OF REPTILES
"And death is in the garden awaiting till we pass,
For the krait is in the drain-pipe,
The cobra in the grass."
_Anglo-Indian Nursery Rhymes._--R. K.
[Illustration: VISHNU RECLINING ON THE SERPENT (FROM AN INDIAN LITHOGRAPH)]
The 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.
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.
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.
[Illustration: A SNAKE-CHARMER]
But there are theosophists who declare that in watching a snake-charmer's
tricks we are witnessing manifestations of occult mysteries. "Then is the
moon of ripe, green cheese compact." Yet is he connected with the Gods by
one article of his equipment. The _dauru_, a small, hour-glass-shaped
drum-rattle of fearsome noisiness (drawn in the fore-front of my sketch),
is the badge of all his vagrant tribe, and also of the great God Siva, who
bears it slung on his trident in many pictures, and will one day rattle it
furiously to usher in the destruction of the world, which will be set afire
by the flame of the midmost of his three eyes.
* * * * *
The amphisbæna, because it appears to have two butt ends, is believed by
some to have a head at each, while others, with a scientific turn, say that
for six months its head is at one end and for other six at the other. And
it is universally known as the _do mûnhia_--two-faced one. The delightful
Sir Thomas Browne seems, in his _Vulgar Errors_, inclined to accept this
double-headed serpent, but at last he "craves leave to doubt." The era of
doubt is not yet reached in India.
The large lizard, _varanus dracæna_, which is perfectly innocuous, like all
Indian lizards, is called the bis-cobra by some, though the name really
belongs, according to others, to a different creature, and is counted
highly dangerous, while it is believed to be so strong that Sivaji, the
renowned Marathi chief, escaped from a fortress wherein he was confined by
being dragged up the wall by one of these creatures, and some say they are
habitually used by burglars for this purpose. I used to keep one of these
harmless animals, and even while holding it in one hand I have been assured
by natives of its vast strength and deadliness. The cry of the small house
lizard, a kind of gecko, is unlucky in certain conditions. In Southern
India, where lizards are numerous and are perpetually falling from the
thatched roofs, there is a marvellously elaborate code of omens drawn from
the varying circumstances, the parts of the body, house utensils, etc.,
upon which they drop. Less attention seems to be paid to lizards in the
North, but even there they say, "A lizard has fallen on you, go and bathe."
Crocodiles are occasionally regarded as sacred, one cannot say kept and
periodically fed. _Muggur pir_ near Karachi is a pond full of these
creatures, which are often fed for the amusement of visitors. There is a
legend of a British officer who crossed this pool, using its inhabitants as
stepping-stones in his daring passage. In some of the lakes in Rajputana
they are cherished and come to the Brahman's call; not one may be visible
at first, but there is first a ripple, then a slow, hideous head protrudes,
then another, till the water is alive with crocodiles.
Some out-caste river-side tribes are in the habit of eating tortoises and
crocodiles. Of one of these castes a current Punjab gibe says the crocodile
can smell a Mor when he passes on the river bank, and truly no very
delicate nose is necessary for this feat.
General Sir Alex. Cunningham has identified ancient sculptured
representations of the tortoise as meant to indicate the river Jumna--an
ascription of which modern Hinduism takes no account. Describing sculptures
at Udayagiri he writes: "The figures of the Ganges and Jumna are known by
the symbolic animals on which they stand--the crocodile and the tortoise.
These two representative animals are singularly appropriate, as the Ganges
swarms with crocodiles, and the Jumna teems with tortoises. The crocodile
is the well-known _vâhan_ or vehicle on which the figure of the Ganges is
usually represented; but the identification of the tortoise as the _vâhan_
of the Jumna, though probable, was not certain until I found, amongst the
Charonsat Jogini statues in the Bhera Ghât temple, a female figure with a
tortoise on the pedestal and the name of Sri Yamuna inscribed beneath."
Much graceful and significant symbolism of this nature seems to have been
dropped in recent times, and a tortoise is now a tortoise and no more. In a
Hindu temple at Volkeshwar, Bombay, they were kept and worshipped within
the last thirty years, perhaps even now. They say of low-born people that
"their words are like a tortoise's head," to be put forth or withdrawn
according to circumstances. But no saying reflects on the infamous tyranny
of ages that has made the low-caste man a timid time-server and a sneak.