief reign of a few months or days, we need not wonder that gaols had to be swept and the dregs of society raked to find a king.