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SEBLTSTGAPATAMSEBPENT-WOBSHIP (Introductory and Primitive) 399

SEPARATIST SOCIETY, See COMMTJN- site was granted by one of the Chola Mngs to
ISTIC SOCIETIES OP AMERICA.
Ramanujaeharya, the celebrated Vaisnava apostle,
and in 1454 the Ranganatha temple was enlarged,
SERAPHIM. See DEMONS AND SPIRITS the materials of 101 Jain temples being used for
(Hebrew).
the purpose. The plaee_is remarkable for the two
famous-sieges in 1792" arid 1799, "the British forces
SERINGAPATAM (Skr. jrirangapattana, being under the command of Lord Cornwallis and
' city of the holy pleasure-place'),Senngapatam General Harris ; in the latter attack the Sultan
is a city in Mysore District, Mysore ; lat. 12 25' Tipu was slain. His remains and those of his
N.; long. 76 42' E.; situated on an island in the father Haidar 'All rest in a mausoleum (gumbaz)
river Kaveri. In the earliest times Gautama in the garden known as the Lai Bagh, where
Rsi is said to have had a hermitage here, and prayers are still offered.
LITERATURE.B. L. Rice, Mysore, rev. ed,, London, 1897, ii.
he worshipped the god Ranganatha, ' lord of
ff. ; F. Buchanan, A Journey from Madras through the
pleasure,5 whose temple is the principal building 294
of Mysore, Ca/nara, and Malabar, do. 1807,5. 60 ffi.;
m the fort. The earliest temple is said to have Countries
M. Wilks, Historical Sketches of the South of India, Madras,
been erected by Tinimalaiya, under the Ganga 1869, ii. 241S., 368 ff.; G. B. Malleson, Seringapatam; Past
W CROOKE
dynasty, A.D. 894. About A,D. 117 the whole and Present, do. 1876; IGJ xxii. 1791

SERPENT-WORSHIP.
Introductory (J. A. MACCTJLLOCH), p. 399.
Indian (W. CROOKE), p. 411.
SERPENT - WORSHIP (Introductory and
primitive). The cult of the serpent exists in
many forms, whether of a single serpent or of a
species, of a serpent embodying a spirit or god, of
a real or imaginary serpent represented in an
image, of a serpent as associated with a divinity
(a chief god or one of many), or of a purely mythical reptile. All these may be traced back to the
cult of actual serpents, which, however, easily
become a fitting vehicle for a spirit or god. The
origin of the cult is to be sought in the effect
which all animals more or less had upon the mind
of early mana feeling that they were stronger,
wiser, subtler than he; in a word, uncanny, This
was especially true of the serpent because of its
swift yet graceful and mysterious gliding motion
without feet or wings, unlike that of any other
animal,1 its power of disappearing suddenly, the
brilliance and power of fascination of its eye, its
beauty and strength, the sudden fatal consequences of its bite or of its enveloping folds, the
practice of casting its skin, which suggested its
longevity or even immortality. All these contributed to arouse feelings of wonder, respect,
fear, to produce worship, and also to make the
serpent a fit subject of innumerable myths. In
the various forms of the cult there is often found
a sense of the animal's beneficence, probably because myth easily attributed to it wisdom, secret
knowledge, magical power, healing properties,
and inspiration. As an animal dwelling in holes
in the earth, its chthonic character was suggested
it was the cause of fertility (also because it was
thought to give or withhold water), and became
the embodiment of a fertility daimon or earthspirit ; hence also a guardian of hidden treasure or
metals.2 In so far as the serpent is a revealer of
the arts of civilization, this is probably because,
where it was worshipped, it was often grafted on
to a mythic culture-hero or eponymous founder.
Totemism sometimes lent its aid as a factor in
developing respect for serpents, if not actual cult.
Ancestor-worship also assisted, in so far as certain
snakes haunting houses or graves were associated
with the dead. Myth connected the serpent with
the waters, either because some species lived in or
near them or in marshy ground, or because the
sinuous course and appearance of a serpent resembled those of a river, or with the lightning,
because of its swift, darting motion and fatal
effects. Some serpents are harmful, others are
J Of. Pr 3CM.

Teutonic and Balto-Slavic (E. WELSFOKD),

p. 419.
harmless; and perhaps this is one main reason
why both in cult and in myth some are objects of
fear and their evil traits and appearance are
exaggerated or associated with demoniac beings,
while others are beneficent and helpful.1
Man's fancy and man's dreams about such an
animal as the serpent must also be taken into
account in considering the origins of the cult.
This is illustrated by an account from Papua, where a native
recently dreamt that a large snake living on a volcano accused
him of killing snakes and alligators and offered, if he promised
never to do so again, to gi ve him a herb to cure all diseases. The
native went about announcing this, but some natives still disbelieved and shot an alligator, which remonstrated with them.
Snakes and alligators now go unharmed.8

Here the common fancy of the solidarity of

animals leading them to avenge the death of a
single animal and the consequent respect paid to
them are seen. This and other fancies are embodied in a dream, and might easily be the origin
of a cult, as they actually are of a prohibition.
Classical writers had various theories as to the
origin of the cult, from that of Diodorus that the
snake was worshipped because he figured in
banners or was figured on banners because he was
a god, to the shrewder remarks of Philo Byblius
quoted by Ensebius (see I ()).
Practically every aspect of serpent - worship,
myth, and legend, and of human attitude to the
serpent, is shared by other reptiles e.g,, the
crocodile, to some extent the lizard, and here and
there large eels.3
While some form of awe or reverence for the
serpent is wide-spread, the actual worship varies
in intensity in different regions. Fergusson supposed the cult to have originated among the
Turanian peoples of the lower Euphrates and to
have spread thence to every part of the old world
where a Turanian people settled, while no Semitic
or Aryan people adopted it as a form of faith, its
presence among these being 'like the tares of a
previous crop springing up among the stems of
a badly-cultivated field of wheat.'4 Fergusson's

1 See, however, 0. Hose and W. McDongall, The Pagan

Tribes of Borneo, London, 1912, ii. 68 ff.
2 G. Murray, ARWxv. [1912] 628,
> See 8KB i. 430*>, 609, 514*, ii. 352, iii. 563, vii. 230, viii.
357*, ix. 279, 341, 346, 511, 528; J. F. McLennan, Studies in
Ancient History, 2nd ser., London, 1896, pp. 272, 274, 409;
Hose-MeDongall, foe. cit.; R. B. Dixon, Oceanic Mythology
(=Mythology of all S aces, vol. ix.), Boston, 1916, pp. 55, 120;
E. Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New
Zeala,nders\, 1858, pp. 57, 73; W. W. Skeat, Malay
Magic, do. 1900, p. 282 ff. ; H. Callaway, The Religious System
of the Amazulu, do. 1884, p. 217; H. Ling Roth, JAI xxii.
[1893] 27; W. W. Gill, Myths and Songs from the S. Pacific,
2 Perhaps also because the lightning (=serpent) was supposed London, 1876, p. 77.
to produce gold.
* J. Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, p. 3.

400

SERPENT-WOBSHIP (Introductory and Primitive)

theory is hardly "borne out even by the facts

known to him, still less by newer knowledge now
available. More recently Elliot Smith suggests a
theory of migration by Avhieh, along with megalithbtdlding, terrace culture, and many other things,
serpent-worship originated in Egypt about 800
B.C., was spread thence by the Phoenicians to
India, tlie Far East, and the Pacific islands, and
eventnally reached America.1 Investigation along
the line of this new theory may have fruitful
results.
i. Worship of the serpent. The distinction
should be noted between the worship of the animal
itself and its worship as the embodiment of a god
or spirit. Sometimes also a god appears as a
serpent, or the animal is the symbol or attendant
of a god who is probably the anthropomorphic
form of an earlier serpent, such as is often the
guardian of a sacred place or temple.
(a) Australian, In Australia the serpent is
often a totem and occurs in myth, but is not
worshipped, except perhaps by the Warramunga
tribe of N. Central Australia.
The Wollunqua is a huge mythical totem-snake, father of all
snakes, and lives in a water-hole, whence it may emerge to
destroy men. The men of this totem do not call it by its real
name, lest they should lose their power over 3t, and they perform ceremonies like those used by others for increasing their
totems. By these rites the Wollnnqua is pleased and wul not
come forth to destroy. A large keel-shaped mound, resembling
it, is made. The men walk round it, stroke it, and then hack
it to pieces. At a visit paid to the water-hole the men, with
bowed heads, solemnly begged the Wollunqua to do them no
harm. Here something approaching worship, with prayer and
ritual, is indieated.3
Some New South Wales tribea believe in the existence of two
snakes, 40 miles long, found on the way to the other world or
in it. They are killed and eaten by the dead, but are immediately reproduced. The blacks fear them.3

But among the Australians generally and other

low racesVeddas, Andamanese, and Fuegians
to judge by the reports of the best observers, there
does not appear to be any cult of the serpent.4
Bushman paintings show huge snakes and other
animals; sometimes with humps, on which baboons,
men, and mythical creatures are painted, but we
do not hear of a cult.*
(6) Palcsolithic, How far serpent - worship
existed in pre-historic times is uncertain. Serpents
are found among the_ animals figured by artists of
the Palaeolithic period. Two figured on b&tons
de commandement may possibly be eels.5 But in
other instances even the species is recognizable.
One of these occurs on an armlet, perhaps as a
charm ; 7 another is surrounded by an ornamental
border.8
It is hardly likely that these animals were represented, as in
S. Eeinach's theory of Paleolithic art, in order to attract them,
but the representations might have been for some such magical
rite as that of the Arunta. The serpent with the ornamental
border might suggest that the reptile was the object of a cult.
N. Pinsero,9 while disbelieving that Paleolithic man had a
1 Q. Elliot Smith, The Migrations of Early Culture, Manchester, 1916, The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilisation
in the East and in America, London, 1916.
2 Spencer-Gillenb, pp. 226 fi., 495
3 E. Palmer, JAI xiii. [1884] 29L
4 No reference to it occurs in such worts as the following:
A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of SJS, Australia, London,
1904; 0. 6. and B. Z. Seligmann, The Veddas, Cambridge,
1911; E. H. Man's exhaustive art. on the Andaman Islanders in
JAIxii. [1883] 69 fi., 1173., 327ft; P. Hyades and J. Deniker
]n Anihropologie et ethnologie (=Mission scientiflgue du Cap
Born, vol. vii.), Paris, 1891.
5 G. W. Stow, The Native Races of S. Africa, London, 1905,
pp. 32, 202; E. N. Hall, ' Bushman Paintings in the Ma-Dobo
Kange,' Geographical Journal, xxxix. [1912] 594. The snakes
have giraffe heads, and similar snakes are also incised on rocks.
The paintings are said to be sacred.
T, Wilson, 'Prehistoric Art,' in Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 189S, Washington, 1898, pp. 388, 400.
7 Of. below, 4 (a).
174E' Kette L'Anfhrvpologie, -n. [1395] 408, xv. [1904] 149,
9 Xia psicologia del? womo preistorico, Palermo, 1895, quoted
in L'Anthropologie, viii. [1897] 334.

religion, found religious sentiments in anthropoid apes, which,

he held, worship serpents and bury them with a supply oi
insects in their graves as a provision for a future life 1 In
Mesolithio times the serpent had become a symbol, as on the
painted pebbles of Mas d'AzU.

(c) African,All over Africa the serpent is worshipped either in itself or as the embodiment of a
god.
The cult of the snake at Whydah, Dahomey, may be taken as
typical of W. Africa. The heavenly serpent Danh-sio or Danhgbi, the rainbow, confers wealth on men, and is represented by
a coiled or horned snake of clay in a calabash. It is also represented by the python. The monster python, grandfather of
all snakes, dwelt in a temple or ' snake-house," containing
many snakes, and to it kings and people madejilgrimages
with many costly gifts. The python-god is immortal, almighty,
omniscient; valuable sacrifices and prayers are offered to it and
oracles are received from it; and, with the exception of the
priests, only the king can see it, and he but once. It is invoked
for good weather, fertility of the crops, and increase of cattle.
The whole species was reverenced, and a man who killed such a
snake was put to death. The god had a thousand snake-wives
or priestesses, and all girls of about twelve whom the older
priestesses could capture at the time of millet-sprouting were
kept in seclusion and taught the sacred rites, and figures oi
serpents were traced on their bodies. The serpent was said to
have marked them. Later they were put into a hut, where the
serpent was supposed to visit and marry them. Girls and
women attacked by hysteria were supposed to have been
touched by the serpent and thus inspired or possessed. The
people had also smaller serpents, not so powerful as Danh-sio,
but adored by them,i
A similar cult exists among the Brass River people, where th
tribal- and war-god Ogediga was a python, and pythons were so
sacred as to be allowed to commit all kinds of depredations,
while by an article of the treaty of 1856 white men were
forbidden to kill them; The python is the tribal- and war-god
and has a numerous priesthood, and is supposed to contain one
of the many spirits.3 The local god Djwij'ahnu among the
Tshi appears as a serpent attended by other snakes, and
human sacrifices were formerly offered to him. If he did not
appear, special sacrifices were made to propitiate him.3 The
cult also exists among the Mpongwes, Bakali, Ashanti, and
Niger tribes. In Fernando Pp the chief god is represented
by a cobra, which can inflict disease or death, give riches, etc.
A skin of one is hung up annually in the market-place, and
children are made to touch it, perhaps to put them under its
care.*
Among the Baganda the god Selwanga was represented by a
python with priests and mediums. It was kept in a temple,
fed with milk by a woman, and then a medium, possessed by
the god, gave oracles interpreted by a' priest. Sacrifices ware
made to it, and sterile women obtained children through its
power. The wile of the chief god Mukasa was a pythoness,
sister of Selwanga. The Bageshuhad a similar cult of a serpent
Mwanga to a temple on a hill, visited by childless women,9
Many other African tribes have a serpent cult. 6 In Madagascar
serpents are looked upon with superstitious fear and are
supposed to be emissaries of the god Bamahalavy.7
The Voodoo serpent-cult in Haiti and elsewhere reproduces
these W. African cults, one of the names of Danh-sio being
Vodunhwe, The will of the god is communicated through
priest; and priestess, and the cult takes place at night when the
serpent is shown in a cage; offerings are made to it; ta
worshippers implore its aid; and the priestess, standing in ths
cage, becomes inspired and gives oracles. Dances and an orgy
follow, and sometimes a chfid is sacrificed' tha goat without
horns.' 8 The Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana reverence a good
divinity in the snake Papagado, which must not be hurt in any
way, and the snake generally occupies a prominent position
in their thoughts.*

(d) Polynesian, In New Zealand and other

Polynesian islands the snake is seldom met with,
1 A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast,
London, 1890, pp. 60,148 f.; J. A. Skertchly, Dahomey as it is,
do. 1874, p. 54 f.; 0. de Brosses, Du Culte des dieux fetiches,
Paris, 1760, p. 25 f.; W. Bosman, A Description of the Coast of
Guinea,, Eng. tr., in J. Pinkerton, General Collection of Voyage
and Travels, London, 1808-14, xvi. 493 ft.; K, F. Burton, A
Mission to Gelele, Teing of Dahome, do. 1864, i. 59t, ii, 92;
J. 0. M. Boudin, Etudes anthropologiques, pt, ii. p, 57 S.
2 Burton, i. 81; M. H. Kingsley, West African Studies,
London, 1899, p. 483; letter of Bishop Orowther, cited in
McLennan, p. 524; A. Q. Leonard, The Lmaer Niger, London,
1906, p. 329.
3 Ellis, The Tshi-speaking People? of the Gold Coast, London,
1887, p. 41.
4 T. J, Hutchinson, Impressions of W- Africa, London, 1858,
p. 196 f.
5 J. Eoscoe, The Saganda, London, 1911, pp. 313, 322, 336,
J^AJxxxix. [1909] 188,
6 See ERE i. 57, 166 (Agaos), ii, SW> CBerbers), vi 491*
(Galla).
7 0. S. Wake, Serpent Worship, p. 88.
8 Boudin, p. 78 ff.; S. B. St. John, Sayti, the Slack Republic,
London, 1884, p. 185 S.
9 L. O. van Panhuys, Actes du iV Cmgres internat.
aes religions, Leyden, 1913, p. 55.

SBBPBNT-WORSHIP (Introdiictory and Primitive)

401

Corresponding to the Bain-Serpent is the snake Sisiutl of the

Kwakiutl (N.W, Pacific coast)a serpent with a horned head
at each end of its body, and a human horned head in the
middle. To touch, see, or eat it is certain death, but it brings
power to those who enjoy supernatural help. It is frequently

represented
in carving and painting.i
Among the Koita of British New Guinea harmful mythical
beings called tabu are seen as snakes, corresponding to the
Most of the tribes pay some form of cult and
beings called paipai which cause sickness among the Boro- give offerings to the rattle-snake, the species
speaking tribes. Snakes are also used by sorcerers.8 In Fiji
the supreme g_od Ndengei had a serpent as his shrine, and was almost exclusively honoured and universally reprethought to exist as a vast serpent in a cave, led by an attend- sented in early and later art.8 Where it is not
ant. Hogs and human victims were formerly offered to him, actually worshipped, it is respected and not killed.
and he gave oracles throngh a priest and sent rain. Batn-maiThe Delawares, Lenin Lenap6, and others call it 'GrandMbulu also lived as a serpent in a cave, where food was offered father,'
and among the Algonquians it was the king of snakes,
to him yearly.? A nitu, or spirit, in the form of a mythic who gave
prosperous breezes and was the symbol of life in
snake Bunosi, to some extent a creator though born of a human
mother, is holy and is worshipped with sacrifice in Lavelai in the their picture-writing,?
Solomon Islands.*
The most Curious aspect of snake-worship is
In San Cristoval figona (spirits) have serpent incarnations, that of the Hopi and kindred tribes. Perhaps
and one of them, Agunua, is supreme and creator. Other originally a form of totem-ancestor-worship, the
snake figona are female. Firstfruits are offered to a snake
called Kagauraha, a representative of Agunua, while there are cult is now a dramatic prayer for rain and growth,
other rites and prayers for relief from sickness, from bad but the worship is paid to mythic ancestors, the
seasons, for growth, etc. Kagauraha and her brood live in a snake-youth and snake-maid, Tcuamana, who are
special house, from which women are excluded. A pig or
human sacrifice is offered, and the serpent gives oracles. In personated in the rite.
other places certain figona incarnate in serpents are worBattle-snakes, the elder brothers of the snake-clan, are colshipped, but are said to be local representations of Agunua, lected and ceremonially washed after prayer. Symbols reprewho is' all of them.' 5
senting clouds, rain, and lightning, and corn and other seeds
(f) Dayak,Among the Dayaks the serpent embodies an are set out in the Teiva, where a secret ceremonial is performed
tmtu, or spirit, and is occasionally worshipped. "When a spirit with hundreds of snakes. In the public ceremony the priests
enters into a snake, the animal becomes a deity and spirit- of the snake fraternity carry the snakes in their mouths, and
helper of an individual, but there is no tribal cult, 6 The Ken- these are sprinkled with sacred meal as a prayer-offering. The
yahs of Borneo regard Bali Sungei as embodied in a serpent in a snakes are then sent off to the cardinal points, in order that
river, causing it to swirl and capsize boats. Hence he is f eared.7 they may carry the prayers for rain to the powers below. The
(g) Ainu.Among the Ainus the cult is directed to a mythi- members of the clan claim immunity from snake-bite, because
cal snake-king, father of all snakes. Snakes cause the evils of the snake is their totem. This snake-dance has no connexion
child-birth, and their spirits may possess one who has slain with the cult of the Plumed Serpent already referred to.4 The
them. Madness is caused by a snake entering the body, and Natchez also venerated the rattle-snake as a form of the Great
women bitten by snakes become subject to hysteria, and some- Spirit and placed its image in the temple of the sun.5
times act as witch-doctors.8
Among the animal mounds of Wisconsin one represents a
serpent, 1000 ft. in length. It is conspicuously situated, and,
(K) American Indian,The American Indians like
all the other mounds, was fitted for the performance of
believe in a huge serpent, sometimes worshipped,9 ceremonies
before a large multitude. 6

but in' Tonga the -water-snake is the embodiment

of a god and is reverenced,1
(e) Metanesian,There are traces of snakeworship in Melanesia. _
___ __

bnt among the northern tribes mainly the subject

(i) Mexican,In Mexico, before and after the
of myths.
He is horned or feathered,i<>the horn being the thunder-bolt, Aztec immigration, the snake was an important
and he is generally malevolent, though not always so. Some- religious symbol.

times he is a personification of the lightning, more often of the

waters, ruling them and their powers, and in Chippewa myth
lie is connected with the flood. More beneficent beings are in
^conflict with him, and sometimes slay himthe Great Hare
' (Algonquins),ll the Thunderer who hates all noxious beings
(Iroquois),i2 Manibozho (Chippewas).13 Sometimes he isplaeated
to avoid his malignancy, as with the MusquaMes, with whom
the great Bain-Serpent is the cause of drought and ancestor of
all snakes, and to whose fish-totem clan he is propitious,1* But
in the drier regions he is the Bain-Serpent who sends the
needed rain to fertilize the maize, and he is one of the gods.
With the Zuni dramatic ritual symbolizes the coming of
Koloowisi, the Plumed Serpent, of whom an image is carried in
procession. Water and grain are made to drop from it, and
the water, symbolizing rain, is drunk by candidates for initiation ; the grain is planted separately from the rest of the seed.JS
Among the Hopi the serpent is called Paliilukon, and the fertilizing of the maize by him is dramatically represented.16
1 W, Mariner, An Account of the NoM-ves of the Tonga Islands,
London, 1817, ii. 139; J. Williams, Jfarr, of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands, do. 1838, p. 547.
2 c. G, Seligmann, The, Metonesians of British New Guinea,,
Cambridge, 1910, pp. 183, 302.
3 B. Thomson, The -Fijians, London, 1908, p. 114; T,
Williams, Fiji and tha Fijians, da 1858, p. 217 f.; cf. ERE vi.
14h, For the cult in Banks Islands and the New Hebrides see
ERE viii. 5S&> and cf. ix. 337i>; in New Guinea, ix. 346; in
New Caledonia, is. 338.
* G. 0. Wheeler, ARWxv. [1912] 348 ff.
5 0. E. Fox and F. E. Drew, JJRAI xlv. [1915] 135 ft,; cf.
ERE viii. 533.
6 H. Ling Both, The Natives of Sarawak and British 2f,
Borneo, London, 1896, i. 188; Hose-McDougall, ii. 90 f., 114.
7 Hose-MeDougall, ii. 15; for Annam see EKE i. 541^.
8 J. Batchelor, The Ainu, and their Folklore, London. 1901,
pp. 301, 356 ff. ; ERE i, 251.
9 See ERE i. 324*>.
10 For horned snakes and their rationale see ERE iii 503*>,
668b, vi. 793*.
11 H. B. Alexander, N. American Mythology (= Mythology of
all Races, vol. x.), Boston, 1916, p. 44.
12 J. G. Muller, f-fesch, der amerikan, TTrreligienen, Basel,
1855, p. 47.
is E. G. Squier, American Review, new ser., ii, [1848] 392 ff.;
Miiller, p. 131.
14 M. A, Owen, Folk-lore of the Musquakie Indians, London,
1904, pp. 36,110 f. For the Bain-Serpent revered by the Kickapoos see ERE i. 3241',
is M. C, Stevenson, 2$ RSEW [1904], p. 94 ff.
16 See ERE vi. 785*>, 786, and,ior such divine serpents among
the Huichols, vi. 829*.
VOL. XI.26

