The outlook is not in the least encouraging, nor can any one who really knows the country honestly hold forth a hope that the Government by any agency it can command will be able to tread out the deadly snake. The people will not allow it for many a year to come.
It may be worth while to quote a few figures from the last Government report on the subject. In the Bombay Presidency in 1889, 400,000 snakes were killed and only 1000 human deaths from snake-bite were recorded. In the Punjab, 68,500 snakes died; in Bengal, 41,000; in the North-West Provinces and Oudh (the greater part of Hindustan proper), less than 26,000. In Bengal 10,680 persons are reported to have died from snake-bite, and in the North-West Provinces 6445. But not every death ascribed to the snake is really caused by him. Many a murder and poisoning case is passed off as snake-bite, for the murderer is just as ingenious in India as elsewhere.
The creatures to which mortality is mainly due are the Cobra (Naja tripudians), the Krait (Bungarus ceruleus), Russell's Viper (Daboia Russellii), and the Echis (Echis carinata), to which may be added in Western India the Kupper snake, and in Assam the Hamadryad (Ophiophagus elaps).
Snake-bite seems likely to remain incurable until some more fortunate Dr. Koch of the future discovers a fluid which on injection will counteract the horrible decomposition of the blood that snake-poison causes. In India there are many antidotes in which the people put their trust, but probably all are worthless. A German Missionary recently claimed that a nostrum, to which he gave a pretty name from Persian poetry, was efficacious, but it seems to have been no better than the rest. The snake-stone,—a porous piece of calcined bone, pumice-stone, or something of that nature,—is the sheet-anchor of many, and in the year of grace 1890 an enlightened native gentleman of Hyderabad gave several hundred rupees for one. The theory is that when the snake-stone is placed on the bitten part it adheres and swiftly extracts the poison, dropping off when the virus is absorbed. It is reasonable enough that any absorbent, even the lips of her "who knew that love can vanquish death," if applied promptly enough, may prevent a mortal dose of the poison from entering into the circulation; but once mixed with the blood, all the snake-stones and quack nostrums in creation cannot avail to withdraw it. Yet even nonsense of this kind has its use. The Briton who spends thirteenpence-halfpenny on cholera pills and the Indian noble who spends a few thousand rupees on a snake-stone do not utterly throw away their money. They buy confidence and courage, most valuable commodities. The hope that springs eternal in the human breast is the innocent first cause of the quack.
One of the unalterably fixed beliefs in the native mind is that the mongoose knows a remedy for snake-bite,—a plant which nobody has seen or can identify, but which, when eaten, is an antidote so sure that the mere breath of the animal suffices to paralyse the snake. The gem in the head of the serpent itself is a no less potent remedy. No human being has seen that gem, but it must be there, since generations of Hindus have written and talked of it. The mongoose has only its quickness of attack and its thick fur for safeguard, and once fairly bitten, goes the way of all flesh into which the deadly poison is poured. But no Oriental of high or low degree will believe this, and you are made to feel like an infidel scoffing at serious things if you assert it.
Having thus incidentally met the mongoose or ichneumon, we may pause to say a word on its tamability. Few wild animals take so readily to domestic life as the Indian mongoose, who has been known to domesticate himself among friendly people; first coming into the house through the bath-water exit in chase of snake or rat, and ending, with a little encouragement, by stealing into the master's chair and passing a pink inquisitive nose under his arm to examine a cup of tea held in his hand. This is the footing on which pets should be maintained. A creature you put into a cage, or tie up with string or chain, is no pet, but a prisoner who cannot but hate his keeper.
There is one person of Indian birth to whom the sanctity of the cobra is a joke; a cynic who dallies with the crested worm, disarms him of death, and makes him dance to the tune of a scrannel pipe; who breeds him for sale to Government officers, that he may receive the sixpence officially set on his beautiful hood, and knows all his secret ways. The Indian snake-charmer of to-day is a juggler, and often a very skilful one. He belongs to a caste to which all things are pure and clean, and is, in consequence, more dirty than all the rest, and yet he is not proud of his superiority to Levitically bonded souls.
Most animals have their peculiar masters,—or servants. The horse owns an imposing retinue of princes, nobles, soldiers, and grooms all over the world, to say nothing of the slaves of the betting ring; the cow and the ox have an humbler following; a peculiar public is devoted to the dog; elephants and camels have their body-servants and attachés; in Europe even the rat has an incubus who lives scantily on his murder; but it is only in India that the reptile under the rock has retainers. There are snake, lizard, and crocodile eaters, and those who, with no assumed madness like that of Edgar in King Lear,—"eat the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water; ... swallow the old rat and the ditch-dog; drink the green mantle of the standing pool; who are whipped from tithing to tithing, and stock-punished, and imprisoned." In our days, however, the scorn and oppression of the upper classes fall lightly on these out-castes, although, according to the most admired code of Menu, their life is worth less than that of the creatures they devour. From one of these numerous clans comes the snake-charmer. One would like to believe that he exercises a special occult influence over his snakes, but, like the mongoose, he owns no more than his nimbleness, possesses no charm more potent than knowledge of his subject, and it is to be feared that he can only draw that snake out of its hole which but now was secretly put by his own hand. A fair theosophist, describing the conditions under which the early miracles of her curious creed were wrought, declared in print that for their due performance it was necessary that the miracle-workers should "know the place and have been there, the more recently the better." If this is true of discovered brooches, broken tea-cups, or cigarette papers, it is also true of cobras. All the snake-charmer asks is to know the place and to have been there recently, and you shall have your snake without fail.
