Ophiolatreia

nake Worshipper-The gardeners of Guzerat-Cottages for Snakes at Calicut-The F

the peculiar worship before us, and perhaps that country may fairly be placed side by side

t temples at Nágpúr is surmounted by the Nág as at Benares. And in the old temple near the palace of the Nágpúr, or city of the Nág or cobra, is a five-headed snake, elaborately coiled. The Bhonslahs apparently took the many-coiled Nág with them to Benares. A similar representation of the Nág is found in the temple near the Itwarah gate at

all Hindus regard the snake. I find from my notes that one Kunbi whom I questioned in old days, when I was a Settlement Officer in camp in the Nágpúr Division, stated that he worshipped the Nág and nothing else; that he worshipped clay images of the snake, and when he could afford to pay snake-catchers for a look at a live one, he worshipped the living snake; that if he saw a Nág on the road he would worship it, and that he believed no Hindu would kill a Nág or cobra if he knew it were a Nág. He then gave me the following list of articles he would use in worshipping the snake, when he co

the while certain mantras or incantations. Having offered all these gifts, the worshipper prostrates himself before the snake, and, begging

, calling them "father," "brother," and other familiar and endearing names. The head gardener paid them religious honours.

live serpents, whom he tended with peculiar care, and made it a capital crime for any person in his do

worshipper, in the hope of propitiating the reptiles during the ensuing year,

atry and numerous other works, are universally adorned with, or represented by this great symbol. Thus we have the statue of Jeyne, the Indian ?sculapius, turbaned by a seven-headed snake; that of Vishnu on

thy of the traveller's notice for the vast number of images carved upon every part of its surface. Among the rest there is Hari, of a gigantic size, recumbent upon a coiled serpent, whose heads (which are numerous) the artist has contrived to spread into a kind of canopy over the sleeping god; and from each of its mouths issues a forked tongue, seeming to threaten instant death to any whom rashness might

estroying angel in as far as he resists the approach of serpents, which in most systems of poetical mythology appears to have been the beautiful, deceiving, insinuating form that sin originally assumed. Garuda espoused a beautiful woman; the tribes of serpents, alarmed thereat, lest his progeny should, inheriting his propensities, overpower th

corching pain in his throat, and any attack on a holy or pious person would be followed by a great diminution of strength. By mistake, however, Garuda sometimes seized a priest or a religious man, but was admonished and punished in the first case by the scorching flame, and was unable, even when he had bound him in his den, to hurt the man of piety.[20] To Rama also, in the war of Lauka, Garuda was eminently useful: in Rama's last conflict with Ravana the latter was not overcome without the a

bore off the amrita (ambrosia), which enabled him to liberate his captive mother. A few drops of this immortal beverage falling on the species of grass called "Kusa," it became eternally consecrated; and the serpents greedily licking it up so lacerated their tongues with the sharp grass that they have ever since remained forked; but the boon of eter

ted to the fabled honours of the serpent tribe. In Hindu mythology serpents are of universal occurence and importance; in some shape or other they abound in all directions; a similar state of things prevails in Greece and Egypt. Ingenious and learned authors attribute this universality of serpent fo

ed. Garuda is also the proverbial, but not the utter destroyer of serpents, for he spared one, they and their archetype being, in reference to created beings, eternal. His continual and destined state of warfare with serpent, a shape mostly assumed by the enemies of the virtuous incarnations or deified heroes o