Living rattle-snakes were kept in the temples and fed with

the flesh of human sacrificial victims.' Several of the higher
gods were partially of serpent origin or had been associated
with older serpent-gods. Huitzilopoehtli, an anthropomorphic
humming-bird deity, was born of Ooatlicue, whose name signifies ' serpent," and snakes were associated with his image and
ritual.8 In times of danger his image was covered with a snakeskin, and the priest carried a wooden snake as his symbol on
his festival. The walls of his temple had snakes carved in
relief, and its circuit was called eoatepantK, 'the circuit of
snakes.'9 Perhaps the snake-aspect of this god was derived
from the serpent-cult of the Otomis, whose highest god, Mixcoatl, was a -serpent-divinity.!0 In one of his aspects Quetzalcoatl seems to be identical with the Plumed Serpent of tha
Hopi, and a snake-god of Yucatan, Cuculcan, may have been
merged into him. His name means 'feathered serpent'; hi
image had a snake beside it; and the entrance to his tempi*
represented the gory jaws of a huge serpent. When he left
Mexico for the fabled land of Tlapallan, he journeyed in a boat
of serpent skins.ii At the feaat of the god Tlaloc little hills of
paper and wooden snakes were placed on his altar, and his
image held a golden serpent-i2 The goddess Cihuacohuatl^ or
1 serpent woman,' was said to have borne twins at the beginning
of the fourth world-age, from whom the earth was peopled.
Hence twins were called ' snakes.' She was also called Tonantzin, ' our mother," and was represented with a great mal
serpent beside her.13
1 F. Boas, ' Social Organization and Secret Societies of ttw
Kwakiutl Indians' (Report of U,S, National Museum), Washington, 1895, p, 371.
2 D. G. Brinton, The Myths of the New World?, Philadelphia,
1896, p. 130; W. H. Holmes, 8 RSEW [1883], p. 289.
3 Brinton, p. 142.
4 J. G. Bourke, The Snake Dance of the Moguis of Arizona,
London, 1884; J. W. Fewkes, JAFL xvi. [1901] 82 f., 15 RSEW
[1897], p. 304,19 RSEW, pt. 2 [1900], pp. 624, 965 ff., 1005 ff.;
M. C. Stevenson, 11 RBEW [1894], for the dance among the
Sia. Cf..R.Evi, 785 f.
5 Mi511er, p. 62.
6 G, F. Wright, The Origin and Antiquity of Man, London,
1913, p. 148 ff.
7 Bernal Diaz, quoted by Southey, notes to Madoc in Poetical
Wor&s, London, 1860, v, 432; F. Lopez de Gdmara in S. Purchas, Purchas Sis Pttgrimes, Glasgow, 1905-07, xv. 636.
8 Joseph Acosta, in Purchas, xv, 312 f.
9 n, p. 319 f,; N-R iii. 321.
10 Miffler, p. 485.
11 W. Prescott, Hist, of Mexico, London, 1909, i. 383; Miiller,
pp. 486, 577 ff.; JtfR iii. 281, 449; Lopez de Gomara, in Purchas.
xv. 547.
12 Muller, p. 502.
13 Ib. pp. 484, 514; Brinton, p. 143; JtfB, iii. 352.

r
402

SERPENT-WOBSHIP (Introductory and Primitive)

(j) Mayan.The Mayan god Votan was probably in one

Their forms are frequently the embodiments of evil spectres,
aspect a variety of the Plumed Serpent, and his image repre- which caiise misfortune, illness, and death, or are instruments
sented him as a bird above and a serpent below. This culture- of punishment. Snakes cause illness by sending their souls into
god was said to have built 'the city of the serpents' and to the bodies of men, and sick people are alleged to vomit vipers.
have written a book proving that he was one of thejOhanfes, or The serpent is also a common wer-animal;1 in early times
serpents.1 In Mayan MSS and carvings th~e rattle-snake alone snakes with human or partly human forma human face, a
is represented as a symbol and is called the 'serpent-king.'a
wolf's body, birds' wings, and moving like a snakewere known.
of men into snakes and of snakes into men is
(K) Central American,Among the peoples of Transformation
a very old belief. In many stories, however, in spite of the
Central America living snakes -were worshipped.
generally evil aspect of the serpent, apparitions of snakes have
Human victims are said to have been offered to a living proved to be propitious.2 The dragon as the giver of rain is
serpent-god by the Zacatecaa.3 Near Uxmal is a spring where, worshipped in time of drought, and also in spring and autumn
according to Indian belief, an old woman sits and exchanges by certain mandarins by command of the emperor. He has a
water for little children, whom she gives to a serpent to eat. temple in Peking, and is regarded as a great benefactor and the
She is perhaps the anthropomorphic form of a serpent-god to venerated symbol of good. In the ritual, when rain is prayed
whom children were offered.4 All over this region, in Hon- for, a large image called the 'Dragon King' is carried in procesduras and Nicaragua, the remains of temples show colossal sion, and incense is offered to it. Boats in the -shape of a
feathered serpents, sometimes with a human head in the jaws, dragon also play an important part in the Dragon Boat
as at Uxmal, sculptured on the walls and cornices, and some- festival and in the procession of the Five Rulers. The symbol
times running the whole length of the building. Quetzalcoatl of the dragon is a common religious and artistic motif: the fiveor Ouculcan is also depicted holding feathered serpents or with clawed dragon was the emblem of the imperial power, the
these coiled round his body. Such serpents are also seen protecting deity of the emperor, whose body was called the
dragon's body, his throne the dragon's throne, etc. The true
painted on rocks in Nicaragua. 5
(Z) Peruvian.In Peru the pre-lnca lace venerated serpents dragon is never all visible at once, but only his head or tail, the
and painted them on temples and houses, and offered human rest of his body being enshrouded in clouds.3
hearts and blood to them. They were also represented on the
(o) Japanese,The Japanese frequently worship
temples of the Inea kingdom, where reverence for shakes was
wide-spread, and the spotted wood-snake was kept in the the serpent as a mysterious being, often the
temple of Pachacamac.6 The god of riches, Urcaguai, was embodiment of a spirit or god.
regarded as a snake, in which form he was said to have
It has an important place in mythic history as progenitress
appeared, and his snake-image in the form of a horned and of the Mikado's ancestry. Myth hardly distinguishes between
hairy rattle-snake was revered ia a building called the * snake- snake and anthropomorphic god, the forms being interchangehouse.' '
able. Some divinities still assume serpent forme.g., the
goddess Bentem, to whom certain snakes are sacred and are
(m) S, American Indian.The native Indians of her servants and confidants^and where certain snakes live
S. America have always shown certain reverence famous temples have been built.4

for serpents.

Among the Caribs, who believed that the spirits of the dead
transmigrated into snakes, images of snakes existed. Bakumon,
one of the men drawn from the thigh of the first man and god
Loguo, became a snake with a human head and twined himself
round trees, the fruit of which he ate and gave to others.
Afterwards he became a star. Star and snake are connected in
Carib myththe star shows by its position the tune of the year's
fruitfulnesSj the snake symbolises the renewing of vegetation
through the fertilizing rain.8 The serpent is also a common
symbol.in the ruins of the old temples of the more civilized
tribese,g,, the Muyscas, among whom the priests in processions wore masks of snakes and crooodiles.9 The Chibchas
believe^ in a large snake which issued from a lake, and they
made offerings of gold and emeralds to it. A snake-cult was also
observed by neighbouring tribes, and the Canaij believed them*
selves descended from a snake dwelling in a.lake, to whom
offerings of gold were made.*" The great boa was worshipped
by tribes in Brazil, and one tribe living near the borders of
Peru kept one in a pyramidal temple, fed it with human flesh,
and prayed to it.11 Of the snake called the manima a 16th cent,
traveller in Brazil says that the natives to whom it showed itself
regarded themselves as blessed and believed that they would
live long.M The tribes of the Issa-Japura district believe that
the anaconda is evil and the embodiment of the water-spirit, the
yaca~mama, mother of the streams, who bars their passage.
Hence they go in fear of the reptile, which occupies in
Amazonian folk-belief the place of the sea-serpent elsewhere.13
Many myths and tales about serpents exist among the various
tribes.14

(n) Chinese,In China serpents, like other

animals, occasionally have temples dedicated to
them, this cult being apparently connected with
the belief in metamorphosis j1S "but on the whole
they are feared,
1 Muller, p, 487 f.; 2TR v. 159.
2 Brinton, p. 130.
3 Muller, p. 483 f.
* J. L. Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America,
London, 1841, p. 425.
BE. Q. Squier, Nicaragua, New York, 1852, i. 317f., ii. 36;
Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, London, 1856, i.
302, ii. 304ff., 312; T. Qann, 19 KBEW, pt. 2 [1900], p. 663ff.
See also JJRAI xlii. [1912] 17 ff. For other Central American
serpent-gods see ERE iii. 308*.
6 Acosta, in Purchas, xv. 307, 388; Gareilasso de La Vega,
Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, ed. 0. B. Markham, London,
1869-71, passim.
7 Muller, p. 366; Brintoo. p. 142.
8 Muller, pp. 210, 221.
8 J. B. von Spix and 0. F. P. ron Martins, Reise in JBrasUien,
Munich, 1823-31, Hi. 258,1272; Muller, p. 436.
10 T, A. Joyce, South American Archteology, London. 1912,
pp. 28, 66, 156.
'
" Muller, p. 258; GarcDasso de La Vega, in Purchas, xvii. 388.
12 Purchas, xvi. 497.
231 W" "WMffen' ^ tf<<*k-#res Amazons, London, 1915,
ntE- N^denski61d, Indianerleben: el Gran Chaco, Leipzig.
1912, pp. 110, 288; cf. ERE ii. 836*, 837b.

I0 in j * JioM> de Groot> 2^* JfeBfcFion */ the Chinese, New York,

\V1U, p. 124.

(p) Cretan, There are traces of a former

serpent-divinity in Crete.
Images of a goddess, with snaies twined round the body and
head-dress, have been found. Sometimes votaries holding
snakes dance before her. She is probably an earth-goddess,
lady of the wild creatures, and an anthropomorphic transformation of an older serpent-divinity. It is unlikely that the
figures represent snake-charmers, as has been supposed.5 On
the Mycensean cylinders of Cyprus the goddess of Paphos ia
associated with a pillar entwined by a serpent, and Pausanias
describes an image of Artemis holding serpents. 6

(g) Egyptian,Among worshipful animals the

serpent predominated in Egypt, either because of
its supposed good qualities or through fear of some
species; and the cult of the cobra and asp occurs
in the earliest times.
The figure of the serpent appears aa a personal or house'
protecting amulet all through Egyptian history. The cobra or
urceus was a symbol of fire or the solar disk; hence this serpent
decked the forehead or crown of the solar god and of kings, his
representatives, was carried by priests and priestesses of Ba, or
itself occurred crowned on standards. It was identified with
the flaming eye of the god; hence 'eye' and 'asp' became
synonymous, and two eyes or serpents were called ' daughters
of the sun-god.'1? The sun-god is also figured as a serpent or a
double asp, and, like the solar orb, the ureeus was sometimes
represented with wings. Serpents guarded the groves and
gates of Amenti, breathing fire against the wicked, as well as
the pylons of the heaven of Osiris. A serpent was the embodiment of certain goddessese,g., Bannut, goddess of fertility
and the harvest, perhaps because snakes found in corn-fields
were regarded as local spirits in snake form and were fed; Mertseker, goddess of the necropolis at Thebes; Bute and Nekheb,
guardians of Upper and Lower Egypt. It was associated with
Isis and Nephthys, because these goddesses were later identified
with Uazet, the wrtEws-goddess, who was gradually absorbed
into all the goddesses. Hence all goddesses were adorned with
or represented by the urceus, or as a serpent a goddess ia
associated with a god.8 Qeb, god of the earth, was master ojf
snakes and had a serpent's head.9 Live serpents were kept as
guardians or sacred animals in shrines and temples behind a
sacred veil or in a small cell. These serpents were mummified

* See art. LTCAITTHBOPT, i,

2De Groot, The Religious System of China, Leyden, 1892-'

1910, iv. 215 f,, v. 626ff.
3 J. Doolittte, Social Infe of the Chinese, London, 1866, i 281,
292, ii. 55 f., 117, 264 f.
* W. E. Griffis, The Religions of Japan, London, 1895, p. 31 f.;
SojiJei, tr. B. H. Chamberlain, Yokohama, 1883, passim; JURIS
ix.
x. [1904] 223; PEFSt [1916] 207; C. H. and H. B.
Hawes, Crete the Forerunner of Greece*, London, 1911, pp. 102,
123, 139 ; S. Beinach, in 2>'Anthrqpologie, xv. [1904] 274 ; cf.
ERE i. 142.
6 Paus. vm. xxxvii. 4.
i W. Max Muller, Egyptian Mythology (=Mythology of 3
Races, vol. xii.), Boston, 1918, p. 29.
8 E. A. Wallis Budge, The ycxto of the Egyptians, London,
1904, i. 92, 100, 441 f.
- w - >
-
9 Max Muller, p. 42.

SERPENT-WORSHIP (introductory and Primitive)

or, like those sacred to Amon, buried in the temple. i Offerings
of fruit, cakes of flour and honey, flowers, and incense were
made-to serpent-divinities. Urtei figured as temple-guardians,
often in the form of a cornice or frieze. In heaven was supposed
to exist the serpent Sati or. JBata^J;hB_seipent~o_niiUions-of
years,' into which the soul of the dead identified -with Osiris
could transform or identify itself. 2 Divine beings have somelimes a serpentfs head. The serpent was much represented in
later times as its cult increased, sometimes in pairs, and then
often with the heads of Sarapis and Isis. Stars were regarded
as snakes or these were their symbols.3 Generally the serpent
was regarded as an oyaSos SaC/nav connected with life and
healing. So even now ' it is believed that each quarter in Cairo
has its peculiar guardian-genius or Agathodsemon, which has
the form of a serpent.'4 In early times dwarf figures like Bes
tear up and devour serpentssymbols of hostile powers; and
the heavenly gods are said in one myth to have left the earth
because of the serpents who drove them awayprimeval reptiles
of the abyss or a serpent of the earth-god or a serpent created
by Isis.5 There is also a confused reference here to a serpent of
great size embodying darkness and evil, enemy of Ra and the
gods and destroyer of souls. This is Apap, referred to from
early times, and probably a reminiscence of the p_ython,6 Apap
dwelt in the ocean over which travelled the divine boat of Ra,
which he sought to upset, or in that part of Hades through
which the god travels daily. Ra daDy attacks and slays him,
and the destruction is described with grim realism. 7 The dead
fought Apap and other demoniac serpents with Ra's aid, and
protected by amulets and formate of repulsion, In other
forms of the myth gods (often with serpents' heads) attack and
bind Apap under the earth or sea. Apap tended to be identified
with Set, attacked by Horns. These myths may be connected
with the Babylonian myth of Bel and Tiamat, Apap was also
devourer of the souls of the wicked, and was head of all powers
hostile to the sun. Serpents of demon aspect met the soul on
its way to the other world, but against those the Scot; of the
Dead provided a way of escape. Horus, as protector against
venomous snakes, was called ' stopper of snakes' and is represented holding snakes in his hand. Hence amulets of the god
in this aspect were worn as protectives.9

(r) Babylonian,In Babylonia there is little

trace of worship of the serpent.
Herodotus10 speaks of a live serpent worshipped there, but
this may be a reminiscence of the conquest of Tiamat by BelMerodaeh.u JEa had the serpent as symbol and was called ' god
of the river of the great snake'i.e. the deep or the Euphrates,
The names of the river in early inscriptions show the connexion
of the serpent with Ea and also with Innina, his daughter,
whose name is interchangeable with that of the snake, the
anthropomorphic transformation of which she probably was. 12
Serpents abounded in marshes at the mouth of the river.
Serakh, god of corn, was a snake-god. Sala, consort of
Rimmon, had a name meaning 'goddess of reptiles.' Certain
goddesses associated with the under world are depicted with
serpents in their hands.'* Among what appear to be emblems
of gods on boundary-stones recording sales of land a snake is
a prominentfigurepossiblysymbolizing Ea.i*

On the whole the serpent tended to assume or

already generally had an evil aspect in Babylonia,
This is seen especially in the myth of Tiamat, of Sumerian
origin, and in ' the evil serpent' or ' serpent of darkness,' often
identified with her, or ' the great serpent with seven heads.'
Tiamat represented the primeval, anarchic waters, as a monster
dragon or raging s_erpent, which Merodach conquered and slew
or, in another version, subdued and bound.15 Among her forces
were 'the dragon, the .great serjjent, the devouring reptiles.'
Traces of this myth are found in the OT as a survival or
borrowing. The serpent is associated with the deep, is called
by various namesLeviathan, Behemoth, Rahab, as well as
dragon or serpentand is represented as conquered by
Jahweh,!8 or as bound by Him or set in the sea and again to be
conquered." This being is apparently identified with historic
i -eElian, de Nat. An. x. 31, xi, 17; Herod, ii. 74:
2H. Brugsch, Religion wn& Mythologie der alten A"gypter,
Berlin, 1885-88, p. 180; W. R, Cooper, Trans, of Victoria
Institute, p. 340; Budge, ii. 377.
3 A, Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, Leipzig, 1903, p. 71;
Plut, de Is. et Qsir, 74.
* E. "W. Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the
Modern Egyptians, London, 1836, i. 289.
6 Max Miiller, pp. 62, 64, 76 f., 79 f.
6 G. Maspero, The Davm of Civilization, Eng. tr., London,
1894, p. 34,
' Isitany of the Sun, ch. 2; Hymn to JRa; Books of the Overthrowing of'Apop; cf. .EKEviii. 266.
8 Book of the Dead, ch. 32, 39.
9 See, further, ERE v. 245.
*> v, 23.
n Ct H. Gunkel, Schopfung und Chaos, Gottingen, 1895,
P. 320 f,
12 A, H. Sayce, The Religion of the Babylonians (BE), London,
1887, pp. 134,139, 284; cf. ERE viii. 636 for Ea as 'the great
serpent of heaven.'
Perrot-Chipiez, ii. Chaldee et Assyrie, pp. 367, 804; Diod.
Sic, n. ix. 5.
M H. 0. Rawlinson, WAI, London, 1870, iii. pi, xlv.
16 gee ERE iv. 128K 598.
16 pa 7414 ia 5j9f..
17 Ez 322 293; cf. Job 38.

403

nations (Babylon, Egypt, Assyria), and is sometimes duplicated,1

and it has many heads, 0_ther references to ' the dragon that
is in the sea' may imply Tiamat's consort, Kingu.3 Monstrous
forms of reptiles and serpents are mentioned by Berosus as
.existing-in early times in Babylon. Horned serpents occur in
Chaldaaan monuments, and winged dragons on the lintel of a
doorway of the palace of Sennacherib. The demoniac or evil
aspect of the serpent is seen also in the myths of Labbu and of
Etana, and in the serpent which steals the plant of life from
GilgameS, while demons were often given a serpent form.3
The seal with an erect serpent between two seated figures on
either side of a sacred tree still lacks interpretation, though
some have supposed it to represent a Babylonian version of the
Fall story.* Serpents were believed to guard holy places and
were set up on entrances of temples and palaces,

(s) Canaanite and Hebrew.In JCanaan. serpents

of brass or terra-cotta and actual serpents' heads
hare been found. These suggest a cult, and
perhaps a pit in which was a serpent of brass may
have been a serpent shrine.5
Ashtart, like the Cretan goddess, is represented with serpents
in her hands. These brass serpents recall the Hebrew brazen
serpent, which has been variously explained as a pre-Israelite
image of a serpent embodying the spirit of a well/ adopted by
the Hebrews ; as an early Hebrew image connected with healing worshipped down to the days of HezeMah, who destroyed it;
as a totem of the family of David,' or the symbol of a serpent
tribe; or as originally a representation of Tiamat, later misunderstood and associated with healing. 8 Was it the image
of an actual serpent or of a spirit (jinn) embodied in a serpent ?
Probably the latter, as the fiery serpents of the setiological myth
explaining its origin 9 suggest demoniac beings in serpent form,
such as are still believed in by the Arabs. The cult of every
form of creeping thing and abominable beast portrayed on the
walls of the Temple may have been a recrudescence of an earlier
Hebrew cult or a borrowing from exterior sources.i Serpents
or dragons, as in Arab belief, were doubtless also connected
with wells, giving or withholding the waters, and in Syria
springs are named after Serpents, or as in Palmyra a female
serpent-demon dwells in a spring and can hinder its flow.n
The fiery flying serpents of ITu 218 and Dt 815 are still known
to Eastern superstition, and are mentioned by Herodotus 12
as inhabiting the desert. A serpent of this kind is 1ihreaten ed
against Philistia, and is mentioned as a creature of the land
of trouble and anguish.13
The talking serpent of Qn 3 represents a primitive stage of
thought, while the story supplies an tiological myth answering
the questions, Why are serpents and men at enmity ?, and Why
does the serpent crawl instead of walk? It is doubtful
whether the serpent was intended in the original Story to be
evil. More likely he was a divine being, with superior knowledge and a kindly desire to help man to knowledge denied
him by other divinities. A later recension made his act have
evil consequences, and therefore he himself had evil intentions.
The story doubtless arose with a people to whom the serpent
was sacred, and who were impressed with its wisdom.
Frazer connects the story of the Fall with myths of the origin
of death (the ' perverted message' group) and of the cast skin
(the serpent casting its skin renews its youth and never dies,
and hence was considered immortal).l4 He assumes that in the
earlier form of the story there were two trees, one of life and
one of death. God wished man to eat the former and so
become immortal, but man, misled by the serpent, ate the fruit
of the other tree and so forfeited immortality. The serpent
ate of the tree of life and so lived for ever.l5
The connexion of the serpent with the devil is nowhere
hinted at in OT, but appears first in Wis 224, and was a Rabbinic
conception^ with profound influence on Christian and Gnostic
thought. The idea of a chaotic force, personifiede.g., as a
dragon (Tiamat)hostile to creative divinitie_s, was more or less
combined with this. Hence such a conception as Rev 12, esp.
v.9. Here is also the idea of a dragon hostile to a heavenly
goddess and her son (Leto, Apollo, Pyfeho; Isis, Horus, Typhon
or Set; Marduk, Tiamathere the goddess is lacking). These
various ideas recur in Christian and Gnostic literature, and
language is exhausted to express the evil character of the
devil-serpent or dragon. Partly because of the myth of the
1 Is 271.
2 These mythical references are still found in Rev 123 (possibly
influenced also by the Greek myth of Pytho and Leto) IS2-*-!!
1613 202.
3,ELSE ii. 315 f., vi. 644*; M. Jastrow, The Religion of
Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, 1898, p. 262 f.
4 See ERS v. 714k; Perrot-Chipiea, p. 97,
' H. "Vincent, Canaan d'apres Vexploration ricente, Paris,
1907, pp, 117, 174 f.; ERE i, 792*>; PEFSt [1903], pp. 42, 222,
[1906], p. 119.
6 01 the serpent stone at a well (1K19),
7 W. R. Smith, JPh ix. [1880] 99.
8 EBi, col. 3388.
9 Nu 218*..
10 Ezk 810 Cf. Wis 11'5.
11 W. R. Smith2) p. i68f.
12 H. 75.
isis 142 306; of. 2 Esd IS; for the connexion with the
seraphim see ERE iv. 695*>.
M See 6 (f).
is J. G. Frazer, folk-Lore in the Old Testament, London,
1918,i.45ff,
16 A. P. Gfrorer, Geseh. ties Urchristenthums, Stuttgart, 18S8|
vol. i. pt. i., 'Das Jahrhundert des Heils,"p. 388.

