A Financial Commissioner of the Punjab told me that once, when walking through fields with the son of a village Lambardar or head-man, he raised his stick with the Englishman's instinct of killing a cobra crossing the path, but the young man laid a hand on his arm, saying: "Nay, sir, do not strike, the snake also has but one little life,"—an unusual act, from which the lad's father would probably have refrained, partly in deference to a high officer of the Government, and partly from the Hindu habit of minding his own business and letting other people alone. But it shows the ingrained respect for serpent life.
It is possible, however, to show mercy to many generations of serpents and yet to know little about them. When a snake has a musk-rat in his mouth he is considered to be in a terrible dilemma. If he swallows it he becomes blind, if he vomits it he becomes leprous. The way out of it is for him to go into the water. I have never been able to understand the how or why of this escape, but it is accepted as a triumph of serpent cunning. No need to say that the snake, having swallowed the rat, brings the dislocated gearing of his jaws together and thinks no more about it, or that the musk-rat is just as welcome to him as any other.
Sayings which treat the snake as purely noxious may be guessed to be mainly Muhammadan, but the Hindu is not prevented by a sense of veneration from speaking his mind, as the numerous gibes at Brahmans show. "The snake moves crookedly as a rule, but to his own hole he can go straight enough," is a reflection on a Brahman or a cunning and selfish person. "In a council of snakes tongues play fast," is a reproach to those who talk much and do little. The silent play of the serpent tongue, however, scarcely suggests talk. "Even the breath of a snake is bad" is a common saying. I have noticed an evil odour in the breath of a python, the only creature of the race I have ventured to be intimate with, and it may be this is based on observation.
"The gadding wife sees a snake in the roof of her own house" is a wise word for India, but inapt for England, where the customs of modern good society have elevated gadding into a duty and a fine art and falsified the folk-talk of ages. "Kill the snake but do not break the stick," is sensible advice often given to over-eager people; and to those who miss opportunities, "The snake is gone, beat the line of his track." To appreciate this it should be remembered that over the greater part of India is a layer of dust on which the track left by a snake is plainly imprinted. The hopelessness of snake-bite is acknowledged in "Bitten by a snake, wants no water," i.e. will not live to drink it. The snake's bite goes in like a needle but comes out like a ploughshare, is an expressive phrase used in Bengal. A rhyming saying might be Englished "After snake-bite sleep, after scorpion weep." In the first case the sleep of course is eternal. Of the deadly little Kupper snake they say in Western India, "Its bite begins with death." Another contrast with the relatively harmless scorpion is a saying applied to rash and foolish persons, "Doesn't even know the spell for a scorpion, but must stick his finger in a snake's mouth." "Even in a company of ten the serpent is safe," they are all so much afraid of it is the inference. "One serpent can frighten a whole army" is an expansion of the same notion. But there is something worse than even snake-bite: "You may survive the cobra's fang, but nothing avails against the evil eye," says popular superstition.
There is a popular belief that to see a couple of snakes entwined together, as on the wand of Esculapius and the caduceus of Hermes in classic sculpture, is a most fortunate event. It is certainly rare, and a friend of mine who saw a pair of cobras thus engaged says this encurled dalliance is a surprising and beautiful sight. A single cobra reared in act to strike stands high, but a pair twisted together and full of excitement rear up to a great height. The heads with expanded hoods are in constant movement, and the tongues play like forked lightnings. Then he fetched his gun and shot them both dead. A Hindu would have folded his hands in adoration and considered himself made lucky for life by this auspicious sight.
The Secretary of State for India is anxious that more should be done by the Indian Government towards the extirpation of poisonous snakes and deadly wild animals. From the smooth pavements of London town the task doubtless appears easy. In reality nothing is more difficult, for in addition to the protection of Nature is the no less powerful protection of superstitious respect and deeply-rooted apathy on the part of the people. This last quality, by the way,—absolutely incomprehensible in Europe,—is an immense factor in Indian affairs which Governments and eager reformers are apt to overlook.
The Indian Government has done its best, but is inclined to despair in the face of an increasing mortality in all Presidencies except Bombay, and is now minded to recommend that the system of rewards for dead snakes should be discontinued, and that increasing care should be given to the clearing of the scrub and jungle round villages. With a diminishing staff of English civil officers it will probably be found as difficult to carry out this wise precaution as to provide for the improved sanitation which is the most urgent need of the time. Native subordinate officers are to be directed under the orders of the Sanitary Board of each Province to destroy cover for snakes near villages. But thorn-heaps, prickly pear thickets, jungle growth and clumps of tall sedge are as cherished traditions of the village outskirt as are the noisome ponds from which drinking water is drawn; and there is not one Oriental in a thousand to whom they appear in their true light as nurseries of vermin and disseminators of disease. Lord Lansdowne quoted at the opening of the Allahabad water-works a translation of a native couplet,—
"A confounded useless botheration
Is your brand new nuisance, sanitation—"
and expressed a hope that it was a libel on the more thoughtful and intelligent part of the community. But that is only a microscopic part, after all. The average native hates sanitation as the devil hates holy water, and worse.
The offer of rewards for dead snakes has naturally developed a new and remunerative industry—the rearing and breeding of snakes by out-caste jungle folk; excepting, it would seem, in the Bombay Presidency, where large numbers are killed at a cheap rate, and where the death-rate from snake-bite is decreasing. During the last eleven years Rs.237,000 (say £20,000) have been spent on rewards for destroying snakes, and evidently to very little purpose, for the mortality of man from snake-bite shows over the greater part of India no diminution, but on the contrary is increasing.