he serpent has swallowed up the rights of the rest of the reptiles in Indian lore and talk. As Adi Sesha Seshnâg or Ananta, the nâg or cobra is a sacred eternal creature on whom the world rests. He is also a couch to Vishnu, and the hoods of his thousand heads are clustered like the curls of a breaking wave in a canopy over the form of the Creator. In rustic ceremonies, survivals of the antique prime, before sowing or reaping, the village Brahman's first care is to find in which direction the great world-supporting serpent is lying, while the peasants wait, awe-stricken, half fancying they hear the stir of his slow uncoiling. The beloved Krishna, too, India's cerulean Apollo, is often represented in modern bazaar pictures standing on the head of the great black snake he slew and dragged from the river Jumna. He bruised its head with victorious heel, but in the pictures he stands at ease, tranquilly blowing his pipe and attended by Lamia Gopis or milkmaids.
Then there are still beliefs in serpent folk and serpent transformation, and legends and chronicles of dynasties of naga or cobra kings. The serpent of Scripture who "was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made" has perhaps conveyed to the minds of the nineteenth-century Europeans some notion of what snake legends may be like. But it is no disparagement to the faith of Christians to say that in Europe the Eden serpent is vague. When we do not (like Dr. Adam Clarke) injuriously suspect him of being an ape, he serves mainly as a metaphor, a mere vehicle for the spirit of evil, and we are too far off to make out his scales, his flat triangular head, and his quick darting tongue. In India he is alive,—alive with swift powers of death, and always very near. In the roof thatch, the stone wall, the thorn fence, the prickly pear thicket, the well-side, or coiled on the dusty field path, he waits his appointed hour to strike.
He takes part in a thousand tales of mystery and wonder, and is wiser and more wicked than all the sons of men. There are several fabled Indian jewels; that in the Elephant's brow, in the lotus of Buddhism, in the head-dress of the princely Bodisát or Buddha-to-be; but the jewel in the cobra's head evokes a livelier faith than the rest. It is not infected with the serpent's guilt, but is an antidote to poison and a sure remedy for pain. Fortune waits on its possessor, and he will never bear a heavy heart. But it is not easily come by, for they say, "A chaste woman's breasts, a serpent's jewel, a lion's mane, a brave man's sword, and a Brahman's money are not to be handled till they are dead."
Serpent tales are too numerous to be told at length. In some, a young Prince accidentally swallows a snake which feeds on his vitals. Many involved turns of the story-teller's art follow after this beginning. In one an anxious Princess, watching by her afflicted husband's side as they are journeying in search of health, sees the snake emerge from his mouth as he lies asleep, and overhears a conference with another snake which guards a treasure. They reveal the charms by which they may be subdued, and the Princess restores her husband to health and gives him illimitable wealth. This is also an old European superstition, for Gerald of Barri says that a young man, grievously afflicted by reason of having swallowed an adder, went to all the shrines of England for relief in vain, but found at last health and peace in Ireland, where no snake may live. Physiologists could tell us what would really happen to a snakelet exposed to digestive processes. That snakes guard treasure is a modern Italian superstition.
Lamia stories are common. A peasant meets a lovely disconsolate woman in the woods, brings her home, and makes her his wife. A holy man passes that way and repays his entertainment by instructing the peasant how to detect and destroy the monster woman snake.
So the now suspicious husband prepares for dinner a salt curry, having previously broken the drinking water vessels. As he lies by her side, pretending to sleep, her beautiful head rises from the pillow, the neck slowly, slowly lengthens, the forked tongue plays in feverish thirst as the serpent curves and twines round the hut seeking the door. Then, with sinuous stretch, it glides out and away, and he hears the lapping of water on the distant river brink, while the fair body by his side is cold and still. Then it returns, coil on coil shortening and settling noiselessly down, until at last a lovely woman's head is laid on the pillow with a soft sigh of content. The next day, while his industrious and beautiful wife is busy at the oven outside, the peasant thrusts her into its glowing depth and piles on wood till she is utterly consumed, even as the holy man instructed him. In some varieties of the tale the pâras, or philosopher's stone, which turns all it touches into gold, is found in the oven after the burning, and other adventures ensue.
The worship of the serpent may not everywhere survive in official form, and there are, I believe, no temples entirely consecrated to Nâgas, but it is still practised as a domestic ordinance in Southern India, and everywhere the true Hindu reverences the fateful creature that carries pure death in its fangs. Sarpa homa is the name given to the somewhat elaborate ceremony of snake-worship. But in everyday life, when the women of a household hear a cobra chasing rats or mice in the ceiling or roof, they will pause in their work and put their hands together in silent adoration. Nâg panchami is the serpents' fête-day—a holiday throughout India. In the south models of the five-hooded cobra are made in terra-cotta, brass, or silver, so contrived that the centre coil forms a socket for a cup in which an offering of milk is put and the whole is worshipped.
In poetry it is easy to talk of a thousand heads; the sculptor and the painter content themselves with five, so modern folk say that in old days the cobra had five heads, but in this iron age he has deteriorated. In Ceylon, and possibly in the extreme south of India, the snake is often an almost familiar member of the establishment, seen daily and regularly fed and worshipped. Nor is it wonderful that the cobra should be reverenced when his attributes are taken into account. He is the necklace of the Gods, he can give gems to the poor, he is the guardian of priceless treasures, he can change himself into manifold forms, he casts his skin annually and thus has the gift of eternal youth, he can make milk, fruit, bread and all innocent food stark death when he chooses to pass over them, he is of high caste, he is in the confidence and counsel of Gods and demons, and when the great world was made he was already there.
In rustic life the serpent has peculiar reverence as the appointed guardian of the village cattle; in this capacity he is regarded as an incarnation of some ancestor, and is generally named by a colour, as the Red, Black, or Blue snake, and becomes in a sort a tutelary divinity. Poisonous snakes kill scores of cattle, therefore they are in India accounted the natural protectors of cattle.
The Government pays large sums annually for the destruction of poisonous snakes, but it will be many a year before a respectable Hindu will willingly kill one. This is not surprising when we reflect that an ordinance not yet obsolete decrees that when a snake is killed the Hindu shall perform mourning ceremonies of a like ritual to those in honour of a dead relation. This, of course, is not often done, but the snake's skin is frequently burned as an atonement to its outraged spirit. They call him Raj-bansi, royal scion, as an honourable name, and generally seek to propitiate as we to destroy the pest.