404

SEBPENT-WOBSHIP (Introductory and Primitive)

dragon cast into the abyss, partly because of the existing

conception of death as a devouring monster, Hades is often
described or depicted as a dragon,

Zeus as a serpent violated Persephone, who then gave birth

to Dionysus (Sabazios),! a god with occasional snake form,2 in
whose rites women put snakes in their hair or round their
rent them asunder.s The god was doubtless em(t) Phoenician and Arabian,For the Phoeni- bodies, inorthe
snakes, for ' the symbol of the Dionysiac orgies is
cians we have the'evidence of Eusebius, quoting bodied
a consecrated serpent." * In Roman myth the parallel was the
Philo of JByblus:
violation of the Bona Dea by her father Faunus, and a conTaautos {the Egyptian Thoth), and after him the Phoenicians secrated serpent was placed beside her image in her ritual,8
and Egyptians, divinized dragons and serpents, because they Sabazios, the god of Asia Minor kindred to Dionysos (or some
of all reptiles have the strongest respiration and a certain personal name of whom was read in Greek as ' Dionysos"), was
flery nature. Their swiftness and variety of movements, in represented as a snake along with Cybele,
spite of possessing no feet, their longevity, their power of
Some divine beings were represented as partly
renewing their youth, all contributed to the respect in which snake in formbesides those already mentioned,
they -were held. The Phoenicians called the serpent AgathoTyphon,
Boreas, Hecate (also with serpents in her
daimon, and it was adopted into the mysteries and temples.
Sacrifices were offered to serpents, and they were regarded as hair), and the giants.6
great divinities and mediators.1 This evidence is supported by
Snakes kept in shrines were fed with honey or honey-cakes, as
the fact that Tyrian coins show the serpent in connexion with the ghosts were also propitiated with the same food.'
trees, pillars, and altars,3 while Asklepios, the Greek serpent(v) Roman.Among the Romans a serpent-cult
god of healing, was identified with Eshmun, a Phoenician god
with similar functions,'
is mainly connected with the animals as embodying
In Arab belief the jinn are embodied in snakes, especially the genius, and snakes were kept in large numbers
those haunting houses and thickets, appearing and disappearin
in temples and houses.8 The Greek cult of the
suddenly,-* The prophet says in the book JUishkata 'l-Masabg
that such snakes axe jinn, some infidels, some believers. They serpent Asklepios probably influenced the Romans,
must be asked to leave; if they refuse, they are infidels and as the embassy to Epidauros just mentioned
may be killed.
suggests. A more native aspect of the cult is seen

(it) Greek,In Greece serpents were regarded as in the serpent-cave at Lanuvium, whither virgins
guardians of graves, sanctuaries, and dwellings, were taken yearly to prove their chastity. If the
and were kept there or represented in symbol,
serpent accepted the offerings brought by them,
Snakes were sacred because heroes or the dead generally their chastity was proved and also a fertile season
might appear as serpents; certain gods had once been snakes
or might become visible as such; and snakes were associated ensured, as at Epirus,9

with them in myth, ritual, and art. The snake as a ehthonian

animal'a son of the earth'5was associated with fertility,
and had been early reverenced as house-spirit, oucovpbs 6$ts,
or earth daimon, or oyoSos Sai/ncav, promoting fertility, and
hence worshipped or at least fed.6 Eponymous founders regarded as heroes were thought of as snakes or as having twynature, like Cecrops,' Kychreus of Salamis,3 and Ereohtheus of
Athens.9

A survival of an older cult or totem-clan rite is probably

to be seen in the y_early procession of men with coils of live
serpents before the image, hung with serpents, of St. Domenico
of Foligno at Cocullo, near the territory of the ancient Marsi
snake-clan. The people claim immunity from snake-bite as
well as power over serpents, as did the Marsi.i

Snakes were kept in shrines sacred to Asklepios (whose name

maybe connected with dcncciAajSos, ocncaAa(ios='snake')10and
were fed by virgin priestesses. They gave omens of health and
plenty.H In these shrines the snake (=the god) suggested a
cure to tHe sufferer in.dreams or gave fruitfulness to women,
and the'V child was believed to be begotten by the god.
Asklepios appears as a snake in myths and art as well as in the
sorcery of Alexander of Abonoteichos,13 and in stories of the
founding of temples. The snake is also his symbol, twined
about Ms staff, or side by side with him. Asklepios had once
been a divine snake, giving fertility and health before he became anthropomorphous. He was brought from his sanctuary
at Epidauros to Sicyon in the form of a snake, and an embassy
went from Borne to Epidauros and brought back a serpent
which caused a plague to cease and received divine honours.13
In some of his aspects Zeus had snake form, as certain basreliefs showZeus Ktesios, the fertility-giver, Zeus Meilicbios,
and Zeus Sosipolis, who as a child was placed by Eileithyia
before the army of Elis when the Arcadians invaded it, and
vanished into the ground as a snake. A sanctuary was afterwards built on the spot.14 Snakes fed by a naked virgin
priestess lived in Apollo's shrine at Epirus and were said to be
descended from the Pytho, and to be play-things for the god.
If they took the honey-cakes with which they were fed, the
year would be fruitful; if not, the reverse.15 Demeter had the
snake Kychreus as her attendant, at Eleusis, probably an old
local snake-god, and as goddess of the Phigalians in Arcadia she
had snakes twined in her hair, and her chariot was drawn by
winged snakes. The Erinyes, as chthonic beings, are called
fipttjcouvat, and had the form of snakes, or snakes were coiled in
their hair.is in so far as they originated from ghosts, their
snake form is obvious.
1 Philo, ap, Eus. Prcep. JSvang. i. 10.
2T. Maurice, Indian Antiquities compared with Persia,
Egypt, Greece, London, 1796-18U6, vi. 273.
3 W. W. F. von Baudissin, ZDMG lix, [1905] 459 f.; see also
art. PBCENICIASS.
* W. E. Smith2, pp. 120, 129, 133; E. W. Lane, Arabian
Society in the Middle Ages, London, 1883, pp. 28, 35 ; cf. ERE
i 669*.
5 Herod, i. 78.
' Cf, J. E. Harrison, Themis, Cambridge, 1912, p. 283; cf.
ERE vi. 404X
1 Aristoph. Wasps, 438; see ERE Hi, 270.
Paus, i. xxxvi. 1,
9 See Herod, viii. 41; Vita Apolltm, vii. 24; Orph, Bymn,
xxxii. 11.
10 0. Gruppe, Die griecTi, Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte,
Munich, 1897-1906, ii. 1444.
n .anian, de Nat, An, xi. 2,
12 See EKE i. 306.
13 Paus. n. xi. 8, m. xxiii. 7; Ovid, Metam. xv. 5; Livy, x. 47.
M Paus. VL xx. 3, 5.
is jEHan, de Nat. An, xi. 2,
IB Eur. Iphig. in Taur, 286; ^Esch. Sum. 126, Choeph, 10445.

present a torque to two ram-headed serpents.ii These gods are

probably all forms of an underworld god; hence the chthonic
character of the animal as his symbol or vehicle may be suggested. The ram-headed serpent accompanies a goddess of
fertility on a monument at Epinal.a2 What myth was told of
such twy-natured serpents is unknown, but the ram has been
supposed to be connected with a cult of the dead or with the
god of the under world. 13 Serpents were entwined round oaks
in the Druidic grove described by Lucan, The serpent also
occurs on a group of Scottish monuments regarded as of the
Christian period, either alone or with the doubly bent rod.M
These symbols are probably derived from the pagan period, but
their meaning is unknown.
W. Stukeley, in his works on Avebury and Stonehenge,
advocated the theory that the megaliths there were connected
with serpent-worship, but archaeologists see no reason for
dissociating these from similar remains known to be burial-sites.
A similar theory has been connected with a so-called ' serpentmound ' near Oban.
Dragons and serpents are mentioned frequently in Celtic
myth and story in association with lochs or sacred trees, and
in many saintly legends they are overcome by the saints. A
white serpent is king of the snakes in Celtic lore.i5

(w) Celtic,Among the Celts details of a serpentare lacking.

The presence of snakes in sanctuaries and in the cult
A horned serpent is figured with twelve Boman gods on a
rites of certain divinities suggests that these had Gallo-Boman
altar, and the serpent frequently occurs along
once been worshipped as snakes.
with images of Celtic gods who hold serpents in their hands or

(as) Ophite,Reference may here be made to the

cult or symbolism of the snake among the groups
of Gnostics collectively known as Ophites,
With some of these the serpent was a symbol of evil, Thia
was the case with some groups described by Irensaus, with
1 Clem. Alex, Protr, 2 ; Amobius, v, 21; Diod, Sic. iv. 4, v.
75.
2 Eur. Eaceh. 1017.
3 Ib. 101,687; Athen. "V, 28; Clem. Alex. Protr. ii, 12; Galen,
de Antid, i. 6, xiv. 45.
4 Clem. Alex. Protr. ii. 12.
5 Macrob. i. xii, 24; Plut, Caesar, 9.
6 Hyginus, Fab, 166; Lucian, Philops, 22; Paus. v. six, 3,
vm. xxix, 3.
7 Herod, viii, 41; Paus, rx. xxxix, 11; Aristoph, Clouds, 506 i
Lucian, Dial, Mori. iii. 2; Philostr, Vita Apollon. viii. 19.
spliny.-HJfxxix, 72.
9 .iElian, de Nat, An. ix. 16; Propert. Eleg. iv. 8.
10 M. O. Harrison, FL xviii. [1907] 187; Puny, 3N vii 2.
11 RA xxx. [1897] 313, xix. [1882] 322.
12 J, L, Courcelle-Seneuil, Les JDieuas gaulois, d'apres fa
monuments figures, Paris, 1910, p. 80.
is See J. A, MacCulloeb, Religion of the Ancient Celts,
Edinburgh, 1911, p. 166.
14 j, Bomilly Allen, The Early Christian Monuments oj
Scotland, with introd. by J, Anderson, Edinburgh, 1903, pt. i
j. xxxiii, and plates.
is For the serpent's egg in Celtic lore see ERE iii. 297s, 413*.

SEBPENT-WOBSHIP (Introductory and Primitive)

405

the Bahima the bodies of dead princes and princesses ara

thought to produce snakes, which are cared for in temples by
the priests.* The Kafirs venerate the python, because it embodies the spirit of a dead chief; to slay a python was punishable by death. 2 Medicine-men and the rich among the Masai
become snakes when the body decays, reappear in their hutSi
and are fed with milk.3
The belief occurs sporadically in N, America, the Moquis holding that men of the Battle-snake clan become rattle-snakes at
death, and the Apaches that snakes are connected with the
elders or dead men of the tribe,4 The snaka is sometime*
identified with the soul, as when seen coming out of a dead
person's mouth. Several S. American tribes also have this
belief._ Women who look upon the Jurupari mysteries of
Brazilian tribes become serpents or crocodiles at death, instead of going to paradise.s
Among tha Tami of New Guinea spirits may be called up as
snakes which give oracles through a seer, and among the
Papuans of Geelvink Bay, who make images of the dead in which
the spirit resides and communicates with the living, those of
dead women are represented holding a serpent with both
hands,8 In Kiriwina (E. New Guinea) a chief may appear as a
snake in a hut and is honoured but also asked to go, as his
appearance is a bad omen.' In -central Melanesia the dead
may appear as snakese.g., in a sacred placeand are held
sacred, and in the Pelew Islands such snakes ara never killed.
According to New Britain belief, the dead are men by day and
snakes by night.3
In Indonesia soul-substance, as distinct from soul, may
animate snakes which come out of holes from the under world.9
The Dayaks believe that spirits (untu) appear as snakes, and,
if they enter a house, it is to carry off the hving. But they are
fed, and anything found in their mouths is kept as a charm,l<>
With the Ibans of Borneo, who believe in a man's ngarang,
or secret spirit-helper, usually an ancestor, the ngarong may
be a snake, and all of the same species are reverenced by the
individual who is helped.ll
(&) Japanese, Chinese, and Arabian.Ancestral snakes are
also believed in by tha Chams and Assamese,!3 and in older
Japan and China there are legends of snakes appearing from
graves or in coffins, as if the belief also existed there.13 This ia
also an occasional Arab belief, for in Upper Egypt at Shaikh
Haredi, the tomb of a saint of that name, in cases of sickness a
virgin was sent to it and a serpent came forth, hung about her
neck, and was carried to tha sick man's bedside. Another
account says that several women visit the place once a year,
the serpent twines round tha neck of the loveliest.!4 In
a. The serpent as embodiment of the dead. and
ancient Egypt it was the privilege of the dead to assume any
Certain snakes hannt houses and Trarial-places, form by means of 'words of powsr,' and among them were
of serpent or crocodile.!'
and partly for this reason they are thonght to those
(e) Greek and Raman,Among the Greeks tha snake, was the
embody ghosts of the dead, returned to their old symbol
of the grave and of the spirit contained in it, especially
ahodes or lingering ronnd the grave.
spirits of worshipful heroes, often represented in =art and
tradition
as snakes or accompanied by snakes, their doubles.
(a) Lower races,This is a common Bantu belief, and with
the Zulus the amatongo are the dead in snake form, the reptiles The idea was doubtless derived from the fact that snakes
haunted
tombs. In. legends snakes were seen close to tha
having come out of their bodies. If a man sees a snake on his
son's grave, he says, 'This is my son,' and snakes in houses are dead or crawling from their beds, or the dead turned into
snakes
(Cadmus
and Harmonia).i6 There was also a theory
identified with the dead by marks or scars once borne by these.
They cause a hap^y feeling to the living, who sacrifice to them that the marrow of the dead became a snake.!? A woman or
go_ddess
(Hygeia,
daughter
of Asklepios) feeding a snaka with
and feed them with milk.9 Among the Thonga woods where
ancestral chiefs are buried ara tabu, and the dead frequently milk is a common Greek artistic motif, recalling the savage
custom
of
thus
feeding
spirit-snakes
and perhaps arising from
appear as snakes. Sacrifice is madeto them from time to time.io
Among tha Eastern Bantu spirits sometimes take this form for a similar custom in Greece. Analogous to this among tha
Romans
was
the
symbolizing
of
the
genius or yv.nothe
mischief. Such a snake ia killed, because this slays tha ghost
or prevents its further embodiment, but an apology is made to guardian-spirit or other selfas a snake, and the keeping of
tame
snakes
in
large
numbers
in
temples
and houses.18 The
it.li The Suk regard the appearance of a snake in a housa as
denoting that the ghost is hungry, and that, if it is not fed, all snake is already figured on Etruscan monuments, and it was
painted
on
the
walls
of
Roman
houses,
sometimes
approaching
in the house will die. But such a snake may be killed outside
tha hut,!3 The El Kiboron, a Masai tribe, think that the bones
of married men become a snake and return to tha hut, where
i J. Koscoe, JRAI xxxvii, [1907] 101 f.
they are fed with milk.13 Qhoslrsnakes are fed with honey and
a Stow, p. 148.
milk by tha Akikuyu, and, if one is accidentally killed, the elders
s Hollis, p. 307, For the Nyanja belief, resembling tha
are summoned, a sheep is killed, and all must partake of it, the Egyptian (see below), see ERE ix. 420b.
culprit wearing part of the skin lest his wife and children die.**
4 J. G. Bourke, FL ii. [1884] 435 f.
The Nandi kill snakes in houses, but, when ona is found on a
5 ERE i. 383", ii. 836.
woman's bed, it is the spirit of an ancestor and an omen that
8 G. Bamler, in B, Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, Berlin,
her next child will be safely born. Itisfedwitb.milfc,i3 Among 1911, iii, 516; J. G. JFrazer, The Belief in Immortality, London*
1913, p. 308.
l Iren. adv. Seer. i. xxviii. 3 (ed. Harvey),
7 G. Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians, London, 1910,
* Hippolytus, Refut. omn. Ster. r. 20 f,
p. 238f,
3 Epiph. adv. Seer, 45,
* Iren, i, xxviii, 8.
8 B. H. Codrington, The Mela/nesivms, Oxford, 1891, p. 178 f.;
'Hipp. v.lit; V. 4.
P. Bascher, AA xxix. [1904] 209 f.
9 Epiph. i. 37; of. art. OraimH.
9 ERE vii. 238*.
I Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, ed, B. A, Lipsius and M.
W E. Dunn, Anthropos, i, [1906] 182,
Bonnet, Leipzig, 1891-1903, ii. pt. 2; W. M. Bamsay, The
11 Hose-McDougall, ii, 90; E. H. Gomes, Seventeen YearsG&ies and Bishoprics ofPhrygia, Oxford, 1895-97, i, 87.
among the Sea Jjyaks of Borneo, London, 1911, p. 143.
12 E, Aymonier, RHR xxiv. [1891] 267; ERE i. 538, iii. 348*>,
SActa Ap. Apoc. n. ii. 51.
9 Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, pp. 8, 12,
13 Jtfihongi, tr. W. G. Aston, London, 1896, i. 210; Be Groot,.
199 ff., etc.; E. Casalis, lies Bassoutos, Paris, 1859, p. 246; D. Rel. System of China, iv, 218.
Leslie, Among the Zulus and Amatongaa*, Edinburgh, 1875,
14 F, L, Norden, Travels in Egypt and NuMa, Eng. tr., 2 vols.,.
pp. 47,120.
London, 1757, ii, 28 f.; B. Pococke, A Description of the East,.
10 H. A. Jtraod, The Life of aS. African Tribe, Neuchatel, in Pinkerton's Voyages, xv. 269.
1912-13, ii, 351 fT.
is E. A. W. Budge, Egyptian Magic, London, 1899, p. 230,
II D. Maedonald, Afrieana, London, 1882, J, 62; J. Maedonald,
isplut. Cleomenes, 39; Porph, Vita Plot. 103, ed. Didot;,
JA J xsai. 114,
Ovid, Metam.fr, 563 f,
is M. W, H. Beech, The Swfc, Oxford, 1911, p. 20.
17 Plut. loo, cit.; Ovid, Metam, xv. 389; Pliny, SN x. 84 [64];
13 M. Merker, Die Masai, Berlin, 1904, p. 202; cf. also EBB cf. ERE vi. 653a.
vffi.482*.
.
.is W. W.JT0wler^2!Ae Roman festivals of the Period of the
14 0. W. Hobley, JRAI xli, [1911] 408.
Republic, London, 1899, p. 104; Pliny, 5Sf xxix. 72; Serving*
M A. 0. Hollis, The Nandi, Oxford, 1909, p. 90,
ad ^n. v. 95.
whom the son of laldabaoth was Nous o^idjuqp^os, from whom
were derived spirit, soul, and mundane things, and the cause of
all wickedness. Hence, as the enemy of mankind, he was not
honoured by these groups of Ophites,* In the system of Justin,
Naas, or the serpent, is the principle of evil, commits adultery
with Eve, and afflicts the spirit of EJohiin in man.2 The
Severiana also regarded the serpent as evil and the vine as the
product of intercourse between ib and earthperhaps the
reflexion of a pagan myth.3
Others regarded the serpent as good, thus reverting unconsciously to the belief adumbrated in the Semitic Pall mythof the wise serpent, because his action produced good results in
disobedience to the Demiurge, or he represented an intelligent
principlee.g., in the case of the sect which identified Sophia
and the serpent,4 To the Peratse the Son and the serpent were
identical, and the Naassenes worshipped Naas as the moist
principle which is good and in which all things subsist^ An
actual cult of a serpent was probably limited to a few extremists
e.g,, some described by Epiphanius; the others regarded the
serpent merely as a symbol of higher powers.
Epiphanius says of this group: 'They keep a living serpent
in a chest, and at the tune of the mysteries entice him out by
placing bread before him. The door being opened, he comes
forth and having ascended the table he twines himself round
the bread. This they call a perfect sacrifice. They not only
break and distribute this among the votaries, but whoever
desires may kiss the serpent. This they call the Eucharist, and
they conclude by singing a hymn through him to the Supreme
Father.'6
On Ophite gema the serpent is frequently represented in
various aspects; e.g.-, the Egyptian god Chnubis, identified
with lao Sabaoth, is depicted as a serpent with a human head.
In the apocryphal Acts of Philip the apostle ia said to have
preached in Ophioryma (Hierapolis), * where they set up images
of serpents and worshipped them,' and his persecutors are
'children of the serpent,' or Echidna, who is identified with the
devil, Knally Philip and John expel the serpenta distorted
reading of fact, for the serpent-cult must have continued in
Hierapolis long after apostolic days.7 This serpent-cult was
probably connected with that of Cybele. On coins of Hierapolia
snake-emblems appear, or Cybele presents a cup to a snake,
and in the Acts serpents ara called 'sons of the goddess'i.e.
her sacred animals or representatives, "Wine was offered to a
viper in the temple.s Possibly the Gnostic reverence for the
serpent was influenced by the pagan cult of a goddess associated
or identified with a snake,

406

SERPENT-WOBSHIP (Introductory and Primitive)

an altar. Doubtless all this was connected with an older belief reason, added to the snake being regarded as an earth-spiriti
In the ghost embodied in a snake. ^Eneas, seeing the snake why it is so commonly associated with fertility as so often
coming out of his father's tomb and tasting his offering, was noted above.1
perplexed as to whether it was the genius loci or an attendant
4. The serpent in magical rites,It is not
on his father.1 In some cases life was supposed to be dependent
on the safety of the house-snake ; .e,0,, when -the tame- serpent surprising that such a mysteri6ngT"aimnal as the
of Tiberius was devoured by ants, he drew the augury from it serpent shonld he used in magical rites, and in
that he must guard against attack from the multitude.8
(d) .Russian. In Russia the presence of snakes in a cottage some languages the word for 'serpent' has dei3 a good omen. They are fed with milk, and to kill them is a rivatives or cognates referring to magic or interBin. This is apparently a relic of the time when a belief in course with demons, while the serpent is often a
ancestral snakes existed among the Slavs, Lithuanians, and symbol of culture-gods and gods of wisdom, and
Wends.3
is connected with healing.

3, Serpents in the mysteries, The ritual use of

(a) The common idea that the representation of
a serpent in Asiatic and Greek mysteries is con- a noxious being w$ll drive off that be_ing_or other
nected with the aspect of certain divinities as noxious creatures is perhaps one explanation of
snakes.
the brazen serpent story in Hu 218ff>

In the initiation to the rites of the Phrygian Sabazios, whose

symbol and embodiment was a snake, a golden snake was let
down into the bosom of the candidate and taken away again
from the lower parts. Clement of Alexandria calls this 'the
serpent gliding over the breast'this serpent crawling over the
breasts of the initiated being the deity.* This rite was also
adopted in the Dionysiac mysteries.? In these a snake was
carried in a vista, the snake being the god himself. The dsta,
with the snake emerging from vine leaves, is represented on
coins of the cities of Asia Minor of the Roman period, and
Clement speaks of the tista in which was a snake, the symbol
of Dionysos Bassareus, having previously spoken of the box in
which the Kabeiroi exhibited the $nAAos of Dionysos to the
Tyrrhenians to worship. 6 In the Arretophpria, performed for
lie fertility of women and fields, ' sacred things which may not
be named were carried about, made of cereal paste, i.e. images
of snakes and of the forms of men/ viz. AaMoi.7 Snake and
<aAAos are here parallel as symbols of a deity, under both of
which Dionysos was represented.8 In the Eleusinia, according
to Clement of Alexandria, some object was taken by the initiate
from a vista, put into a basket, and from tha basket again put
into the chest.9 This object has been conjectured to be a
^oAAds, for a representation of the mystic basket shows a
(jboMds among fruit, and Dieterich thinks thavwhat was done
with the snakedrawing it through the bosomwas also done
with the <jboMijs.10
The rite was one expressive of sexual and mystic union with
the god, as Zeus or Sabazios as a serpent had entered els xdpijs
jdjAuw. The god was hailed as farojetftane, according to an
Orphic hymn. ' In relation to the god both men and women
were as female." In such a rite snake and $oM<5s were one and
the same, and women imitated the divine action. Such rites
may have jpven rise to the stories of sons born of human
mothers by 'divinities in the form of a serpent.11
The cisSwof the mysteries of Isis may also have contained a
snake,12 'Besides the above, certain facts point to the connexion
between serpent 'and ^aAXrfs.13 In Algonquian myth, at creation, the <aAAos of Qeechee Manito-ah being in his way, he
wrung it off and threw it into the bush, where it became
"Wau-kau-thee, the Rain-Serpent.1* Elsewhere in America the
<J>oM<Js 'was correlated or identical with the serpent,*1' If
the boundary-stones in Babylon were phallic, the presence
of the serpent wreathed round them is significant. The figure
of Nergal as a monster on a Babylonian plaque shows the
^oAAos as a serpent, and 'the serpent of conception' is spoken
of in certain texts.15 In India the serpente.g., in the Saiva
cultis associated with sexual powers, and in the temple of
"visvesara at Benares the lingam is sometimes represented with
a serpent coiled round it.1' 0. Schoebel, following certain
Talmudists, Agrippa of Cologne, and others, identifies the
tree of knowledge, serpent, and ^oAAq? in the narrative of
On 3.18 The connexion of snake and ^\\6s is perhaps one

In Egypt a serpeiifc-head amulet guarded its wearer from

snake-bite in this world and the next. The urceus on tha
crown was supposed to throw itself on the king's enemies, and
to have compelling power over the gods when the urceus crown
was placed by Nut on the head of the deceased.2 In Athens
snake-amulets are placed on the newly-born *o protect them
against snake-demons, 3 Perhaps the goldep serpents which
Clement of Alexandria condemns as a female decoration were
really worn as amulets.* Gregory of Tours tells of a bronze
serpent found in a Paris sewer on the removal of which snakes
infested the city.5 Among savages, too, amulets resembling
snakes, or a snake tatued on the body, protect against snakebite.8 In Romagna serpents, head downward and interlaced,
are painted on walls to keep away the evil eye,'
(&) The skin of the snake forms a part of the American
Indian 'medicine-bag,* and medicine-men among the Nandi
receive power from snakes carried in their bag.8 A wand in
the form of a snake was used by Egyptian magicians, and also
in the death ritual to heal the wound made by the adze in
opening the eyes and lips of the deceased. Buried with him,
such a wand gave him power over the dead. 9 The skin of a
serpent is also mentioned as a magico-medical remedy by Marcellus in the 4th cent., and it has still such properties in modern
Tuscany,1"

(c) Eating a serpent's flesh, or anointing with its

fat, or applying part of its body to the wound,
was a remedy against snake-bite among Greeks,
Romans, Arabs, Jews, American Indians, Abipones,
Thonga, and other races, and is also found in folkmedicine in many lands stillan example of the
principle that like cures like,11
Hence fennel cured snake-bite because snakes ate it.13 Again,
part of the war medicine of the American Indians was a fragment of a serpent, to give skill in war. Its blood was given to
women in child-bed, because, the snake being immortal, tha
blood had vital influences.^ Here, too, the virtue of tha
'serpent's egg' and of the so-called adder's stone may be
noticed.14

(d) The serpent is associated with healing rites

over a wide area, for no very obvious reason, but
perhaps because of its supposed wisdom.

