THE SERPENT IN INDIA.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLIII, Issue 2282, 29 January 1912, Page 7

THE SERPENT IN INDIA.

HOW IT IS REVERENCED. Serpent tales are numerous in India. In some, a young Prince accidentally swallows a snake which feeds on his vitals. Many involved turns of the storyteller's art follow after this beginning. In one an anxious Princess watehing by her afflicted husband's side as they are i journeying in search of health, sees the snake emerge from his mouth as he lies asleep, and overhears a conference with another snake which j guards a treasure. They reveal the i charms by which they may be subdued, and the Princess restores her ;. husband to health and gives him ilI linaitable wealth. Lamia stories are common. A ! peasant meets a lovely disconsolate I 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 j serpent curves and twins round the | hut seeking the door. Then, with ! sinuous stretch, it glides out and | away, and he hears the lapping of I water on the distant river brink, j while the fair body by his side is i cold and still. Then it returns* coil ! cm coil shortening and settling soise- : lessly down, until at last a lovely woman's head is laid on the pillow j with a soft sigh of content. The | next day, while his industrious and I 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 paras, 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 Nagas, 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 homo is the name given to the somewhat elaborate ceremony of snake worship. But in every day life when the women of a household hear a cobra chasing rats of mice in the ceiling or roof, they will pause in their work and put their hands together in silent adoration. Nag panchami is the serpents' fete-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 tbat in old days the cobra had five heads, but in this iron age he has deteriorated. In Ceylon,, and probably 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 nacklace 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, be 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. —From "Beast and Man in India."