This is seen in the case of the Greek Asklapios^nd other

divinities and in the Semitic association of serpents with healing
springs. In Madagascar a god of healing was patron of serpents,
and his priest carried a serpent in tha procession of the
god.1**
As the snake sloughed its skin, this became a folk-explanation
of its connexion with. Asklepios. The sloughing symbolized the
healing art.16

(e) Omens are often drawn from the sight of

1 Yerg JEn. v. 84 ; cf, F. B, Jevons, Plutarch's Romane
serpents, and it is often considered unlucky to see
Questions, London, 1892, p. xlviif.; ERE ft. 24*.
one, as among the Kenyahs and Thonga and many
2 Suet. Tiberius, 72.
. .,.,
3 See art, SERPEOTVwoBSHn" (Teutonic and Balto-Slavic).
4 Arnobius, adv. Gentes, v, 21 ; Clem. Alex. Protr. ii. 18 ; other peoples,17
1 See art. PHAIOJSM.
_ ,
Firmicns Maternus, de Err, prof. Rel, 11; cf. Justin Martyr,
2 See art. CROWN, vol. iv. p. 341; H. M. Tirard, The Book of the
Apol. i. 27,
Dead, London, 1910, p. 28.

6 See art. MYSTERIES (Greek, Phrygian, etc.), x (c),

3 Gruppe, p. 902.
4 Clem. Alex. Peed, m 13.
8 L. Anson, JNumismata Grceca, London, 1911, pt. i. p. 936 ;
5 Greg, of Tours, Hist, eccles. des Francs, French tr., Paris,
Clem. Alex. Protr. ii, 19; cf. Plutarch, Alex. 2.
7 Schol, on Lncian, Dial. Her, ii. 1 ; cf, J. E. Harrison, Pro- 1874, viS. 33.
5 See ERE iii. 395*, i. 538; cf. Brinton, p. 133.
legomena to the Study of Greek Religion, London, 1903, p. 122.
7 Leland, p. 168, In Annam serpents are painted on the body
8 Qruppe, p. 1423.
9 Clem. Alex. Protr. ii, 21.
to
prevent snake-bite (ERE i, 538*).
10 Dieterich, Sine MithrasMturgie, p. 125 f.
BHollis, p. 51.
Tirard, p. 26,
11 Cf, Dieterich, p. 123 f., de Hymnis Orphicis, Marburg, 1891,
. 38 ; Gruppe, pp. 866, 1423 ; Ramsay, i. 94, 293 ; see also below,
.
11 Pliny, 'HN xxix. 71; Gruppe, p. 1274; ERE viii, 253
32 ct. Ovid, Amor, ii, 13; Juvenal, vi. 537; see also art. (Arabs); JE xi. 203 (Jews); M. Dobrizhoffer, An Account of
the AUyvnes, Eng. tr,, London, 1822, ii. 290 f,; Junod, ii. 317,
MYSTERIES (Egyptian).
!3 Of. E. Gerhard, Griech, Mythologie, Berlin, 1854-55 ; ERE
12 Pliny, HN xix. 23.
13 Brinton, pp. 133,140.
T, 829.
M See ERE iii. 297, 113*, For love-philtres made from
14 Owen, p. 36.
serpents' flesh see ERE i. 542.
is Brinton, p. 177, Nagualism, Philadelphia, 1894, p. 49 f.
is J. Sibree, The Great African Island, London, 1880, p. 268,
!9 See i (r); Perrot-Chipiez, p. 363 f. ; ERER. 644, note H.
i J. G. Frazer, Pausanias's Description of Greece, London,
17 Crooke, PR2 ii. 124 ; M. Monier- Williams, Brahmanism and
1898
iii. 66; see also art. DIS&ABB AND MBDICIRE,
Hinduism*, London, 1891, p. 439 ; J. H. Rivett-Carnac, JASB
W Hose-MoDougall, ii. 73, 79; Junod, ii. 489; ERE i, 526b,
IE; [1879] 13.
541*.
M Zie Mythe de lafemme et du serpent, Paris, 1876.

SEBPENT-WORSHIP (Introductory and Primitive)

(/) Power over snakes is sometimes ascribed to
sorcerers, or the snake is used by them as a ' sending'a creature sent forth to produce disease,
to wound, or to kill,1

Serpents were thus sent as agents of his anger by the

Malagasy deity already mentioned. 2 In Calabar a tribe levied
toll on all who passed. Refusal to pay resulted in a snake being
sent after them, which tied their legs, and the people then came
and robbed them. Medicine-leaves also protect houses in
Calabar, and fetishes among the Baganda; and, if any robber
approaches, snakes rush out at him,3 Bushmen sorcerers are
said to be able to whistle up snakes, which coil round their
neck in the presence of spectators.* The Ohiriguano believe
that they would never die unless, inter alia, bitten by a snake
really a sorcerer in that form.5

(gr) Charms and magie formulae are often used as

remedies for snake-bite or as protection against
snakes.5
(h) As certain snakes are susceptible to musical,
rhythmical sounds or movements, these are used by
snake-charmers to exhibit their power over them,
This has occurred in Africa and in many Eastern lands from
ancient down to modern times; among the American Indians
charming was used by magicians to prove their intercourse
with unseen powers and the power given them by these so that
they handled snakes with impunity.? Possibly snake-charmers
produce some cataleptic or hypnotic state in the animals.8 The
supposed immunity of the charmer should be compared with
that seen in the case of the Hopi, the devotees in the Dionysiac
mysteries, the Psylli and Ophiogenes, and the Jtebeet among the
Abipones.9

5, Demoniac and mythical serpents and dragons.

Although the serpent is frequently worshipped,
its harmful character and the repulsion which it
arouses, its frequent large size and strength, and
the mystery of its movements have often caused a
sinister character to be given it, and made it an
embodiment of demoniac powers. Because of the
brightness of its eye and its power of fascination
over animals the serpent was commonly supposed
to have the evil eye. The larger species, possibly
also the dim memory of extinct species or species
no longer found in any region, affected man's
imagination, and both fear and fancy gave rise to
a belief in mythical serpents or dragons of vast
size and powers, and often the. cause of various
natural phenomena. They have frequently many
heads; they have wings and feet j and they breathe
fire and smoke. Demoniac and mythical serpents
are often the object of belief where a cult of
serpents exists, showing that very different emotions
are aroused by serpents of various kinds.

Some examples of demoniac and mythical serpents have

already been referred to. The Sea Dayaks of Sarawak tell of a
huge snake which came down from heaven and fed on the rice.
A man slew it and ate its flesh; the result was the deluge.10
Another myth tells how the python was once the most poisonous
oJ snakes, and killed a man who took fish from its fish-pond.
Thinking afterwards that he had come to life, it vomited its
poison into the sea, where a snake, Ular Berang, swallowed
some of the poison, and the sea-snakes took the rest. The TJlar
Berang is rarely seen, but is very dangerous,11 Certain snakes,
like other animals, possess Jiadi-i.e. a bad spirit or mischief of
a dangerous kindwhile the ladi of some large trees is a more
individual spirit which may appear as a snake.!2 Both in
Burma and in Borneo dangerous snakes are held to be embodiments of evil spirits. 13 Among the Negrito tribes of Borneo
eclipses are caused by a python trying to swallow sun and
moon or to embrace the latter.1* According to the loans, the
Mood was the result of men's wounding a huge python. Soon
I Seligmann, Melanesians, p. 282; Junod, ii. 467 (Thonga);
ERE i, 251* (Ainus); de Groot, Set System of Ghina, v. 851
(China); cf. art. LTCANTHROPT, vol. viii, p, 218*.
a Sibree, p. 268.
3 From information supplied by the Kev, J, K. MaeGregor;
Boscoe, The Saganda, p. 15.
* T. Hahn, Tsuni-Woam, London, 1881, p. 80.
s G. E. Church, A borigines ofS, America, London, 1913, p, 237,
BTirard, p. 99; Seligmann, The Feddas, p. 197 f,
7 Brinton, p. 131; Muller, p. 277 (Brazil); ERE L 792*.
8 Of. ERE i 434b,
9 Dobrizhoffer, ii, 67,
101, H. N. Evans, JRAI xliii, [1913] 469f.; E. Dunn,
Anthropos, i. 17.
II N, Annandale and H. C. Kobinson, Fasciculi Malayenses,
London, 1903-06, pt. i, p. 88.
13 To. pp. 100,104.
19 ERE iii. 25, vii. 260b,
M W. w, Skeafc and 0. 0. Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay
Pentrottte, London, 1906, ii. 203, 224, A dragon-like monster
is supposed to swallow candidates for initiation in New Guinea
(see ERE viii. 826, reft.).

407

after the rain caused a flood which drowned every one except a
woman.1 The American Indian myth of the great horned
serpent2-the embodiment of lightning or of the waters, and
slain by a god or herois perhaps a variant of the myth of
.chapSjjrepresented by a monster, and overcome by a god. In
Musquakie myth a huge "snak"e with" hard, white scales, deer's
horns, and spitting fire, rose from a lake, but was vanquished
by the hero, Hot Hand.3 In the arid south-west region, where
the canons are quickly flooded, men are said to have lived
underground at one time, but to have been driven to earth's
surface by a huge snake which caused a deluge.* In other
American Indian myths (Ojibwa, etc.) serpents who have slain
the hero's brother cause a deluge when the hero avenges them,5
On the other hand, in British New Guinea, Baudalo, king of
snakes, put an end to the deluge by pursuing the waters to
their accustomed bed^6 A Toba Battak myth tells how a great
serpent lay on the primeval ocean and engulfed.the_earth.ai its
creation by turning it over. But the Heavenly Maid caused
eight suns to dry up the waters and then pinned the serpent
to a rock. 7 The Thonga believe in the vast snake, Buwumati,
dwelling in lakes invisibly and heard crying when rain falls. If
any one should chance to see it, he dies.8 The Mexican sun-god
Tonatiuh cut in pieces the coloured wood-snake, as Manco
Capac in Peru and Bochiea in Bogota slew the serpents of the
waters.9 The Ayni believe that evil spirits are incarnated in
serpents, as do also the Tbibios of S. Nigeria.10
The monstrous demoniac serpents of Babylon and Egypt have
already been described.11 But Egyptian myth knew also of a
beneficent serpent, its body overlain with gold, and 30 cubrtB in
length, living on an island, where it apparently was the guardian
of the dead, just as serpents guarded the under world and are
figured on tombs as guardians. A human-headed urceus ol
large size is sculptured on an Ethiopian temple.115 In Greece
Typhon, son of Tartaros and Gaia, was demon of the whirlwind
and possessedlOO serpent-heads. He attacked Zeus, who felled
him with a thunderbolt and set JEtna upon him. His consort
was Echidna, half-woman, half-serpent, whose progeny were
the Sphinx, Chimsera, Hydra,andtheDragon of theHesperides,13
Hydra, with nine heads, dwelt in the swamps of Lerna, laying
waste all the land till Heracles slew it. Heracles also slew the
dragon or snake of the Hesperides, which is represented as
twined round a tree from below which issues a well; therefore
it is guardian of the waters.1* Jason, Perseus, and Cadmua
were also slayers of dragons in Greek myth. Python, a dragon
born of Gaia, sought to kill Leto because he learned that her
son would be fatal to him. 2eus interfered, but Leto's son
Apollo slew the Pytho at Delphi, where he buried the body and
instituted the Pythian games.
Behind this lies the myth of the cult of a prophetic snake at
Delphi, embodiment of a goddess. The combat with Apollo
haa been explained as the seizing of the oracle_ by a tribe of
Apollo-worshippers, who changed the shrine to his. The shrine
in N. Greece where serpents, the god's play-things, were fed by
virgin-priestesses may also have been an ancient shrine of a
snake-goddess.15
Ancient Persia, in its dualisHc scheme, regarded some animals
e,g,, the serpentas of the evil creation, while certain others
were created to destroy them. It also embodied the evil power
in a mythic dragon created by Angra Mainyu to destroy the
faithfulthe dragon Azi Dahaka, three-headed and immensely
strong, sometimes also identified with Babylon (Bawri) or the
Arabians.1^ He was conquered by Atar, son of Ahura Mazda,
a. personification of fire,17 or, in another myth, by Thraetaona,
who bound him on Mt, Demavend, At the end of time he will
escape and destroy a third of mankind, cattle, and sheep, as well
as water, fire, and vegetation, but will be slain by Keresaspa.M
1 Hose-MeDougaH, it 144; cf, H. Ling Both, flativet tj/
Sarawak, i, 301,
2 See i (A).
3 Owen, p, 4; cf. ERE vi. 885* for a Huron mythical serpent.
* Alexander, N, American Mythology, pp. 161, 299 fl.; cf.
ERE iv. 547*.
5 n, pp. 274, 301; Frazer, Folk-lore in the Old Testament,
1,302,
6 A. Ker, Papuan Fairy Tales, London, 1910, p. 30; cf,
W, W. Gill, Journ. of the Polynesian Soc., xxi. [1912] 61 (Cook
Island version); Q, Turner, Samoa a Hundred Tears Ago,
London, 1884, p. 288.
7 J. Warneck, Religion der JBataJe, Leipzig, 1909, p. 28; cf,
ERE vii. 79(3* for the dragon of the Laos. The Bnnun of
Formosa have also a myth connecting a huge serpent with a
deluge (Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, i 232).
8 Junod, ii. 318,
9 Muller, p. 666.
10 Ii'Anthropologie, iv. [1893] 431; P. A. Talbot, Geog, Journal,
xliv, [1914] 296.
11 For a Hittite mythical serpent see ERE vi. 725k.
12 W, M. F, Petrie, Egyptian Tales, London, 1895, ii. 818;
G. Maspero, Contes populaires de VEgyptt ancienne, Paris,
1882, p, 133 f.
13 Hyginus, Fab. oh. 151, 152.
i* J, E. Harrison, Themis, p. 431,
1516. pp. 428, 433, 436; L, E. Farnell, CffS iii, 91, iv, 181;
W, S, Fox, Greek and Roman Mythology (=Mythology of all
Races, vol. i,), Boston, 1916, p. 178; ERE ix. 493b.
!6 SSE iv.a [1895] 258 f,, xxiii. [1883] 60.
W Yasht, xix. 47 f.
is SSE v. [1880] 119; Pinknrt, ix, 13.5; cf, ix, 15, Iff.; Sundahi$, xxis.; cf. Eev 87 9is 202- 7f,; see also Yasna, ix. 11;
Yasht, xix. 40 f.

408

SERPENT-WOBSHIP (Introd-uetoiy and Primitive)

In Firdauai's Shah Namah Asa Dahaka ia an Arab King with

a dragon-like face and two snakes on his shoulders, the product
of the kisses of Iblis. These were fed with human flesh. The
poem follows closely the Armenian Zoroastrian version of the
myth, in which Hruden (Thraetaona} is the conqueror of Asa.1
Dragons exist frequently also in Hindu, Teutonic,-Slatdc,-and
Celtic myth and folk-tale, in Mandxan and Manichsean mythologyin both cases derived from Babylonian or Persian belief
and also in Gnosticism.2
In the Pistis Sophia the disk of the sun is described as a great
dragon with his tail in his mouthan Egyptian conception;8
and dragons form the rudder of the ship of the moon. The
outar darkness, where souls incapable of redemption are cast,
is a great dragon encircling the earth, with its tail in its mouth,
and containing twelve chambers of punishment. So in a Gnostic
system described by Epiphanius4 the archon of the lowest
heaven ia a dragon encircling the earth and swallowing souls
which have not knowledge. Both in Gnostic and in Catholic
prayers for deliverance of the soul on its upward way there is
mentioned the opposing dragon or serpent. The dragon as
Hades in Pfetis Sophia, is probably a reminiscence of the Egyptian Apap, In the Apocalypse of Saruch there is a huge dragon
In the third heaven and also in Hades. Its belly forms Hades,
and the dragon devours the wicked.6
The Gnostic idea of the dragon or serpent as an evil worldprinciple, identical with the devil, encircling the earth and
holding it in his power, 8 may be referred to in the Hymn of the
Pearl, ascribed to Bardesanes. The pearl is in the sea, hard
by the serpent.? The sea is the mythic chaotic deep, which,
encircling the world, is sometimes compared in Babylonian
mythology to a snake'the river of the snake." 8 This idea is
also found in Egypt, where the myth of Apap bound in the deep
is also figured as that of the ocean itself representing Apap
bound, girdling the earth and keeping it together, yet ever
trying to burst his bands and destroy it.9 A Ptolemaic writer,
Horapollo, says that the Egyptians represented the universe aa
a serpent devouring its taila subject depicted also in Gnostic
gems. 10 In Eabbinic belief Leviathan was coiled round the
earth, and the sea appeared to Alexander, when carried into
the air by griffins, as a snake encircling the earth.u So, too, the
m$$-ga/r<fi?s-ormr of the Edda, the serpent encircling the earth,
is probably the ocean. 18 The Sia believe in cosmic serpents, one
for each quarter and one for each earth and heaven.13 The
serpent was one of the symbols of the elements in Mithraism.14

6. Myths about serpents.(a) Earthquakes,

The previous idea of the serpent coiled round the
earth is perhaps connected with a series of myths
in which earthquakes are caused "by serpents or
dragons which support the earth or swell underground, and whose movements shake the earth.15
In Polynesian myths the sea-aerpent, by standing erect, raised
the sky from the earththe two having previously cleaved
together.is

(&) The serpent and the waters,In many myths

a dragon or huge serpent lays waste the land, until
the king offers his daughter in marriage to the
knight who will slay it. Or a maiden must he
given to it at intervals; at last it is the turn of
the king's daughter, and then the monster is slain
by a hero or saint or divinity. In some of these
tales the serpent lives in a lake and keeps back
the water-supply. In others a water-spirit does
this, or the spirit is embodied in a serpent. Such
tales are found in ancient Babylon and Greece, in
all European countries, as well as among Negroes,
Mongolians, Japanese, Ainus, Kabyles, Eskimo,
and American Indians.17. They have a basis in fact
in the terror inspired by_ huge serpents, perhaps
propitiated by human sacrifice. Instances of such
sacrifices occur sporadically, and divine serpents
fed with human flesh have already been referred
l Of. ERE i. SOQa, iv. 620\ Of. i (a:),
3 Cooper, p. 375.
4 Adv. Beer, 26. 40.
S See, further, art. MOOTH, vol. viii p. 869*.
8 Of. Acts of Thomas, in Apoc. Gospels, Acts, and Revelations,
Edinburgh, 1873, p. 407; Origen, c, Celwm, vi. 25, 35.
7 A. A. Bevan, 'The Hymn of the Soul,' in TS, vol. v, no. 3,
Cambridge, 1897,
8 Sayce, p. 116.
9 Max Muller, pp. 104,106.
W Cooper, p. 335.
11 JSBi, col. 1132; J. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Ensr, tr.,
London, 1882-88, ii, 794.
u Qrimm, loo, tit.
13 Stevenson, 12 R3EW, p. 69.
l* BRE viii. 758*; see 355% 359% 360, for aMalay cosmic snake.
M Jfr. j, 491i>, v. 128*, vi, 14*>; Exvi:u [1885] 32 (Bogobos);
J, E. Erskine, Journ, of a. Cruise among the Islands of the
W, Pacific, London, 1853, p. 47 (Kji).
18 Turner, Samoa, pp. 284, 288, 292.
WJERS vi, 645i (Bab.), 855 (Japan); Ovi&,Metam. iv. 6621
(Perseus and Andromeda); the numerous variants are cited ia
MaeOuHooh, CF, p. 381
ff.
i

to, The association of huge serpents with water

is in accordance with wide-spread belief.
Bushman belief connected a monstrous horned snake with
the waters, and in Hottentot myth fountains contain a snake,
and -they dry up if it is killed.! Arab belief associated the
jinn in serpent form with medicinal waters, and in Neh 2*3 a
'dragon's well' is mentioned, probably a sacred pool with
serpent guardian.2 In the Greek myth of Cadmus the dragon
guarded the well of Dirce, and the Styx was also believed to be
guarded by dragons. In Annam the spirit of the waters appears
as a serpent, winch also takes human f orm.3 Celtic myth knows
of dragons and serpents in lochs,4 just as in Guiana and Zuni
tales a serpent lives in a pool sacred to him.5

Other myths speak of a serpent-race, like The

Indian Nagas, dwelling under water, and capable
of assuming human form.6 The chracs of French
folk-lore and water-dwelling snakes in Montenegrin
belief are hostile to men, like those of Cambodian
and Laotian belief.7
(e) The serpent and creation,Sometimes the
serpent figures as the origin of the World (cf, the
Tiamat myth) or as creator.
In theNetherland Islands the serpent which pushed up heaven
from earth was cut in pieces, which became the islands, and ita
blood the stars. In Buahman myth snakes were struck by
Cagn and became men, A Saliva myth tells how the Oaribs
sprang from the flesh of serpents. Among the S. Massim a huge
snake cut to pieces is said to have been changed into the reefs.3
In the Solomon Islands Kahausibware, a spirit in snake form,
made men and animals, but was chopped to pieces by a woman,
when good things became bad and death entered. The Sioux
myth of the first men tells how their feet grew in the ground
like trees till a great snake set them free as men,9

(d) Origin,The origin of snakes themselves is

sometimes mythically related.
They were made from fragments of the god Angoi, slain by
another god (S.E. Borneo); from the breast of the child of a
sky-maiden and a mortal, cut in two (Ifugao of the Philippines,
Mandaya); or from a bark-cloth twisted and filled with thorns
(E, Afriea).iO

(e) Rainbows and eclipses,The rainbow is regarded as a great snake among the Semang (who
think that the places where it touches earth are
unhealthy to live in), the Shoshone, the Australian
aborigines, the Dahomans, the ancient Persians,
and many other races,11 Eclipses are often regarded
as caused by the efforts of a serpent or dragon to
swallow the sun or moon,12
(f) The serpent and immortality,The serpent
was believed to have no fear of old age,13 or to be
immortal, because it casts its skin,14 apparently
renewing its life. According to many 'origin of
death' stories, man was meant to be immortal by
the same process, but the serpent received the boon
because the messenger sent to man told the serpent
this secret, or snakes heard the message and men
did not, or because the creator was angry with
them,15 Hence the cast skin of a serpent is a
powerful' medicine,' Among the Lenguas of Para1 Stow, p. 131; Hahn, pp. 53,77.
2 W. B. Smiths, p. 168; ef. Jos. JBJ v. iii. 2.
3 E, S. Hartland, U* i. 121 f.; cf. ERE vii. 796* (Laotians).
* MacCulloch, Religion of the Ancient Celts, p, 188,
5 See 7 (&),(&),
s W. R. S. Kalston, Russian Foils-tales, London, 1873, p. 119
(Slavic); P. Eascher, AA xxix, 234 (New Britain); Keysser, in
Neuhauss, Deutsch New-Guinea, iii. 202.
7 Gervase of Tilbury, Otia. Imperialia, in G. W. Leibnitz,
Seriptores Rerum Brunsvicarum, Hanover, 1710, i. 987; M, E,
Durham, JRAI xxxix. 97.
8 A. Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion*, London, 1899, i, 170
(Bushman); J. Gumilla, Hist, natwrelle, civile et geographigue
de VOrenoqm, Avignon, 1758, i. 162 (Saliva); Seligmann,
Melanesians, p. 382.
9 ERE viii. 536* (Solomon Islands); see also i (e); G. Catlin,
The N. Amer. Indians, new ed,, London, 1876, i, 280.
l" Dixon, p. 176 f.; Macdonald, Africana, i 294.
11 Skeat-Blagden, ii, 203, 224; Howitt, p. 431; Alexander,
. Amer. Mythology, p. 139; Crooke, PR?, ii. 144; Purchas,
xv. 304 (Peru).
12 See JURE 5. 492, viii. 360, also art. PEOKISIES AUD PORT
for the snake as the bridge to paradise see JKSJUix. 457*.
13 Plutarch, de Is. et Osir. 74.
i* See i (J).
is The tales are found in New Britain, Bismarck Archipelago,
Annam, Borneo, among the Arawaks and the Tamanachiera of
the Orinoco; see Frazer, The Relief in Immortality, p. 69 f.,
Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, i. 66 S,; I. H. N. Evans, JRAI
xliii. 426; Dixon, p. 117 f.

SBBPENT-WOESHIP (Introductory and Primitive)

guay all animals, except fish and serpents, are
thought to share immortality with men.*
In a wide-spread myth a hero restores a friend by using a
plant which he has seen a -serpent 'iise-4o~fering-taG&-anotner
serpent to life, as in the Greek story of Polyidus and Glaucus.2
(g) The serpent and the language of birds, A
common belief existed that eating the flesh OT
heart of certain snakes, especially of a fabnlons
white snake, gave the eater wisdom or a knowledge of "beast language. As the serpent "was
regarded often as an embodiment of supernatural
wisdom, to eat its flesh caused transference of
that to the eater. The serpent was supposed to
know beast and bird language, as Demoeritus
thought, because it was generated from the mixed
blood of birds.
Thia belief forms the theme of innumerable folk-tales and
existed in ancient times. The gift conld also be conferred by
a grateful serpent licking the ear of a man, as in the Greek
myth of Melampus, or in other ways.3 In many quarters the
anake is believed to give inspiration through its spirit, or to
cause possession,4 and in all parts of the worldCentral
America, Mexico, among the Haidas and Tlingits, in New
Ireland, New Zealand, and the Solomon Islands representations of a man holding a snake, a lizard, or a frog with its
tongue to his tongue are found.5 The idea is probably that of
receiving inspiration from the animal.
(K) The serpent and the magic stone, There is
a wide-spread belief in the king of serpents who
wears a jewelled crown a magical possession
which men try to win.6
On such a huge serpent wearing a golden crown the earth
was founded, according to a Borneo myth.? That the serpent
has in its head a jewel or magic stone much coveted by adventurous men, who try to obtain it, is the subject of many tales
in India, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and among the American
Indians.8 In Sinhalese myth the stone is dropped by the
serpent to give it light ; in a similar Nigerian myth, to attract
its prey, when the seeker is able to obtain it by craft.9 Among
the Eoro-speaking tribes of British New Guinea a sorcerer
obtains a black stone from a snake after ritual preparation and
by worrying it till it drops the stone, when he runs off with
it, pursued by the snake. The stone kills any one touched by
it. This bears some resemblance to the Gaulish method of
obtaining the 'serpent's egg.'io Other tales speak of a magic
ring in a serpent's mouth which, once obtained, grants every
wish.11 The Dayaks keep anything found in the mouth of an
ancestral snake as a charm.15*
Somewhat analogous is the Andamanese belief that a small
anake produces streams of oxide of iron and white clay by
emitting a fluid when disturbed. 13
) The serpent and treasure,-^Another common
ef is that dragons lie upon gold, or guard
treasure, or have magic possessionsa common
Teutonic and Scandinavian belief, shared by the
Arabians (the winged serpents guarding incensetrees), and by the Greeks (the dragon-guardian of
the golden apples of the Hesperides), Romans,
Chanes of S. America, and the tribes of E, Africa.14
Because of this mythical connexion with treasure, as well as
because deities or heroes with some serpent-attributeQuetzal1 W. BP Grubb, An Unknown People in tm Unknown Land,
London, 1911, p. 125.
2 Hyginus, Fab, 136 ; Pliny, H$f xxv. 5 ; Grimm, Kinder' und
HawmarchenP, Berlin, 1870, no. IB ; for numerous variants see
OF, p, 82 ; J. Bolte and G. Polivka, Anmerkwngen zw den
Kinder- und Saitsmarchen der Briider Grimm, Leipzig, 1913,
i. 126ffi.; Frazer, Paitsanias, iii. f>6,
3 Phflostr. Vita Apoll. i, 20, iii. 9 ; Pliny, SN x. 70 ; Apollodorus, i. 9, 11; for folk-tale variants see Bolte-Polivka, i. 131ff.;
Frazer, AR i. 11863] 166ff.
4;See x ; Eoscoe, The Baganda, p. SISff.
5 W. H, Ball, On Masks, Labrets, and Certain Aboriginal
Customs,' S RBEW 11884], pp. 103, lllff, ; A. W, Btrckland,
JAI xxi. [1892] 29.
6 Grimm, Tevi. Myth. ii. 686 f., 1219 f., Household Tales, tr.
M. Hunt, London, 1884, ii,-77 ; F. S. Krauss, Sagen >und Marchen
far SUdslaven, Leipzig, 1883-84, nos. 62, 107; ERE 1, 526\. I59f.

8 Crooke, PR*, ii. 143 ; Dixon, p. 328; Skeat, Malay Magic,

p. 303; De Laborde, Relation ties Catanbes, Paris, 1674, p. 7;
JBJRS i, 526^, iii. 395% 503*.
9"W, L. Hildburgh, JRAI xxxviii, [1908] 200; Leonard, The
Lower Niger, p. 192 ; el 'Grimm, iv, 1492.
"> Seligmann, Melanesians, p. 282 ; cJ. art 'CHARMS airo
eltic), vol. iii. p. 412,
' P- 163u E. Dunn, Anthropos, i, 182,
..an,xii.l55.
M Grunm, Teut, Myth, ii. $89 f., iii. 978 f. ; Herod, iii. 107;
fterartu'j fr, 19; Nordenskiold, p, 288; Macdonald, African*,
1* opO*

409

coatl, Kneph, Ea, Indra, Cadmuswere pioneers of civilization

and taught men mining and agriculture, A. W. Buckland
thought that serpents may have played some part in aiding
man to discover metals, and hence were worshipped.-1
(j) In a number of stories having a very different
provenance, but showing a certain parallelism, a
small worm or snake taken into a house grows to
monstrous form and is with difficulty got rid of.a
Or the snake enters the body of a person, causing
great discomfort.3
7, Woman and the serpent,In folk-tale and
myth, and occasionally in ritual, woman is brought
into relation with the serpent, which is often her
lover or husband. This is but one_aspe.et_ of _the
world-wide myths in which an animal marries a
woman, though frequently the animal is a god in
disguise or a being now human, now animal, often
as a result of enchantment, But in many instances, especially among savages, the snake is a
snake sans phrase, because of the method of
thought by which no cleat distinction is drawn
between human and animal forms,4 possibly also
because of the connexion of snake and q&aAXo1?.
(a) Of the first series the European examples
are mainly variants of the Beauty and the Beast
cycle, and the serpent is a youth bewitched to
serpent form till a maiden releases him from the
enchantment by kissing him or burning his snakeskin.5
Greek mythology contains similar stories, though here the
serpent is usually a god in disguise.6 A similar myth was told
of Faunas in Roman mythology, possibly because serpents were
kept in the temple of the Bona Dea,' Both Greek and Roman
legend related that gods as serpents were fathers of well-known
personages by human mothers,
Olympias. wife of Philip, was approached by the god Ammon
as a serpent, and gave birth to Alexander the Great, A serpent
was found lying by her as she slep_t, and, as Olympias was
given to the cult of Dionysos, in which serpents figured, the
germ of the legend may be found in this. 8 The mother of
Aristomenes had united with a god in serpent-form, as also the
mother of Aratus. In her case the serpent was Asklepios, and
a figurine of her sitting on a serpent esasted in the temple of
Asklepios at Sieyon.9 Augustus was the son of a serpentiform
deity, and his mother could never get rid of the spots left by
the serpent on her body.io A similar legend was told of the
mother of Scipio the elder.11 Possibly all such stories arose
from the use of serpents in the cult of Dionysos, or from the
fact that barren women visited the temple of Asklepios.12
According to Athenagoras, Kore, daughter of Rhea, had a
monstrous aspect and horns. Then he tells how Zeus did
violence to Rhea, who changed herself to a Spa.Ka.wa. to escape
him, when he now became a dragon. In that form also he
violated Kore.13 Reinach sees here two parallel traditions, and
thinks that Zeus and Kore had both serpent form and that
Zagreus was hatched from an egg as a hornexi serpent.14
Parallels from savage folk-tales exist,
In a New Guinea tale a youth is enabled to take serpent form
and obtains a girl, afterwards resuming human shape. Or a
serpent can take human form and marry human brides.J5 IQ -a
Zuni tale Koloowisi, the serpent-god, catches a girl, but takes
human shape, renouncing his serpent-skin.18 In Polynesian
legend such tales are told of a huge eel which can take human
1 A. "W, Buckland, Anthropological Stwdi&s, London, 1891,
p. 104 f.
a W. Mapes, d/9 JNttgis CutiaKvfm, ed. T. Wright, London,
1850, dist. ii. cap. '6; F. Liebreeht, Znr Volkskunne, Heilbronn,
1879, p. 66; W, Henderson, Notes on the Fotk-lJore of the 2f.
Counties of England, London, 1879, p. 287; F. H. Gushing,
Zufti Folk-tales, New York, 1901, p. 93; G. Turner, Samoa,
p. 243; Codrington, p, 403,
3 Seligmann, Melanesians, p. 382 (New Guinea); Junod, n,
229 (Thonga).
4 See art. METAMOKPHOSIS, 3.
6 W, Webster, Basque Legends*, London, 1879, p, 167; A, de
Gubernatis, Novettini popolari, Milan, 1883, no, 14; Ralston,
The Songs'of the Biwsian People, London, 1872, p. 174, Rwsian
Folk-tales, p, 116; J. H. Knowles, Folk-tales of Kashmir,
London, 1888, p. '491.
6 Arnobius, adv, Gentes, v. 22; Diod, Sic, iv, 4, v. 75.
7 Macrob. i. 12. 24; Cf. Plut. Gees, 9.
8 Plut, Alex. 3; Lucian, Dial. Mart. 13; cf. EKE via, 193*.
9 Paus. n. x. 3, IV. xiv. 7,
W Suet. A-ugust. 9S'; Dio Cass. xlv. 'i, 2.
Livy, xxvi.19; Aul. GelL vii. 1.
12 See 1.
!3 Athen. Leg. yro Christianis, ch. 20; Clem. Alex, Protr. ii;
cf. C. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamws, Konigsberg, 1829, p. 547 ff.
MS. Reinach, Cvltes, mythes et religions, Paris, 1905-12,
ii, 60.
iSH, H. Romilly, From my Verandah in 3fe-v) Guinea,
London, 1889, p, 78; Seligmann, Melanesians, p, 397.
16 Gushing, p. 93,

410

SERPENT-WOBSHIP (Introductory and Primitive)

form.1 Similar tales of snakes that can take human shape an

marry girls are told among the Kafirs, Formosans, andNegroe
of Jamaica.2 A Rabbinic idea was that, through intercourse o
the serpent with Eve, her descendants were corrupted, th
serpent having then almost the form of a man.3

clan,1 In Japan stories of men's wives that are also serpents 01

dragons at times exist in the early mythology and in popular
belief.2 So in the Greek story the mistress and bride of
Menippus is a lamia or serpent, and disappears when discovered
by Apollonius.3 In some folk-tales and .ballads a girl is anso that she appears as a reptile until a youth kisses
(&) In the second group the serpent has n chanted
her, when she is retransformed, as in the parallel tales where
Iranian form, and the tales, mainly of savag the
hero is thus bewitched.* Hindu folk-lore has examples of
provenance, are extremely realistic and disgusting beings (e.g., the nagas) who are women by night and serpents
Examples occur among the tribes of New Guinea, the Ad by day.5 In other instances we have a composite being, halfmiralty Islanders, Eskimo, American Indians, and Guaranos. woman, half-serpent in the lower part of the body. Herodotus
Echoes of such stories are found in early Christian literature cites a myth regarding the origin of the Scythians, progeny of
Heracles and Echidna, who was a serpent from the waist
e.g., the Acts of Thomas, where a dragon or snake loved a gir
In the Visio Pauli faithless virgins must endure the embrace down.6 Such composite beings are known also in India, but
the typical example is found in the well-known tale of Melusine,
of serpents in hell3
who, married to Raymond, asked that she should spend one
(e) These tales may he connected with actna day each week in seclusion. One day he spied upon" h'e* and
saw her in a bath, half-woman, half-serpent, and, when he
custom and helief.
calle_d her ' odious serpent,' she left .him for ever. In one
The python god Danh-gbi of the Ewe has many priestesses version
she had been cursed by her mother, a fay, to assume
and is supposed to marry young novices secretly, Accordin,'
form every Saturday,' The story belongs to the 'superto one writer, the girl is placed in a pit with serpents and toll this
natural
cycle, but Melusine has parallels in Greek
that one will take human formreally one of the priests.8 Tb nymphs bride'
are serpents from the waist downwards, in
Onyckolum compel a woman to marry, saying that, if she does Egyptian who
art,
and
in the sirenshalf-woman, half-fishthe
not, she will marry the great snake Ak,7 Among tht form also of the Semitic
Derceto or Atargatis, of Triton, and of
Akikuyu^at the worship of the snake-god, who requires wives Oannes.8
women and girls go to the huts built for him, where, however
converse form, in which divine beings have anake-faces,
the priests visit them. The children are fathered on the god.* is The
frequent occurrence in Egypt, as well as vice versa. They
Girls at initiation among the Basutos are taken to a stream areof also
referred to in the so-called Mithras liturgy; and in
where they are told a great serpent will visit them.9 The some
mediseval representations of the Fall the serpent has a
Hottentots believe in a serpent with human organs which
head and arms, or even two such heads, to address
visits women in sleep, and a somewhat similar belief is fount human
among the Macusi.i" A 16th cent, treatise on Brazil says that Adam and Eve at once. 9 Among the Araucanos the servants of
barren women among the Indians were struck on the hips with Pillan, the chief god, are snakes with men's heads.10
a snake, with which soothsaying was also observed, as a means
_ (e) The fondness of snakes for milk has perhaps
of their having children.U Some Australian tribes believe in a given rise to a helief in their sneldng the hreasts
serpent which attacks women.12 In many other instances the of women, hut in certain cases the practice may
serpent seems to be associated with the fruitf ulness of womenl;
-^-e.g,, in Greece women slept in the temple of Asklepios anc have heen an erotic perversion.
thought themselves visited by the serpent-god in their dreams,
The Hottentots believe that serpents come by night for
and their offspring was believed to be the result of this visit. women to suckle them, and bite them if they refuse.11 The
Again, virgin or marriedpriestesses are often associated, though Mayas believe in an imaginary snake Ekoneil whidi glides into
not exdusively, with serpent shrines or ritual, in some instances houses of nursing mothers, covers their nostrils with its tail, and
probably because the serpent representing an earth-goddess sucks their breasts.13* In Welsh tradition the wings of mythical
was best served by women. The shrines of the pre-Apollonie flying snakes arose because they had drunk women's milk
Pytho and of Qaia, later consecrated to Apollo in N. Greece, spilt on the ground and had eaten sacramental bread.1^ The
the shrine at Lanuvium, that at Shaikh Haredi in Egypt, the story of CaradoCj which forms part of the French Perceval
temple of the python in Uganda, as well as the ritual of the cycle, relates how a serpent fastened on his arm and sucked
Thesmophoria, and the wives of the serpent in Dahomey, are away his life. He was saved by a young maiden presenting
cases in point. The ritual with serpents in the Dionysiac her breast to the serpent, which took the nipple in its mouth.
mysteries and 'the snake gliding over the breast,' with the Cador then cut off its head, but with that also the nipple,
meaning already referred to, doubtless give rise to some of the which was magically replaced by one of gold.1* A dose parallel
Greek myths. It is also certain that women had serpents as exists in a Gaelic folk-tale, and less close in a Scots ballad,^
pets among the Greeks and Romans, and ;that lascivious but it is probable that the source is Celtic, as the name of the
practices were followed with them. Perhaps these snakes as wife of the Welsh Karadawe is Tegau Eurfron, Tegau * with
well as those at Dahomey were trained to these practices.1*
the golden breast.' The Egyptian goddess Neit is repre(d) Conversely a man is sometimes the lover of sented with a crocodile at either breast, and in French mediseval architecture serpents are represented sucMng the breasts
a snake-mistress.
of women. Women are seen by visitors to hell suckling serThe Koranas believe that the first man and a snake lived
>enta as a punishment for refusing nourishment to their chiltogether,15 In Hudson's Island the sea-serpent as woman and xen.JB Some frescoes in Byzantine churches show a parallel to
earth as man united, and their progeny was the race of men.1 this.1' Lucian says that in Macedonia women pressed^ serpents
The Snake dan of the Pueblo Indians is believed to be descended in their hands and gave them the breast.18
from a snake (alternatively snake and woman) and a man
(/) In some instances menstruation is ascribed
who gained access to the fciva of the Snake people. When they

to the hite of a reptile or other animal.

world life which fertilizes the maize. The snakes to which she
gave birth changed to men and women, ancestors of the Snake
i Gill, p. 77.
a G. N. Theal, Kafir Folk-lore, London, n.d., p. 29, cf. p. 47;
FLJ v, [1887] 162 f. (Formosa) ; W. Jekyll, Jamaican Song and,
Story, do. 1907, p. 102 ; cf. USE i, 321.
3 JB, S.D, 'Fall.'
* Romilly, pp. 107, 120 ; J. Meier, Anthropos, ii. [1907] 654 ;
H, Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, Edinburgh and
London, 1875, p. 186ft; 0. G, Leland, Algonquin Legends of
J?sw England, Boston, 1885, pp. 266, 274ff.; E. Petitot,
Traditions indiennes du Canada nord-ouest, Paris, 1886, pp. 16,
407; ERJB i. 321&; W, H. Brett, legends and Myths of the
Aboriginal Tribes of British Guiana, London, 1880, p. 64. Cf.
also H, L, Joly, Legend in Japanese Art, London, 1903, p. 140 ;
-SOian, de Nat. An. xii. 39 ; cf. vi 17 ; Ralston, Songs, p. 173 f.
5 0. S. Boswell, An Irish Precursor of Dante, London, 1908,
p. 231, suggests an origin of these ideas in travel tales of Indian
serpents, preserved by Greek naturalists.
8 W, W. Reade, Savage Africa, London, 1863, p. 540 : see i,
.
.
8 Of. J. Q. Frazer, B3, pt. iv,, Adonis, Attis, Osiris,
London, 1914, i. 67 f.
9 Casalis, p. 283.
lOHahn, p. 81; H, H. Floss and M, Bartelg, Das FsG>8,
Leipzig, 1905, ii. 334.
11 Purehas, xvi. 457.
MA. Featherman, Social Hist, of the Sates of ManUnd,
London, 1881-91, ii, 75.
J3 gee above, i,
M Boudin, p, 68 ff. ; O, A, Bottiger, Sattna, Leipzig, 1806, H.
188 x.
is Hahn, p. 82,
18 Turner, Samoa, p. 288.

iBourke, Snake-Dance of the Motruis, p. 177; Fewkes,

IS RBEW Q,8W),-p, 304.
a Joly, p. 377; Sojiki, ed. Chamberlain, p, 127.
3 Philostratus, Vittt, Apollon. bk. 4; of. Burton, Anatomy of
Melancholy, pt. iii, sec. 2, mem. 1, subs, 1; and Keats, Lamia.
* See E, S. Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales, London,
1891, p. 240 f.; MacCulloch, OF, p. 267; W. Scott, Minstrelsy
of the Scottish Border, London, 1839, p, 345 f,
5 Crooke, PJ?3, ii. 137; J, F; Campbell, My Circular Jfotes,
London, 1876-79, ii. 186.
8 Herod, iv. 8.
' T. Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, reprint, London, 1900,
p. 480 f.; S. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,
do. 1884, p. 471 ff.
8 J, E. Harrison, Themis, p. 281; A Guide to the Egyptian
Collections in the British Museum, London, 1909, p, 273; JURE
x. 843*. Cf. the third world-power in the Gnosrac system of
Justin (half-female, half-serpent), and Error (half-woman, halferpent) in Spenser's Fterie Queene, i. i. 14.
^Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, pp. 12 f., 71; A. N.
Mdron, Christian Iconography, Eng. tr,, London, 1886, ii. 140.
W R. E. Latcham, JSAI xxxix, 347,
u Hahn, p. 81,
u FLJ i, [1883] 256,
M E. Owen, Welsh Folk-Lore, Oswestry, 1896, p. 349,
i* Gaston Paris,' Caradoo etle Serpent' in Romania, xxviii,
[1899] 214 ff,
i J. F, Campbell, Popular Tales of the W. highlands, Edinurgh, 1890, 1, Introd, p, Ixxxix; F. J, Child, English and
Scottish Popular JSallads, Boston, 1882-98, pt, i,, p. 176 f,, no.
01.
18 in the Apocalypse of Peter, Apoc. of Esdras, and Apot o)
tary.
w L. Heuzey, Annuaire de VAssoc, pvur ^encouragement tfw
tudes grecgues, Paris, 1871, p, 118,
18 Ploss-BartelsS, i 484 ff.

;-;

SERPENT-WORSHIP (Indian)
This is shown by images from New Guinea in which a crocodile or snake enters or emerges from the female organ.1
Among the Chiriguanos, at a girl's first menstruation, women
try to drive off with sticks 'the snake which has wounded
her.' 3 Among the Macusi girls at this time are not allowed to
go into the woods lest they he amorously attacked by serpents.
Basuto girls at this period dance round tha image of a snake.3
Certain families at Kumano in Japan send their female children to the mountains to serve the god Susa-no-wo. When
they show signs of puberty, a dragon is said to come and glare
at them.* In Portugal menstruation is traced to a serpent, or
women are thought liable to the bite of a lizard at this period.^
Cognate with these beliefs is the superstition current in Germany in the 18th cent, that the hair of a menstruous woman,
if buried, becomes a snake, and the gypsy custom whereby unfruitful women become fruitful by spitting on and sprinkling
with menstrual blood the place where they have seen a snake.8
It is also believed among the Orinoco tribes that serpents try to
have connexion with menstruous women; hence they are forbidden to go into the forest. Such a woman who died of
jaundice was believed to hava thus exposed herself to the
attack of a snaka.' Among the Matacos a cure for snake-bite
is to drop menstrual blood into tha wound, 8
Reinaeh suggests that the hostility between tha serpent"s
seed and the seed of the woman, i.e. the daughters of Eve
(Gn 315), originally referred to some such myth of the origin of
menstruation.9 The rationale of such myths is probably to be
found in the connexion between snaka and $aAAos, the latter
drawing blood at devirgination; menstrual blood was supposed
to be produced by a similar wounding by a snake.

8, Children and serpents,The test of the legitimacy of children by the Psylli10 is paralleled by
Greek myth,

te.

411

python within eight days after birth.i In the case of the El

Baboron clan of the Masai, who do not kill snakes, and tha
married men of whom are supposed to become snakes after
death, it is believed that snakes never bite members of tha
clananother indication of serpent descent.2 A clan in
Phrygia was called Qphiogenes, because they were descended
from the eponymous goddess Alia and a serpentprobably tha
god Sabazios in that form.3 At Parium another clan bore tha
same name, probably for a similar reason, and tha males of tha
clan could heal a person bitten by a snake by touching him.
The saliva of some of them had the same effect.4 Whether the
name Ophiusa, formerly applied to Rhodes and Cyprus, and tha
stories that Tenos, Crete, and Seriphus once swarmed with
serpents, denote that serpent clans dwelt there is uncertain.
The Caribs were descended from a water-spirit, with both human
and serpent form, and a girl, whose child was ancestor of tha
Carib raee.5 The Hudson Bay islanders believe that men ara
descended from earth (the male) and a serpent. 6 If the name
Eve (Hawah) is equivalent to * serpent,' the belief in serpent
descent may have been held by the Hebrews or some branch of
them,'

Probably snch legends are connected with totemism, since, where this exists, the snake is often a
totem, and the immunity from snake-bite attributed to some of the clans referred to may be
explained from the belief that the snake species
would not hurt its fellow-clansmen, who also would
protect it. The healing of snake-bite by such
people,8 as well as their power of handling snakes
with impunity (as among the Hopi), is curious.
But some of the myths may be related to a cult of
a serpent as chief god, from whom men believe
themselves descended.
" ,

"When Alcmene bore Heracles and Iphicles, respectively sons

of Zeus and Amphitryon, the latter placed two serpents in the
"bed to see which was hfe son. Iphiclea fleda proof that he
The Peruvians were progeny of the divine sun-serpent and
was son of a mortal, u In another version Hera sent the his consort, and a similar myth existed among the Mexicans,'
serpents to destroy the infant Heracles, who strangled them.12 Kings and rulers also had a serpent origin in some instances
In many tales which suggest a source for these from a serpent-god or an ancestor conceived as a serpent. In
the royal line began with the serpent Arwe; tha
myths serpents appear friendly to children, and Abyssinia
semi-human serpent Cecrops was first king of Athens and
visit or play with them,
ancestor of the Ceeropidaj; and the Mikados of Japan wera
Pausanias tells how a prince at Amphiclea, suspecting a plot also believed to have serpent descent.1"
against his child, put him in a vessel. A wolf tried to reach
These myths should be compared with those of
hnn, but a serpent coiled round the vessel and kept watch. serpent and woman unions,11 with others in which
The father killed it; but, learning the truth, he made a funeralpyre for it.is Vopiscus M tells of a snake attached to a boy and a serpent has human children,13 and with a third
regarded as his familiar, and, Spartianusis has a similar tale. group telling how serpents and other reptiles were
Puny tells a story of an asp in Egypt regularly fed. The son once men, afterwards transformed to reptile shape.13
of the house died through the bite of one of its young ones,
whereupon the asp killed it.18 0, W, Holmes 17 cites some 17th In others, again, women give birth to snJakes, and
cent, instances of the alleged friendliness of snakes for chil- in the Welsh laws of Hoel (A.D, 928)''a woman
dren. In Calabar a woman found a snake in her child's cradle, declaring a man to be father of her child says,
which the priests declared to be Olaga, a local gcd,is House- 'May I be delivered of a snake, if it be not true,'M
snakes in Germany were supposed to watch infants in the
LITERATURE,Articles in ARW, passim ; W. W. von Bancradle and sip milk out of their bowl.19 Numerous parallels to
Grimm's Marchen with this incident of the snake and child dissin, Studien zur semitisehen Religionsgeschiehte, Leipzig,
exist and are doubtless connected with the fact that house- 1876-78, i, 255 ff.; J. C, M. Boudin, fit-odes anthropologiques,
1 Culte du serpent,' pt. iiy Paris, 1864; P, Gassel, Drachenhaunting snakes are regarded as spirits of ancestors.20
Berlin, 1868; W. R. Cooper, 'Observations on tha
9. Serpent origin of men.Tribes, clans, and Mmpfe,
Serpent Myths of Ancient Egypt,' in Journal of the Trans'
rulers were sometimes supposed to he descended actions of the Victoria Institute, London, voL vi (1872); J. B.
from serpents, as in the instances of the Hopi Deane, The Worship of the Serpent traced throughout the
World?, do. 1833; J, Fergusson, 2Vee and Serpent Worship,
Snake clan and the Scythians, already cited.
do. 1868; A, de Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, 2 vols., do.
The Psylli were an African clan known to classical writers; 1872; T. Hopfner, JDer Tierfadt der alten A"gypter, Vienna,
in their bodies was a virus deadly to serpents, its smell render- 1914; E, Kiister, Die Schlange in der griech. Sunst und
ing them senseless. To test the legitimacy of their children, Religion, Giessen, 1913; C. F, Oldham, The Sun and fh*
they exposed them to serpents, and, if these did not avoid Serpent, London, 1905, Ophiolatreia, do. 1889; F. L. W,
them, the children were illegitimate, i.e. not of tha clan. Schwartz, Die altgrieeh. Schlangengottheiten, Berlin, 1858;
Serpent-descent is indicated here.3! In Senegambia there is a E. B. Tylor, PC*, 2 vols., London, 1903; C. S. Wafee.Slsrpsn*
Python clan, and each child is supposed to be visited by the Worship and other Essays, do. 1888; A. Wiedemann, Her Tiff'
fault der alten Sgypter, Leipzig, 1912. See also artt. AHIMA&S,
vol. i. p, 525 f., FALII (Ethnic), vol. v, p. 714 f.
1 Ploss-Bartelsa, L 484 ff.
J, A, MACCtJLLOCH.
2 Lettres tdifiantes et cwrieuses, new ed., Paris, 1780-83, viii
333
SERPENT-WORSHIP (Indian),I. Import3 H, H. Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sea, London and ance and variety of the cult.The cult of the
Philadelphia, 1897-1910, ii. 237.
serpent in India is of special importance; in no
W. G. Aston, Shinto, London, 1905, p. 206,
5 Ploss-BartelsS, ii, 484; H. H. Ellis, ii. 237.
i REth iii, [1885] 397.
2 Merker, p. 202.
6 H. H. Ellis, ii 237; H. von Wlisloeki, Volksgla/ube und
3 Banian, de NoA, An. xiii, 39; Ramsay, ii. 593,
religioser Branch tier Zigeuner, Munster, 1891, pp. 66,133.
4 Strabo, xra. i. 14.
5 Brett, p, 64.
7 F. S, Gilig, Saggio tf Storia Americano, Koine, 1780-84, ii.
8 Turner, Samoa, p. 288.
132 f.
7 Noldeke, ZDM& xlii. [1888] 487; J. Wellhausen, Rests arab.
8 NordensMold, p. 107.
HeidenthumsZ, Berlin, 1897, p. 154; H, Gressmann, ARW x.
9 Cultes, mythes et religions, ii, 398.
[1907] 359 f.
See below, 9.
8 See art, NUBA, vol. ix. p. 402>>.
B W. S. Fox, Greek and Roman Mythology, p. 79.
9 McLennan, p, 527; see also above, i.
I* Hyginus, Fab. 30.
13 paus. x, xxxiiL 5,
10 Fergusson, p. 33; Diod, Sic, i. 28; Griffis, p. 31,
n Aurelianus, o. 4.
is Severus, c, 1,
11 See above, 7,
18 Pliny, S2T x, 96 [74],
12 Seligmann, Melanssiaw, p. 408 (S, Massim),
W Elsie Tenner, Cambridge, Mass., 1861, ch, xvi.
is Leland, p, 110; cf. ERS i. 320b; Skeat, pp. 54, 285; Lang,
18 Communicated by Rev. J. K. MacGregor.
i. 170, ii. 36.
19 Grimm, Tewt. Myth. ii. 686; cf. Olaus Magnus, Hist, de
14 Wheeler, ARWxv. 348 (Solomon Islands); De Qroot, Rel
gentibus septentrionalibus (1555), bk. xxi. cap. 48.
System of China, iv. 217; Seligmann, Melanesians, p. 397 (S
20 Grimm, Household Tales, ii, 76, For the variants see Bolte- Massim); A, W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, Councils and Mccl,
Polivka, ii, 459.
~
~
Xfocuments 'relating'to Great Britain and Ireland, Oxford,
21 Varro, in Priseian, x. 32; Pliny, fllff yii 14,
1869-78, i, 253.

412

SBBPENT-WORSHIP (Indian)

other part of the world is it more widely distributed

ox developed in more varied and interesting forms.
This results from the wide distribution of the
reptile,
India is the only_ country in the world inhabited by all the
known families of living s_nakes. The chief characteristic of the
reptile fauna of the Indian region is the great variety of the
generic types and the number of their species, the latter
amounting to no fewer than 450, which is nearly one-third of
the total number of species known in the world, referable to
about 100 genera, of which the majority do not range beyond
the limits of India.*

3, Origin of serpent-worship.The abundant

distribution of these reptiles and the serious loss
of life caused by them sufficiently explain the fear
with which they are regarded and the respect and
worship paid to them. The animal is dreaded and
revered on account of the mysterious dangers
associated with it, its stealthy habits, the cold
fixity of its gaze, its sinuous motion, the protrusion
of its forked tongue, and the suddenness and
deadliness of its attacks. It haunts houses, old
ruina, fields, and pools. It is particularly dreaded
by women, whose habits of walking barefoot in
fields in the early dawn and groping in the dark
corners of their huts render them specially exposed
to its malice. Its long life and its habit of
changing its skin suggest ideas of immortality and
resurrection, or of purification, one festival being
held at the time when its skin is sloughed.2
Attempts have been made to prove that serpent-worship was
introduced into India by Scythian and other invaders from
Central Asia. J. Tod,3 relying on authorities now obsolete,
traced its origin to a so-called Tak or Takshak tribe of Central
Asia. But an examination of the latest authority on the
Scythians * shows that, while a serpent barrow and the use of
the snake as an ornament or symbol are found among this
people, there is no indication of a general cult of the reptile.
On the whole, the wide distribution and loss of life caused by
the snake in India warrant the conclusion that the cult is
probably local.

3, Distribution of serpent-worship.During the

census of 1891 some attempt was made to collect
statistics of the numbers of the followers of the
various serpent-cults, but without much success,
because these merge in other types of animism
prevailing among the lower classes,
to the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh 35.366 persons
were recorded as worshippers of the naga, and 122,991 as
worshippers of the snake-hero, GQga Pir, with other groups less
numerically important; in the Panjab 35,344 persons were said
to worship Guga.5 The results from other Provinces equally
failed to indicate the wider distribution of the worship.

The early legends are full of tales of snake-gods, especially in

connexion with water-springs,1 The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen
Tsiang (or Yuan Chwang) states that, as Kasmir & protected by
a dragon, it has always assumed superiority among neighbouring
people.2 Abul Fadhl, the historiographer-of -Akbar, records that
in s'even hundred places there are graven images of snakes
which they worship and regarding which wonderful legends are
told.'3 Legends still abound of dragons, particularly in connexion with springs.4 It was at one tune supposed that all
Ka&nir temples were -originally surrounded by artificial lakes as
abodes for the Naga water-deities, but this theory is now
abandoned.^

(c) The Punjab,In the Panjab, both in the

plains and in the hill country, snake-worship has
prevailed from ancient times.

.asiian 5 tells how Alexander the Great found-in-manv-pteoes

snakes kept in caves and worshipped; the people implored the
king to spare them, and he consented to do so; one of enormous
size is described.' The city of Taxila (Skr. TakshaSila, 'hewn
stone,' or more probably ' rock of Takshaka,* the great Naga
king, or 'rock of the Takkas,' a snake-worshipping tribe) was
apparently the site of a snake-cult which has been localized at $
fountain near Hasan Abdal.8 The tradition of snake-worship
still exists among the Gaur Taga tribe of N. India, which claims
descent from the Takkas.9 Another centre of the snake-cult is
Safidon in the Jind State, the name of which is supposed to
mark-the snake holocaust by Janamejaya (Skr. sarpa-damana,
* snake-subduing'). 10 Serpents, again, are connected with the
widely spread legends of Raja Rasalu and Niwal Dal.il Tho
famous iron pillar at Delhi, erected about A.B. 415, is said to
have sunk into the earth so as to rest on the head of the serpent
Sesa, which supports the world; the king Prithivi Baja, to
make its position certain as a pledge of the permanence of MB
dynasty, ordered it to be taken up, when blood and flesh of the
snake's head were found adhering to itan omen which foretold
his ultimate defeat.12 In the Panjab plains snake-worship is
widely spread.13 In the Chamba State it is associated with the
cult of Devi, the mother-goddess; she is not connected with
springs like the nagas, or serpent deities, but it is common to
find a Naga and a Devi temple side by side and common
attributes are assigned to both. There 13 in Mandi, another hiB
State, a close connexion between the cult of Siva and that of
the nagas, the latter being his, or KalTs, favourite servants. In
Kulu the rainbow is called Buijhi Nagan or Nagin, 'the old
female snake,' which points to the naga being regarded as a
rain- or water-god, as is usually the cajse in the Simla hills; but
in Chamba he is described as a whitish-coloured snake that
frequentshouse-walls, is said to drink milk; and, being regarded
as a good omen, he receives worship (jrojo) and incense is
offered to him.14 In the Panjab hills tiie cult of the cobra, and
in one place that of harmless snakes, is prevalent. The Naga
temples, according to 0. F. Oldham, are not dedicated to the
serpent, but to the Naga Rajas, the ancient rulers of the race.M
The Qaddis, Ghirths, and the people of Churah worsMp "the
snake; the people of Kanaur pray thus to Nages Deota; "O
thou, who livest within the wall, who livest in holes, who tansfc
go into a vessel, who canst swiftly run, who livest in the water,
on the precipice, upon trees, in the waste land, among 1&e
meadows, who hast power like the thunderbolt, who livest
within the hollow trees, among the rocks, within the caves, be
victorious 1' 18

(d) United Provinces,In the United Provinces

Some of the more important types of cult, of Agra and Oudh among the chief centres of the
according to their local distribution, are the cult may be named Mathura, Ahichhatra, and
following.
Benares.
Mathura was a scene of najw-worship, as 3s indicated by the
(a) Nvrfh-West Frontier,

In Abisara, the modern Hazara country, Strabo speaks of local statuary and the legends of Krsna aa a slayer of dragons-W
two enormous snakes, probably kept in a temple as objects of
1 Kalhana, Rajatarangini, tr. M. A. Stein, London, 1900, i. 6,
worship.6 A Kafir legend tells of the destruction by Imra of 371., ii. 462,
an enormous snake in the Bashgul valley, whose tracks are to
2 s. Beal, Si-yu-M, London, 1884, i. 148; T. Waiters, On Yuan
this day indicated by some light quartz veins, which show Chwang's Travels in India, London, 1904-05, i. 261,
distinctly against the darker ground of the rocks; a tarn was
3 S-vn-i-AKbafi, tr. H. S. Jarrett, Calcutta, 1891, ii. 354.
formed by the blood flowing from the snake's severed head.' In
4 W. B. Lawrence, The Valley of Kashmir, London, 1895,
Baluchistan the mountain known aa Koh-i-Maran, 'peak of pp. 170, 289, 294 f., 299 n.; cf. 7 (a).
snakes,' and the petrified dragons of Bisut and Bamian indicate
5 Lawrence, p. 170; "v". A. Smith, A Hist, of Mne Art in
an ancient cult.8
India and Ceylon, Oxford, 1911, p. 46.
6 mrpl $&IM> IStonjTos, m. xxi.
' McCrindle, p. 145.
(&) Ktt&nwr,In Kasmir and the neighbouring
McOrindle, The Invasion of India*, London, 1896, p. 343;
hills there is evidence of wide-spread worship,
Beal, i. 137; Watters, i, 241 f.
i G. Watt, Diet, of the Scon, Products of India, London and
9 H. M. Elliot, Supplement to the Glossary of Indian Terms,
Calcutta, 1889-93, vx. i, 429; 191 i, [1907] 2693,; J, Fayrer, Roorkee, 1860, p. 420 ff.
The Thanatophidia of India, London, 1874.
w R. 0. Temple, Legends of the Panjab, Bombay, 1884, i. 414 ft.
^^j. Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, p. 259; PR*
11 Ib, i. Introd. xvii; Jl&Jiii, P885] 61.
11.123 ft.
!3 W. H. Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian
3 Annals and Antiquities ofRajasthan, popular ed,, London, Official, Oxford, 1915, p. 499; H. C. Fanshawe, Delhi, Past and
1914, p. 86.
Present, London, 1902, p. 264 f.
4 E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks, Cambridge, 1913, pp,
is D. 0. J. Ibbetson, Punjab Ethnography, Calcutta, 1883,
828 f., 410, 4271 and other passages noted in the Index,
P. 114 f.
5 Census of India, 1891, xvi. N.W. Provinces and Oudh,
* H. A. Bose, A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the
Allahabad, 1894, pt. i. 211 i, xix, Punjab, Calcutta, 1892, Punjab and North-West Frontier Province, i. JLahore, 1911]
pt. l, 104 f,
pp. 331, 400, 419,
6 xv. 28; J. W, McCrindle, Ancient India as descried in
is The Sun and the Serpent, p. 84 if., with numerous photoClass. literature, London, 1901, p. 34 f.
graphs of snake-shrines.
' G, s. Robertson, The Kafirs of the Hindu-Bush, London,
!6H. A. Rose, Glossary, ii. 269, 294, 214, 454; NINQ U,
1896, p. 388.
* 11884-85] 91; Census of India, 1901, xvii. Punjab, pt, i, pp, 119 f,,
8 A. W. Hughes, Salochistan, London, 1877, p. 6; 0, Masson, 129; do. 1911, xiv, pt. i. p. 120.
Journeys in Malochistan, Afghanistan, the Panjab, do. 184&-43,
W Smith, p. 138 f.; F. S. Giowse, Mathura, Allahabad, 1883,
ii. 357, 395.
p. 57 f.

y^ggfaaiSfc-:

'13!

Ill
SERPENT-WORSHIP (Indian)
At Jait, in the Mathura District, there is an image of a fiveheeded n&ga, whose tail was said to extend seven miles
underground, until the belief -was dispelled by excavation.*
Ahiehhatra, ' umbrella of the dragon AM,' the great ruined city
in Rohilkhand, like many other places -of-'wh-ieh-the-names.-are
connected with the nagasNagpur, Nagaur, Nagod, etc.has
a legend ol an Ahir whose claim to kingship was attested by a
snake shading him with its expanded hood.2 In Benares SivaAlahadeva is worshipped as Nagesvar, ' Lord of n&gas,' with a
serpent twined round his image; the Nag Kuan, or 'serpentwell,' lies in one of the oldest parts of the city and is surrounded
by snake symbols. 3 In Dehra Dun the local folk-lore is full of
tiles of the nagas,* The Agarwala caste of traders perform the
worship of Asflka or 5staka Muni, a sage descended from the
snake, and call themselves naga-upasalisa,' snake-worshippers.' 5
Similar worship is performed by many_ other castes and tribes. 8
In Qudh Nigohan, in the Lucknow District, is a centre of the
cult.' There are numerous traces of najra-worship in the
Himalayan districts of the United Provinces,, but now chiefly
connected with the special cults of Visnu and Siva.8

(e) Bengal,
In Bengal the goddess Manasa (Skr. manas, 'mind'), or
Bishahri (Skr. visahari,' remover of venom'), holds the foremost
place. If her worship is neglected, some one in the family is
sure to die of snake-bite; she is worshipped by placing an
earthen pot marked with vermilion under a tree; clay images
or snakes are arranged round it, and a trident is driven into the
ground; sometimes the plant named after her is taken as her
emblem; sometimes she dwells in a jnpaZ-tree (Ficus religiosa)
in places where snakes abound a special shrine or a separate
room is dedicated to the goddess; her sister, Jagat Gaurl, has
also power over cobras and other snakes, and Ananta Deb is
Mng of the snakes in Qrissa.9

(f) Central Provinces and Central India,In

the Central Provinces and Central India the
snake-cult is "widely spread.
At Sagar worship is offered to Nag Deo, the serpent-god,
sometimes at a shrine, sometimes at the snake's hole, by
adoring him and making an image of him with butter and
cow-dung on the house wall; people of the Nath tribe carry
about snakes during the Nagpanchamlio festival and receive
fees for allowing them to be worshipped." The Kawars greatly
dread a mythical snake with a red crest on its head, the mere
sight of which is believed to cause death; it lives in deep pools
in the forest known as Sesakunda, and, when it moves, it sets
fire to the grass along its" track; if a man crosses its path, he
becomes black in colour and suffers excruciating pains, which
end in death, unless he is relieved by the baiga, or medicineman; in one village where the reptile recently appeared the
xiwner never dared to visit his field without first offering a
chicken.12 The cobra is specially worshipped 'by the liarais,
or betel-growers, who associate the tendnls of the plant with
Vasuki, queen of serpents; and the cobra is the tutelary god
<A the nomadic Kaikaris.^ In Central India almost every village
has a platform built over a snake's hole, to the occupant of
which is offered a wicker cover which protects the snake; a
brilliant coloured picture represents the snake when it is
absent; some persons tie a thread of fourteen knots round the
wrist and arm and go to worship at the abode of the snake,
making an image of the reptile in sacred grass, which they
worship; Birds and Bhilalas worship the python and never
injure it; there are legends of families said to be immune from
snake-bite and able to cure it.14 In the month of June, the
first month of the rains, snakes frequently appear; in this
month the Gonds try to Trill a cobra, and will then cut off the
head and tail, "and offer them to Nag Deo, inside the house,
while they cook and eat the body, supposing the eating of the
snake's body will protect them from the effects of eating any

413

poisonous substance throughout the year.1 In Berar the cult

prevails more among the people of the plains than among
those of the hills, metal or clay images of snakes are worshipped,
sometimes on an ant-hill, and, should a cobra be seen, it is
regarded-as-a-good-omen-}JOTigs.of .sacred trees are fixed round
the ant-hill, a yellow thread is wound round them, and within
the circle offerings of grain and milk are laid; the simplest
form of worship is pouring milk on an ant-hill.2

(g) Assam.In Assam the most remarkable form

of serpent-worship is that of U Thlen, a gigantic
snake which demands to he appeased hy the
sacrifice of human victims, and for whose sake,
even in recent times, murders have been committed.
It lived once in a cave near CherrapunjJ, and was tamed by
a man who used to place lumps of meat in its-mouth; Finally
this hero, having heated a piece of iron red-hot, induced the
reptile to devour it, and so killed it. He cut up the body, and
sent pieces of it throughout the country, with orders that the
people were to eat them. Wherever this edict was obeyed, the
land became free of the thlens. But one small piece remained
which no one could be induced to eat, and from this sprang
a multitude of thlens, which still infest tie neighbourhood.
When a thlen takes up its abode in a family, there is nc
means of getting rid of it, though it occasionally departs of its
own accord, and often follows property when it is given away
or sold. The thlen attaches itself to property, and brings wealth
to its owner, but on condition that it is supplied with human
blood. The murderer cuts off the tips of the hair and the
finger-nails of the victim with sDver scissors, and extracts in a
bamboo tube a little blood from the nostrils, which is offered to
the thlen. This offering must be constantly repeated. In
order to drive it from a house, all the money, ornaments, and
other goods must be thrown away, and no one dares to
appropriate such things lest the thlen should follow them.
Persons who are supposed to keep thlens are regarded with
awe, and no one will even mention their names lest ill luck
should follow. The superstition is probably of very ancient
date, and it is supposed to be connected with the primeval
snake-cults of Eastern and Further India.3
Among the Meitheis the ancestor of one clan, Pakhangba,
manifests himself as a snake. 'When it appears it is coaxed
on to a cushion by the priestess in attendance, who then
performs certain* ceremonies to please it.' Among the same
bribe the nongsna, or stone-dragons, symbolize the luck of the
State.-*
Among the Lusheis a man acquires the right to heaven by
slaying certain animals; when a snake coils round the
antlers of a sambliar stag, the man sitting on the coils is conveyed to heaven.5 The Eabhas worship a serpent-god which
once dwelt in a cave and was propitiated by the annual
sacrifice of a boy and a girl. 6

(A) South India,In no part of India is the

cult more general than in S. India.

Here we find the Teavu, or snake-grove, which resembles the

nagavana of N. India.? 'A clump of wild jungle trees
luxuriantly festooned with graceful creepers is usually to ba
found in the.S.W. corner of the gardens of aU respectable MalayaE
Hindus. The spot is left free to Nature to deal with as she
likes. Every tree and bush, every branch and twig is sacred.
This is the vishattum Mvu (poison shrine) or nagakotta (snake
shrine). Usually there is a granite stone (chitra TswtakaMu)
carved after the fashion of a cobra's head set up and consecrated
in this waste spot. Leprosy, itch, barrenness in women, deaths
of children, the frequent appearance of snakes in the garden,
and other diseases and calamities brought about by poison, are
all set down to the anger of the serpents. If there be a snake
shrine in the garden, sacrifices and ceremonies are resorted to.
If there be none, then the place is diligently dug up, and
search is made for a snake stone, and if one is found it is coniGrowse,?. 741
2Cf. 7 (e); A. Fuhrer, Monumental Antiquities and cluded that the calamities have occurred because of there
Inscriptions in the Jf.W. Provinces and Oudh, Allahabad, 1891, having been a snake shrine at the spot, and because the shrine
j>, 28. For other examples see E. S. Hartland, Ritual and had been neglected. A shrine is then at once formed, and
costly sacrifices and ceremonies serve to allay the serpents'
JBeKef, London, 1914, p. 323.
s M. A. Sherring, The Sacred City of the Hindus, London, anger.'8
1868, pp. 75,87 ff.
4 IGI xi [1908] 212.
1 Russell, iii 101.
5 W. Orooke, Tribes and Castes of the -W. W. Provinces and
2 Report on the Census, 1881, Berar, p. 48.
Qudh, Calcutta, 1896, i 18 f.; NINQ fi. 157,202,
3 P. R. T. Gurdon, The Ehasis*, London, 1914, pp. 98 ff,,
8 Crooke, TC i. 109,122,131, iv. 352.
175 ff.; Census of India, 1901, iv. Assam, pt. i 49; Fit xx,
7 NINQ iii. p.893-94] 179, iv. [1894-95] 130.
[1909] 419; PJSQ i. [1883-84] 63.
8E. T. Atkinson, The Himalayan District of the -ff.F.
4 T. 0. Hodson, The Meitheis, London, 1908, p. 100 ff.
Provinces of India, ii [Allahabad, 1884] p. 835 f,
s Census of India, 1911, iii. Assam, pt. i, p. 140 f,
Census of India, 1S01, vi. Bengal, pt. i. p. 195f.; "W. J.
6 Ib, i. 145.
Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, London, 1887, p. 225f.; NINQ i,
7 Somadeva, Ratha-saritsagara, ed. C. H. Tawney, Calcutta,
[1891-92] 166; H. H. Risley, Tribes and Castes in Bengal, 1880, i, 312,
Calcutta, 1891, i 41, 84; W. Ward, View of the Hist,, Lit. and
8 W. Logan, Manual of Malabar, Madras, 1887, i. 183, For
Religion of the Hindoos2, Serampore, 1815, ii 140f.; J, Wise, references to snake shrines and stones in S. India see
Notes on the Races, Castes, and Trades of Eastern Bengal, E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of S, India, Madras, 1909, ii.
London, 1883, pp. 138, 219, 260.
206, v. 173, vii. 385 (with a photograph); J. Dubois, Hindu
10 See below, 13 (/).
Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies5, Eng. tr,, Oxford, 1906,
" Saugor Gazetteer, Allahabad, 1907, i, 43.
p. 641 f.; T, K. Gopal Panikkar, Malabar and its Foll&, Madras,
i2 Hth. Surv. Central Provinces, vii [Allahabad, 1911] 44; B.V. 1904, p. 145 ff.; L. K. Anantha Krishna Iyer, The Cochin Tribes
Russell, Tribes and Castes of Central Provinces, London, 1916, and Castes, do.1910-12,ii. 83 ff. (withillustrations); P. Percival,
4ii 399.
The Land of the Veda, London, 1854, p. 207 ff. (with illustrais Eth, Sum. Central Provinces, i 8, iv. 27; Russell, ii. 195 f., tions); FL viii. [1897] 2841; V. Nagam Aiya, Travancort
451.299.
State Manual, Trivandrum, 1906, i. 169, ii. 69; Census of
14 Russell, HI, 25, 483 f.
India, 1901, xxvi. Travancore, do. 1903, pt. i 99; C. Achyuta

414

SERPENT-WORSHIP (Indian)

Serpent-worship in S, India is of early date,

if the Aioi of Ptolemy1 take their name from Skr,
ahi, ' a snake.'2 An inscription at Banavasl, in
Kanara, records the erection of a cobra stone in
fche middle of the 1st eentnry A.D,3

were Dravidians,1 Others regard the race of

Nagas as of trans-Himalayan origin, who adopted
the snake as their national emblem, and hence
gave their name to the cobra.2?

The great historical fact in connection with the Nagas . . .

is the fierce persecution which they suffered at the hands of the
Brahmans; the destruction of serpents at the burning of the
forest of Khandava, the terrible sacrifice of serpents which
forms the opening scenes in the Mahabharata, and the supernatural exploits of the youthful Krishna against the serpents
sent to destroy him, are all expressions of Brahmanical hatred
towards the Nagas. Ultimately this antagonism merged into
that deadly conflict between the Brahman and the Buddhist,
which after a lengthened period of religious warfare terminated
in the triumph of the Brahman. From these data it would
appear that the Nagas were originally a raee~aistan^tTfo~nrtH9
Aryans and wholly without the pale of Brahmanism; that those
who became Buddhist were either crushed or driven out of
India during the age of Brahmanical revival, and that the
have become converts to Brahmanism and appear
(i) The Deccan and W, India,In the Deccan remainder
to be regarded as an inferior order of Kshatriyas.' 3

In Tanjore the worship of the cobra is common at the present

day. People of the higher castes consider it a sin to kill a
cobra, this offence being followed by childlessness, while
children may he obtained by its worship. The Vellalas make
an old woman cry aloud in the backyard that a sacrifice will be
offered to the cobra next day, with a prayer that the offering
may he accepted. Generally in the evening cooked jaggery,
rice, and an egg, with a burnt offering of butter, are laid out
for its acceptance.* In Bellary the worship was formerly more
common than at present; snake stones may be seen in every
village, but few of them seem to receive much attention.
Tows, however, are made before them to procure children, and,
it a child is afterwards begotten, it is given an appropriate
nameNagappa, Nagamma, etc.5

and "W, India the cult assumes various forms.

Much of this is little more than speculation, and

all that can be stated with confidence is that the
Nagas appear to have been a foreign, perhaps
non-Aryan, people, found chiefly in N, India, but
occupying other parts of the country,4 They were
powerful in Central and S. India.5 Castes like the
Maravans, Agamundaiyans, and Kalians in Madras
are possibly descended from them.8
(b) The Nagas of folk-lore,In Buddhist tradition, folk-lore, and art we have frequent references
to the Nagas, personages half-human, half-divine.
In the legends chiefs and kings are mentioned who
displayed special reverence for Buddha; his almsbowl was their gift; their kings approach and
(j) The forest tribes,As will have been seen consult the Master.7 The folk-tale collections of
from instances already given, the worship is Somadeva, Kafha-sarit-sagara, and the JataJca*
common among the forest tribes.
abound in tales of the Melusine and other types in
The Gonds in Chhatasgarh worship images of snakes every which Nagas figure.
One of the favourite guardian-deities in the Deccan is
Nagoba, 'father snake.'6 In Gujarat, to make amends for
chance injury to a snake resulting in barrenness or loss of
children, childless women worship an imag_e of the serpent on
the bright fifth of every Hindu month; this is_ done for one or
three years, and at the final service a cobra is drawn on the
ground with rice, and a silver snake is laid on the drawing;
the woman and her husband bathe, dress in white clothes, and
worship; after this the wife buries an iron image of a cobra at
a place where four roads meet.' At Than in Kathiawar the
twin snake-brethren are worshipped.8 Khambda in Kathiawar
owes its fame to the shrine of the Khambdio Nag, or snake; it
is supposed to guard the village, which therefore needs no
gates; snakes are frequently seen near the gateway and are
never molested.9 Bhuj, the chief town of Dutch, is said to
take its name from the 52-yard snake which the people used
to worship and feed every day with rice and milk,1''

three years by_ setting out a vessel of muk for the cobra.11
Members of this tribe are said to have always appeared naked
before the shrine of their god Sek Nag or Sesa Naga.12 The cult
is common among the tribes of the Vindhyan ranges.13 Some
Bhils, however, in W. India are reported to kill snakes when
they have the chance, and the Khalpas of Gujarat are reported
not to reverence them.11*
4. The Nagas,The chief serpent-worshipping
race in ancient India is known as the Nagas,
who appear both in history and in folk-lore, and
to whom much vague speculation has been devoted.
(a) The Nagas in history.One of the latest
authorities, C, !F. Oldham, distinguishes between
the Naga demi-gods in heaven and the Naga
people on earth, the former being assumed to be
the deified ancestors of the latter. He concludes
that the Asuras and the Sarpas, ' serpents,' of the
Rigveda, the Asuras and Nagas of the Mahabharata
and Manu, and the Asuras, or demons, of Brahmanical tradition all represent hostile tribes, who
opposed the Aryan invaders, and that the Asuras
Menon, Cochin State Manual, Ernakulam, 1911, p. 190; B. I*
Bice, Mysore, a Gazetteer compiled, for Government, Westminster, 1897, i 454 ff., Mysore ana Coorgfrom the Inscriptions,
London, 1909, p. 202 f.; for the Komata cult of nagas see
H. V. Nanjundayya, Ethnographical Survey, Mysore, monograph no. vi. p. 29.
ii. 9.
2J. W. MeCrindle, Ane, India as described by Ptolemy,
Calcutta, 1885, p. 54.
3 BG xv. ii. 11883] 261; for early snake images and inscriptions
in Mysore see B. L. Bice, Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions, pp. 15,115, 202 (with illustrations).
* Tanjore Gazetteer, Madras, 1906, i. 70.
5 Bellary Gazetteer, Madras, 1904, i. 64,
8 BG xiv. [1882] 897, xvm. Hi, [1885] 386.
7 Ib. ix, i. [1901] 379 f.; cf. below, 7 (&),
8J, Burgess, Report on Ant, of Kafaiawad and Kaehh,
Bombay, 1876, p. 87 S.
9 BG viii. [1884] 510; for other snake-shrines see ib, pp. 558,
663.
JO Ib. v, [1880] 216n., 218; Marianne Postans, Cutch, London,
1839, p. 100 ff., describes the rite,
11 JASB Lvm, [1890] iii 281.
12 J. F. Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, London,
S894-95, i. 87 f.; for Gond serpent-worship in the Central
Provinces see Central Provinces Gazetteer, Nagpur, 1870,
Introd. Ixvi; NIWQ i. 93.
is tfltfQ i. 146t
M SQ ix. i. 305, 346.

The king of tha Nagas dwells amidst dance and song in a

happy land; ' filled with troops of Naga maidens, gladdened
constantly with their sports day and night, abounding with
garlands and covered with flowers, it shines like the lightning
in the sky. Filled with food and drink, with dance and song
and instruments of music, with maidens richly attired, it shines
with dresses and ornaments," 9 Their palaces are under water,
or beneath the roots of a great tree, or under the Vindhyan
hills.10 Their king wears a magic ring and he spits fire; u he is
offered honey, tried grain, and frogs, but dares not eat them; 12
the erection of ancient buildings is attributed to them, apparently because they were regarded as foreign artificers.is

5, The historical development of serpentworship.Serpent-worship in a fully developed

form does not appear in the Migveda, but it is
found as an element of religion in the Yajuroeda,
1 But there can be no doubt that a belief in serpents had its
origin in the Veda, though the serpents meant there were at first
the serpents of the dark night or the black clouds, the enemies
of the solar deities, such as the Asvins, and not yet tha
poisonous snakes of the earth. The later development of these
serpents and the idea of pacifying them by sacrificial offerings
is likewise, aa has been well shown by Dr. Winteraits, thoroughly
Aryan, nor is there any necessity for adopting that laziest of afl
1 Pp. 31, 45, 55.
2E. T. Atkinson, Himalayan Gazetteer, Allahabad, 1884,
p. 373 f.
3 J, T, Wheeler, Hist, of India, London, 1867-81, i. 147,411,
ii 630.
*BG ix. i. 450 n., 458 n., where they are identified with
immigrants from Central Asia.
5 CentralProvince$Gazetteer,xafyco&.lsvw', V,Kanakasabhai,
The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Tears Ago, Madras, 1904,
p. 39 ff.; Rice, Mysore Gazetteer, i, 274, 454,
s Trichinopoly Gazetteer, Madras, 1907, i. 120, For further
accounts and speculations regarding the Nagas see A. Cunningham, The Stupa ofBharhut, London, 1879, p. 23 ff,; F. C. Maisey,
Sanchi and its Remains, do. 1892, p. 60 ff.; B. H. Baden-Powell,
The Indian Village Community, do. 1896, pp. 95 ff,, 169 n.;
Oldham, p. 53 ff.
7 A. Grunwedel, Buddhist Art in Ind^a) London, 1901, p
43ff T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, do. 1903, p. 220 ft.
8 Cambridge, 1895-1913.
9 J&taka, vi. 150.
10 Ib, iv, 1281; Somadeva, ii. 149.
11 0. H. Bompas, FolMore of the Santal Parganas, London,
1909, pp. 90,130; Jataka, i. 206.
12 Jataka, vi. 95,
is Upper Burma (?R2etteer,Rangoon,19QO, I. i, 279; Grnnwedel,
p. 208.
14 A. A. Macdonell, A Hist, of Sanskrit Lit., London, 1900, p.
182.

SBBPENT-WORSHIP (Indian)
expedients, that of ascribing all that seems barbarous in Indian
religion to the influences of the aboriginal inhabitants of the
eountry of whom we know next to nothing.'1

E. W, Hopkins remarks that in Vedic times

'serpent worship is not only known, but prevalent.'2 We meet with references to Ahibudhnya,
the serpent of the deep, and to AM, another
designation of the demon Vrtra; in the later
SamMtas the serpents (sarpah) are a class of
divine beings.3 The post-Yedie Bahu, the eclipse
demon, is, in modern belief, a serpent.4 The
Atharvaveda contains numerous charms against
serpents and a rite of propitiation on the fullmoon day of Margasirsha; they are recognized as
gods, and called euphemistically 'biting ropes.'5
In later tradition many legends are connected
with them, like that of Nahusha, turned into a
serpent because he insulted the Ksi Agastya.8 A
series of tales describes the enmity between Garuda,
the chief of the feathered race, and the Nagas.7
Garuda has been compared with the Simurgh of
Persian and the Rukh, or Roe, of Arab tradition,
the latter of which attacks snakes,8 and with the
Hebrew Cherub.9 It has also been suggested that
the bird was tha totem of tribes hostile to the
Nagas.10 In the Brahmanas serpents, as developed
objects of cult, occupy a prominent place, and in
the Mahabharata, amidst a mass of folk-tradition,
the divine snakes are grouped with other celestial
powers,"
6. Serpents in the later orthodox cults.The
serpent is closely associated with Brahmanieal
Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
(a) Brahmanieal Hinduism,
The association of the snake with Siva's symbol, the Knga, is
very intimate.1^ A, brazen serpent surrounds the great lingo, at
tha Rajput shrine of Eklinga.13 As symbols of Siva's energy,
they appear in the remarkable Nataraja image.3* In file
Himalaya Bhairava, one of the Saiva group of deities, is repres.ented by a coloured stick in the form of a hooded snake, and
Siva himself, as RikheSvar, lord of the Nagas, is surrounded by
serpents and crowned with a chaplet of hooded snakes. If,
In ploughing, the share injures or kills a snake, a short
ritual is prescribed to appease the lord of the snakes. Ganesa,
the Matria or Mother-goddesses, and Ksetrapal, the field
guardian deity, are first worshipped on the spot; then the
figure of Siva in his form as Mrityunjaya, ' he that overcomes
death,' is drawn on cloth, and with it that of the snake-god;
both are worshipped, the snake spell (sarpamantra") is reeated,
and a fire-sacrifice (homo) is made.15 The Lingay^ata (q-v-\s
Saivas, naturally worship snakes.^ Other deities are also
associated with the serpent. At Ter, probably the ancjient
Tagara, the hooded snake accompanies an association of Siva,
Yisnu, Brahma, and Surya, the sun-god, and Sakti Devi, impersonation of the female energy at Chitrarl in the Chamba State,
bears a bell and snake in her right hand,1? At Jaipur, in Orissa,
Kali is represented with her hair brushed back under a snake
fillet and surmounted by a distended head of a cobra,1^ while in
S. India Bhadrakali's image, with two wings, is covered with
serpents.19 Probably in commemoration of his feats as a dragonslayer, a living snake guards Krsna's shrine, and at Pandharpur

415

his consort, Radha, holds snakes in her hands.1 Yisnu resting

on Ananta or Sesa, the world-serpent, is a common subject in
religious art. He sleeps upon the serpent whose heads support
the world, during the intervals of creation.3 In his form
Narayana, at Balaji in Nepal, his image has a snake-hood
projecting over the water.S

(5) BttddMsm, The records of the Chinese

Buddhist pilgrims supply numerous examples of
the serpent-cult in Buddhism, particularly as
guardians of trees and springs.
Two dragon-kings washed the infant Buddha; the dragon
grants a site for monasteries in his lake; the Naga Raja,
Muchilinda, protects Buddha with his folds.* On the Bodh
Gaya rails the naga spreads his hood, and at Bharhut a king
with a five-headed snake-hood kneels before an altar behind
which is a tree.5 At the Sarpa (or serpent) cave, excavated
about the time of ASoka, a three-headed, serpent of a very
archaic type appears.6 In W. India the Saiva Buddhist converts preserved their original snake-worship,' In the records
of the Chinese pilgrims we find Buddhist sramanas worshipping the naga and conducting rites at naga shrines.8 A
favourite gift at modern Buddhist pagodaa in Burma ia a representation in gold of the Lord Buddha, with a hooded snake
raising itself over him.9

(e) Jainism,
In Jainism the symbol of the Tirthakara ParsVanatha is a
s,erpent (sarpa). The colossal statue of Gomatesvara at
Sravana Belgola (<?.&.) ia surrounded with white ant-hills from
which snakes emerge.11 The Nagamalai, or snake-hill, is said
to be ths remains of a great serpent formed Jby the magic art
of the Jains, and prevented by the power of Siva from devouring the Saiva city of Madura, and at the Ramatirtha stands a
Jain image covered by a cobra with expanded hood,13

(d) SiJchism,Sikhism also has associations with

the snake.
Guru Har Gobind, as a child, destroyed a cobra sent by an
enemy to attack him, and he killed a monstrous python which
in its previous birth had been a proud mahant, or prior, who
embezzled the property of his disciples; Guru Har Rai acted in
the same way to a python which in a previous existence had
been a pandit who used falsely to vaunt the power of the
Vedaa-is

7. The serpent m its various manifestations.

The snake-cult assumes many forms.
(a) Controlling Boater.The belief that serpents
live in, guard, and control waterlakes, springs,
and riversis a belief common to many races.1*
In the records of the Chinese pilgrims a naga rides on the
winds, passes through space, and glides over the waters;
another brings fertilizing rain; on a mountain pass ' thera are
poison dragons, who when evil-purposed spit poison, winds,
rain, snow, drifting sand, and gravel-stones'; other wicked
dragons are restrained from sending rain-storma; peopla resort with their shamans to the tank of the Naga Raja Elapatra,
and by cracking their fingera and praying they obtain ram or
fine weather.15 Many lakes and tanks in N, India are sacred to
serpents.1^ All the wells in Kaamir, especially hot springs, ara
associated with snake-worship, w The Naga Mahapadma ia the
tutelary guardian of the largest Kaamir lake, the Vulur.^ Tha
sinuous motion of the snake suggests ita connexion with rivera,
as in Burma, where three snakes, one of which is cut into three
pieces, produce three rivera and four canals, and in Sikkim,
where the course of the river Tista ia straight because the king
of serpents led it into the plains.1^

1 G. Oppert, On the Orig, Inhabitants of Bharata-varsa or

India, London, 1893, p. 138; 3G xx. [1884] 463.
3 H. H. Wilson, Vishnu Purana, London, 1840, p. 205; V. A.
Smith, Sist, of Fine Art, p. 162 f.
3 P. Brown, Picturesque Nepal, London, 1912, p. 181.
4 Beal, i. Introd. i., i. 149, ii. 128; Watters, ii. 128 f.
5 J, Fergusson, Hist, of Indian and Eastern Architecture,
London, 1910, i. 105 n., 107 n., i. 33.
8J. Fergusson and J. Burgess, Cave Temples of India,
London, 1880, p. 69,
7 BG xi. [1883] 336 n.
8 Bed, Introd. xli.
9Shway Toe [J, G. Scott], The Burman; his Idfo owl
Notions, London, 1882, i. 189.
W J. G. Biihler, On the Indian Sect of the Jainas, Eng. tr.,
5 SBJS xlii. [1897] 151ft., 425, 487, 552ff., 605, 640, 43,119,126,
London, 1903, p. 71; Oldham, p. 177.
162,147.
11T. A. Smith, p. 268 f.; E. Thurston, Omens and Supersti6 Muir, i. 67 ft.
tions ofS. India, London, 1912, p. 135.
' Somadeva, i. 182 f., ii. 312; Jatafta, vi. 93,102,
13 Madura Gazetteer, Madras, 1906, i. 7;
Visagapatam
8 B, F. Burton, Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night,
Gazetteer, 1907, i, 335,
ed. London, 1893, iv, 357 f.
!3 M. A. Macauliffie, The Sifth Religion, Oxford, 1909, iii. 39,
9 HDB v. 644; art. HnrouiSM, 5 (&).
iv, 188, 282.
i Oldham, p. 81 f.
" Hopkins, pp. 251, 376.
M J. A. MaeCulloch, CF, p. 258 n.; J. G. Frazer, Pausaniw,
W J, R. Rivett-Carnae, ' The Snake Symbol in India, especially
London, 1898, v. 44 f.
in Connection with the Worship of Siva,' JASB, 1879, i, 173.
is Beal, i. 25, 64, Introd. xxix, xli, i, 122,137.
M Tod, popular ed., i. 427.
!8 PB2 i, 43 f,; Somadeva, ii. 225, 415.
M V. A. Smith, Bist. of Fine Art, p. 251.
w Lawrence, p. 22; F. Drew, The Jwmmoo and Kashmir
" Atkinson, ii. 777, 851, 913.
Territories, London, 1875, p. 130.
l' Thurston, Castes and Tribes, iv. 257.
!8 Kalhana, i. 174, ii. 424.
W Arch, Surv. Rep. 1902-03, pp. 201, 241.
!9 Upper Burma Gazetteer, i. ii. 504; L. A. Waddell, Among
J8 W. W. Hunter, Orissa, London, 1872, i, 269,
the Himalayas, London, 1899, p. 111.
Thurston, Castes and Tribes, ii. 406.

IF. Max Mviller, Cmtrib. to the Science of Mythology,

London, 1897, ii. 598 f.
3 The Religions of India, ed. Boston and London, 1902, p. 154,
quoting Rigveda, xi. 9, viii. 6, 7, where it is combined with
tree-worship (see below, ia).
3 A. A. Macdonell, Vedio Mythology, Strassburg, 1897, pp. 72,
148, 152; J. Muir, Original Sansterit Tenets, London, 186870,i.95f.
4 Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 160; E. Thurston, MTmog. Notes
n 5. India, Madras, 1906, p. 289; ef. W. W, Skeat and 0. O.
Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, London, 1906,

416

SERPENT-WOBSHIP (Indian)

(5) The chthonic snake, The snake living in Sarnath represents him sheltered by the coils and hood of a
snake.1 The world-snake, Sesa, protected the
crevices of the earth is often identified with three-headed
infant Krsna from a rain-storm.2
deceased ancestors and is regarded as chthonie.1
(/) The snake as a healer,Throughout India
Marmots in the Himalaya are credited -with the power of
producing storms because they live in tha bowels of the-earth the naga is invoked to-heal- disease- of- all kinds,
with the nagas that cause thunderstorms.2
particularly loathsome sores. Hence parts of its
In the Br&hmanas * they chant the verses (seen) by the Queen
of the Serpents (sarpa-rajn'Z), because the earth is the Queen of body are valued as remedies.
the Serpents, for she is the Queen of all that moves (sarpaf),'^

Thus the snake becomes associated with fertility

and eroticism,4 Therefore the cult is largely in
the hands of women.
Among the Komatis of Mysore women worship snake ima;
set up in performance of vows, and believed to be specis
efficacious in curing sores and giving children,5

Hence snake-worship is often performed at marriages, as among the Bedars of the Decean by
married women, by Brahmans in Kanara, by
Lambadls in Madras,6 The cult of earth fertilityis specially the case with the honse-snake, which
is regarded as the family-genius.8
(c) Snakes representing ancestors,The conception of the snake as a fertilizer is, again, connected
with the belief that the spirit of an ancestor,
which takes shape as a snake, is re-embodied in
one of the successors.9

Among the Taungthas "there is but one medicine current,

the dried gall bladder and the dung of the boa-constrictor,
which is supposed to be, and is used as, a remedy for everything.'^
In the Qaro hills the skin of a certain snake, when applied to
the part affected, cures pain.4

(ff) The snake-jewel,The snake has in its head

a jewel possessing magical powers.5
' It is sometimes metamorphosed into a beautiful youth; it
equals the treasure of seven kings; it can be secured only by
cowdung or horsedung being thrown over it; and it it is
acquired the serpent dies. ... Its presence acts as an amulet.
... It protects the owner from drowning ... allowing him
to pass over rivers dry-shod,* 6
Snakes make precious stones, like those in Malabar, which
are formed by divine serpents blowing on gold in the depths of
the earth.'

8. Places immune from snakes.Like Sardinia,

Ireland, and other places, certain localities in
India are immune from snakes,8

It is believed that no poisonous snakes exisWin those parts of

the Kasmfcr valley from which the peak of Haramak is visible.'
On the Ratnagiri and Talaimalai hilla venomous snakes are said
In the .Central Provinces Sonjhara women will not mention to be innocuous.1" The family saint of the Kaliar Rajputs in
the name of the snake aloud, just as they refrain from naming the Panjab is Eala Sayyid; any one sleeping near his shrine
their male relatives.10 When Mandalay was founded, the king must lie_ on the ground lest he be bitten by a snake; but, if a
of Burma ordered that a pregnant woman should be slain in snake bites a man on a Kaliar's land, he will suffer no harm.11
order that her spirit might become the guardian nat of the city;
9, Snakes and totemism,The worship of the
offerings of fruit and food were made to her spirit, which was
supposed to have taken the shape of a snake.1* In the Central serpent seems to have originated independently of
Provinces it is said that a man had three wives, who were totemism,12 Descent from the snake, the use of its
cremated with Ms body. ' While they were burning, a large name as a sept title, the tabu which prevents its
serpent came up, and, ascending the pile, was burnt with them. slaughter, and the respect paid to it when dead all
Soon after another came up and did the same. They were seen
by the whole multitude, who were satisfied that they had been appear in India.
the wives [of the deceased] in a former birth, and would
(a) Descent from the snake,>
become so again after this sacrifice.' 33
The Muasls and Nagvansis of the Central Provinces claim
When Ohitor was stormed by the Muhammadans (A,D. ISIS), descent
from a male and female snake, and the Hajjam barbers
the Rajputs, with their wives and children, perished by fire in of Bombay
from the world-serpent, Sesa.^ Some Nagar
an underground chamber. 'Superstition has placed as its Brahmans
in Nimar are said to be the offspring of Brahmans
and Naga women; some Brahmans for this reason refuse to eat
with them, and in Baroda they call their women Nag-kanya,
(d) Snakes guardians of treasure,The ehthonic 1 snake-maidens. 'M In Burma there are people who say that
snake is naturally guardian of treasure buried in they are descended from the egg of a n&ga.^ The Qandhmalia
their ultimate ancestor to have been a cobra; hence
the earth. This incident often appears in folk- believe
they specially observe the Nagpanchami festival 18 and eat no
lore,14 J. Forbes tells a ghastly tale of a snake cooked food on that day.1? A group of Yellalas in Madras say
which actually occupied a cavern in which treasure that they spring from a Naga-kanya; 18 andjihe ruling family ot
Chota Nagpur claim their origin from the serpent Pundarika
was supposed to lie.15
Nag,

(e) Snakes identifying^ and protecting^ kings or

(5) Septs and sub-castes named after the snake,
heroes,The basis of this belief, according to one
suggestion, is that, as representing the ancient Nag is a common title of caste-sections in Bengal,
Madras, and other parts of India.19
rulers, they naturally protect their successors.
(e) Taoit against killing snakes,This is partly
The Nagasias of the Central Provinces derive their name from
;eneral and partly confined to groups which claim
the nag, or cobra, and assert that a cobra spread its hood to
protect the tribal hero from the sun.^ The claim to the throne
escent from the serpent.

Of Sanga, the hero of Mewar and Kehar of Jaisalmer, was

recognized in the same way.1? The same tale is told of the
great chief Holkar,^ and of the infant Buddha, whose image at
1 CGS, Oxford, 1896, i. 290, v. E7; JHS six. [1899] 205.
2 Waddell, p. 219.
3 Aitareya Sr&hmana, ed. M. Hang, Bombay, 1863, ii. 858f.
4 A. E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, London, 1902, p. 192ff.
SEth. Surv, Mysore, vi. [Bangalore, 1906] 29; Thurston,
Omens, pp. 124,133,128.
6 SG xxiii. 0-884] 96, xv. i. [1883] 171; Thurston, Omens,
p. 136.
I Thurston, Castes and Tribes, iv. 306, 300.
8 E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity, London, 1909-10, i.
169, 172; J. 0. Lawson, Modern Greek folklore, Cambridge,
1910, p. 259 f.
9 P? i. 179; Hartland, i. 169, 176; Frazer, GB3, pt. v.,
Spirits of the Corn and of the Wila, London, 1912, ii. 288, 294 f.,
Totemism and Exogamy, do. 1910, ii 634.
l Russell, iv. 510.
II Upper Surma Gazetteer, i. ii. 35.
12 W. H. Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections, p. 29,
13 Tod, popular ed., i, 215.
34 Jataka, \, 179, ii. 214; F. A. Steel and R. 0. Temple, Widewake Stories, Bombay and London, 1884, p. 295; Bompas, p.
158; T. K. Gopal Panikkar, p. 59; SG i. i. [1896] 461,
15 Oriental Memoirs^, I<ondon, 1834, ii. 18 ff.
M Russell, iv. 258.
17 Tod, popular ed., i. 238, ii. 203.
18 J. Malcolm, A Memoir of Central India, London, 1823, i.
144.

According to Manu, killing a snake degrades the offender

into a mixed caste, and a Brahman must give a spade of black
iron.20 In Madras a cobra is popularly believed to be a Brahman;
1 Arch.

Surv. 1904-05, p. 85.

2 Vishnu Purana, ed. Wilson, p. 503.
3 T. H. Lewin, The SHI Tracts of Chittagong, Calcutta, 1869,
pp. 78, 98.
* Asiatic Researches, iii. [London, 1799] 41.
5 MacCulloch, OF, j. 41; J. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology,
Eng. tr., London, 1882-88, iii. 1220, iv. 1686.
6 P.B2 ii. 143 f.
7 Gopal Panikkar, p. 59.
8 Frazer, Pausanias, v. 325 f.
8 Lawrence, p. 155.
10 Trichinopoly Gazetteer, 1907, i. 5, 285.
11 Rose, Glossary, ii. 441.
12 Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 600ff., iv. 35 f.
!3 Chhatfcgarh Gazetteer, 1909, pp. 117,-309; Census of India,
1911, vii. Bombay, pt. i. 261.
M Nimar Gazetteer, 1908, i. 66; Census of India, 1911, xvi.
JBaroda, pt. i. 308.
is jjpper Surma Gazetteer, n, ii. 1S5; H. H. Risley, The
People of India, Calcutta, 1908, p. 101.
36 See below, 13 (/).
Russell, iii. 19.
!8 Thurston, Ca-stes and Tribes, vii. 382; Sarat Chandra Roy,
The Mundas and their Country, Calcutta, 1912, p. 136S.; far
similar legends of descent from a snake-god see GB3, pt. iv.
Adonis, Attis, Osiris, London, 1914, i. 80 ff., pt. iii. The J>vinq
"od, do. 1911, p. 132 f.
w Risley, TCn. 120; Thurston, Castes and Tribes, v, 134 f.
20 Laws, si. 69,134.

SERPENT-WORSHIP (Indian)

417

it is a deadly sin to MQ it, and the offence necessitates an

Certain clans, families, and individuals claim
extreme form of penance.1 The Badagas of bhe Nilgiri hillq
will not kill a snake nor pass near a dead one.2 In W. India, in the power of curing snake-bite or are closely
spite of its destructive nature, a cobra is never killed; when identified with the snake.1
one appears in a house, the people how to it and pray it not to
Such are the Bar of the Central Provinces,2 the Snake-tribe in
harm the inmates; at the most, 3" itr is~canglrtjr it is~pn1rmanthe"Pa^a1^an"d^h^~Bodlag-in-the-8aTOe-proviiice.* Ghasidas,
earthen jar, and this is laid in a lonely spot; the.Vanis of the founder of the Satnami (.q.v.) sect, is said to have been
Ahmadnagar, if they wish to get rid of a cobra, have it caught gifted in the same way.s Among the Todas certain men have a
with round wooden scissors and set at large in a neighbouring reputation for curing snake-bite ; the limb bitten is bound in
field.3 One penalty for killing a snake is leprosy, and this three places with a cord of woman's hair ; with a piece of a
disease attacks any one who destroys its eggs by disturbing the certain tree the healer strikes the limb, repeating an incantaground in which it dwells, or by setting on fire jungle or grass tion.8
in which it lives and breeds.*
Various charms are used to repel the attacks of
Among the Khatris of the Panjab a snake was once born to
one of the Abrola sept, and another fed the ancestor of the snakes. These are often made in the shape of the
Ohhotras; both septs worship and will not kill the reptile.5 In reptile,
the Central Provinces the Hatwas are descended from a snake,
Such is the nagapatam, the most primittve-form-of-ornamenti
belong to the Nag gotra, will not kill a cobra, will save it from
death at the hands of others, and sometimes pay snake- worn by Nayar women in S, India, which represents a hooded
charmers to release those which they hav* captured; an oath snake.7 Men and women in Yizagapatam are very fond of
by the snake is their most solemn form of affirmation. The wearing earrings of brass or gold wire twisted to symbolize a
same tabu prevails among the Nagesh sept of the Kaltuyas in snake, with one end flattened out and pointed to represent the
Bengal and the Nagbel sept of the Nahals in the Central head.8 The head ornament of a Maratha Brahman woman
bears in the centre an image of a cobra erect, representing Sesa
Provinces,?
Naga, the serpent-king.9 Ladakhi women wear, as their
(d) JRespeet paid to dead snakes,
national head-dress, a snake-shaped plaited strip of red cloth.1"
In the Central Provinces, if a Parja of the snake sept kails In Bengal a karabi root (Nerium odorum), pulled whilst the
one accidentally, he places a piece of new yarn on his head, breath is held, on the night when the snake-goddess, Manasa, is
praying for forgiveness, and deposits the body on an ant-hill worshipped, protects the wearer from snake- bite, but its efficacy
where snakes are supposed to dwell.8 In Travancore, if a dead lasts only one year.11 A rosary made of the vertebra of snakes
cobra was found, it was burned with the same ceremonies as a is used in Tibet for necromancy and divination.12
man of high caste.9 In "W, India a special rite (nagabalf) is
Many sacred places are in repute for the cure of
performed by those who desire children, by those who suffer snake-bite,
from bodily disease, who have killed a snake, or whose nearest
In the Central Provinces a visit to the shrine of BhUat Baba,
relative has died from snake-bite.10
saint, cures possession by devils and snake-bite.13 That
10. Persons dying: from snake-bite.The person aoflocal
Maha Siddha, ' the great saint,' has the same reputation in

dying of snake-bite is considered tabu, because bis

body bas been occnpied by tbe snake-god. Hence
With the same object ex votes in the form of
the corpses of such persons are usually disposed snakes are often dedicated.
of in a way different from that observed by the
Brahmans in Madras offer images of snakes to appease the
group.
wrath of Rsvhu during an eclipse, and in Tamil temples models

Among the Sagars of Bombay those who die of snake-bite are of snakes, especially those coiled in coitu, are offered to procremated on the village common, probably in the hope that the pitiate serpents.1' Coiled snakes are constantly represented on
spirit may depart at once, and, if this is not done, it is said that Indian temples.18
they will fail to receive absolution.11 The Jatapu Kandhs
12, Tree- and serpent-worship. The connexion
generally burn their dead, but those dying of snake-bite are between tree-worship and serpent-worship vhas
buried.12 In parts of the Centra] Provinces, if a person has died
by hanging, drowning, or snake-bite, his body is burnt without probably been overstated by J. Fergusson ; " but
any,rites, but, in order that his soul may he saved, a fire-sacrifice some instances are forthcoming,
(Aopi) is performed after the'cremation.13 In N. India a person
In Buddhist times 'the tree-deities were called Nagas, and
dying in this way is believed to be re-born as a snake in the
able at will, like the Nagas, to assume the human form ;
next life. In order to avoid this, an image of a snake is made were
and in one story the spirit of a banyan tree who reduced tha
of silver, gold, wood, or clay, offerings are made to it, a merchants to ashes is called a Haga-raja, tbe soldiers he sends
Brahman is fed, and a prayer is made to VasuM Raja to release forth from his tree are Hagas, and the tree itself is "the
the soul.14
dwelling-place of the Naga." This may explain why it is that
the tree-go_ds are not specially mentioned in the Maha Samaya
ix. Magical .cures for snake-bite.
list
of deities who are there said by the poet to have come to
In Baroda an expert is summoned who applies charmed
reverence to the Buddha,'J9 On the Bharhut stupa are
cowdung ashes to the bite, and, with a charm, ties knot after pay
various reliefs of nagas engaged in worshipping sacred trees or
knot on a thread; if the patient is restless, he dashes some possibly
the Buddha immanent in them.20 A similar subject
handfuls of water on his eyes, and tries to force the snake to from S. India
is described by Tod.21
leave his body; after this treatment the snake explains why it
In
Mysore
'the stones bearing the sculptured figures of
bit the man; u the injury which prompted the snake to bite
near every village are always erected under certain
was trivial, it agrees to leave the patient; if severe, it refuses to serpents
trees,
which
are
most frequently built round with a raised
leave, and death follows; members of a Nagar Brahman family platform, on which
stones are set up, facing the rising son.
are expert in this treatment-15 In the Atharvaveda there are Oie is invariably a the
sacred fig, which represents a female, and
numerous charms for the exorcism of snakes from houses or another a margosa, which
represents a male ; and these two are
against snake-bite; a central feature of such charms is the
invocation of the white horse of Pedu (Paidwa), a slayer of
I Cf. Frazer, Totemisin and Exogamy, i, 133,
serpents -16 A favourite means of cure is by the ' snake-stone,"
s Russell, Hi. 483 f.
which is imposed to suck the poison from the bite.1'
3 JPNQ ii. 91; cf. ff-83, pt. v,, Sfririts of the Com and of the
Wild, ii. 3161
4 Rose, Glossary, ii. 115.
1 Thnrston, Omens, p. 124; Dubois, p. 114 ff.; cf. G3$, pt. ii.
s Raipur Gazetteer, 1909, i. 80.
Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, London, 1911, p. 221 ff.
8 W, H. R. Riyers, The Todas, London, 1906, p. 267.
2 J. W. Breeks, An Account of the Primitive Tribes and
'
Thurston, Castes and Tribes, v. 366; Census of India, 1901,
Monuments of the NUagiris, London, 1873, p. 104,
3 Census of India, 1911, xvi Baroda,, pt, i. 67; BG xvii. xxvi. Travancore, pt. i., p. 325; L. K. Anantha Krishna Iyer,
The
Coohin Tribes and Castes, ii. 101,
.1884] 40.
8 Vizagapatam Gazetteer, i. 69,
4 Thurston, Qixens, p. 124.

Eth,
Surv. Central Provinces, TOO, [1911] 95; BG xvm. i.
9 Rose, Glossary, ii, 516, 619.
8 Russell, i. 367.
' Census of India, 1301, vi. Bengal, pt. L 415; Russell, iv, [1885] 54,
io
Census
of India, 1911, xx, Kashmir, pt. i p. 61 n.
360.
II M em, ASB i. [1905] 283.
8 Russell, iv, 373.
12
L.
A,
Waddell,
The Buddhism of Tibet, London, 1895,
9 Frazar, Totemism and ISxogamy, i, 21, quoting J. Canter
/isscher, Xietters from Malabar, p. 162; Thurston, Mhnog, p. 209.
13
Soshangabad
Gazetteer,
1908, i. 291.
Votes, p. 288.
M Berar Gazetteer, Bombay, 1870, p. 192; PR* i. 220 ff.
w J, M. Campbell, Notes on the Spirit Basis of Belief and
M
Thurston,
Omens,
pp.
43,160,
JBthnog, Notes, p. 353 f.
Justom, Bombay, 1885, p. 3662.
18 Asiatic Researches, vi. [1801] 3S9 (with illustrations); PNQ
11 Sfh. Survt no. 113 [Bombay, 1908], p. 4.
ii.
73.
For
similar
offerings
of
images
of snakes and phalli sea
w Census of India, 1901, xv. Madras, pt. i. p. 157,
J, E. Harrison, Themis, Cambridge, 1912, p. 266; Somadeva, i.
13 Jubbulpore Gazetteer, Nagpur, 1909, i. 137.
8; for KB voto offerings, in Bomalayan snake-shrines, Oldham,
M JfI2fQ iv. [1894-95] 130.
p. 101 f.
15 Census of India, 1911, xvi, Baroda, pt. i. 67 f.
W Tree and Serpent Worship*,
18 Jataka, iv. 221 ff.
18 SB-E xlii. 4251., 27f., 461, 487, 652 C., 6051; for other
w Rhys Davids, p. 232, with illustration of Buddha preaching
.remedies of the same kind see Thurston, Omens, p. 95; PR2 L
to
nagas
in
a
sacred
tree.
S39 ; PL xxL [1910] 85.
20 Cunningham, p. 26 f., plates xxriii,, xxix,
W H. Tula and A. C. Burnell, BobsmtrJobson*, London, 1903,
. 847ff,
21 Popular ed., i. 462.
VOL. XI,27

418

SERPENT-WORSHIP (Indian)

married with the same ceremonies as human beings. Th

bilpatre [vilva-bilva-pattra'} (jlSgle marmelos), sacred to Siva, i
often planted with them.' 1
In Bellary it is said that the fire Pandaya brethren concealed
their arms on a stw/ii-tree (Prosopis spicigera), and that thei
weapons turned into snakes and remained untouched till thej
returned,5*

13. Worship and propitiation of snakes.Th

worship and propitiation of snakes are so closely
connected with orthodox and -unorthodox cults tha''
it is often difficult to disentangle them,
(a) Worship of the living snake.
A snake temple at Calicut contains several live cobras, which
are fed by priests and worshippers; they are carefully pro
tected, and allow themselves to be handled and made into
necklaces by those who feed them; they are venerated as
representing the spirits of anoestors.3 The worship of living
snakes is also found in Mysore and at "Vaisarpadi near Madras
where crowds of votaries assemble, generally on Sundays, ii
tha hope of seeing the snakes preserved in the temple-grounds.
In the island of Nainativoe, Ceylon, consecrated snakes used to
be tenderly reared by the Pandaram priests, and fed daily a
the expense of their votaries.5 At Bhandak, in the Centra
Provinces, a cobra appears in the snake-temple on all public
occasions, and similar cases are reported from Rajamundri,
Sambalpur, and Manipur.8

victim, often a girl, who is finally rescued by a hero.1 Frazel

regards the tales as reflecting a real custom of sacrificing girls
or women to be the wives of water-spirits, who are often
conceived as great serpents or dragons.2
In the worship of serpents it is important to note that the
offerings made to nagas are -not such"substances as are usually
eaten by snakes, but things suitable for the food of men.3 In
S. India among the rites performed by the twice-born classes
are naga-pratishfya, the worship of the cobra in the form of a
carved stone image, and nagabali, or the performance of the
obsequies of a dead cobra with all the formalities observed in
ordinary funeral-rites.4

(e) Worship of snake-heroes, Many

snake-heroes are found in India.

deified

Such are Guga or Gugga Pir in the Panjab and Rajawa and
Soral in Hoshangabad.5 In the Central Provinces. the-^Bhams
worship Karua, * the black one,' the cobra who, they say, was
born in the tribe; he hid in the house-oven because he happened by accident to see one of his brothers' wives without her
veil, was burnt to death, and is now deified by the tribe,5
Another worthy of the same class is BhUat, a deified cowherd,
whose disciples are believed to be able to cure snake-bite with
the long sticks which they carry.?

(/) Snake-festivals,The chief snake-festival is

that known as the Nagpanchami, ' dragon's fifth,'
in N, India and Nagara-panehami in S. India,
(5) Snake temples,Temples in which snake- hecause it is held on the 5th day of the light
half of the month Sravana, or Savan, Its occurworship is performed are numerous.
At the most a_ncient temple in Bilaspur and in Chhattisgarh rence in the rainy season is possihly connected with
the only image is that of the cobra.? At Nagareoil, in Travan- the power of the snake to give rain.

core, is a temple of the snake-god containing many stone images

of snakes; snake-bite is not fatal within a mile of the temple
at Mannarsala the sacred enclosure contains several living
cobras.8 At Nimbargi, in Bljapur, a woman saw her cow
dropping its milk on a serpent's hole; she was ordered in a
dream to build a temple over it, and to close its doors for nine
months; but in bar impatience sha opened it prematurely, anc
found that a half-finished image of Sitaram and a linga had
sprung from the grounda legend obviously invented to explain
the form of the image.9 Among the Jadeja Rajputs of Kachh
the chief procession is that of the Rav to the snake temple in
Bhuj fort,10 A curious illustration of the fusion of Islam with
animism is found_ in the snake mosque near Manarghat, at the
foot of the NUgir! Mils, where an annual festival is held and
alms are collected for the mosque."

(e) Snake-worship at ant-hills.Snake-worship

is often conducted at ant-hills supposed to he the
home of snakes.13
Tb5 Dhangars of the Central Provinces say that the first
sheep and goats came out of an .ant-hill, and, to stop the damaga
which they caused to crops, Siva created the first Dhangar;
hence they revere ant-hills, never remove them from their
fields, and at the Divali, or feast of lights, worship them with
offerings of rice, flowers, and part of the ear of a goat.13 Some
t-ribes in Madras worship snakes by pouring milk on ant-hills.14
The worship of the ant-hill at marriages and the custom of
bringing the lucky earth from them are possibly connected
with the fertility cult of snakes or of ants, because they multiply
in great numbers.15

(d) Propitiation of snakes,

In N. India the Agarwala branch of traders, who have a
legend of snake-descent, have an annual rite for propitiation of
snakes at which various ceremonies are performed, and sesamum
charmed with a spell is sprinkled in the house to preserve the
inmates from snake-bite.16 in Central India, to propitiate the
snake-god Nagdeo, milk is placed by Bhils near the hole of a
cobra.1' A solemn annual service to propitiate the Naga raindeiMes is held in Tibet-iS In an important cycle of folk-tales a
moaster or dragon is appeased by the periodical sacrifice of a

In S. India, on the eve of the festival, worship, is rendered

with offerings of flowers and incense at snake-holes, and milk
is poured into them; the stone images of snakes under sacred
trees are visited with reverence; on the day of the feast these
images are washed, milk, curds, etc., are poured on them,
flowers are presented, and other offerings made.8 In the
Central Provinces, during the month of Sravana, a man must
be sent on a certain day to eat cakes at the shrine of the
snake-god and return ; if this is neglected, the family will be
attacked by cobras.' In other parts of the Province Brahmans
on the day of the feast must not cut vegetables with a knife,
but only with a scythe, and may not eat bread baked on a,
griddle; the priest comes to the house in the morning, and,
if he tells the owner to do something ridiculous, he is bound to
do it; on that day every guest who eats in the house must be
branded on the hind-quarters with a burning stick, the host
doing this stealthily; schoolmasters take their boys to a stream,
where they wash their slates, worship them, come home, and
eat sweetmeats, w Wrestling contests are held on this day, and
it is suggested that this is done because the movements of the
wrestlers resemble the writhing of a snake.11 In the Deccan,
on the first day of the feast, images of snakes are painted on
the walls of the house, worship is offered to them, and an old
woman recites a legend explaining the origin of the rite.13 In
the Himalayan districts of the United Provinces Siva ia worshipped under the title of Rikheswar, as lord of the n&gos, in
which form he is represented as" surrounded by serpents and
crowned with a chaplet of hooded snakes; the people paint
figures of serpents and birds on the walls of their houses, and
seven days before the festival steep a mixture of wheat, grain,
and pulse in water; on the morning of the Nagpanchami they
take a wisp of grass and, tying it up in the form of a snake,
dip it in the water in which the grain has been steeped, and
place it with money and sweetmeats before the pictures of the
serpents.1?
At the temple of Jagannath (g.D.) a* Pun 'the supremacy of
Vishnu is declared in the festival of the slaughter of the deadly
cobra-da-capello, Kalt-damana, the familiar of Siva and hia
queen.'14 "Visnu, in the form of Ananta,' the infinite,' the snakegod Sesa, is worshipped at the feast of the Anant Chaudas,
xn the full moon of Bhadon, which, like other snake-festivals,
'alls in the rainy season.1? A remarkable rite in N. India is that
of the gurui, when girls go to a tank or stream and float dolls,
which are beaten by the boys with long switches, possibly a
>urgation, fertility, or rain cult.16 A similar rite is known a

1 Rice, Mysore Gazetteer, i. 455.

%ellary Gazetteer, i. 64.
SM, A. Handley, Roughing it in S, India, London, 1911,
p. 70 f.
4 Rice, i. 455; Thurston, Ethnog, Notes, p. 283.
1 E. S. Hartland, ZP i. chs. i,-iii; Frazer, Pausanias, v.
6 J, E. Tennent, Ceylms, London, 1859, i. 373
143 ff., who gives Indian parallels,
8 IGI viii. 59; Census Rep, Bemr, 1881, p. 48.
2 Frazer, Lect-ures on the Early Hist, of the Kingship, London,
' Central Provinces Gazetteer, 1870, Introd. Ixv. 86.
1905, p. 184; GJB$, pt. i,, The Magic Art, do. 1911, ii, 155 fit,
8 Thurston, Omens, p. 92; Aiya, Travancore State Manual, """or human sacrifice in snake-cults see above, 3 (g~),
Hi, 589.
s Oldham, p. 29 f.
9JB033dii. 667 f,
^ JZ>. rx. i 136.
4 Above, 9 (d); Census of India, 1911, xxi, Mysore, pt, i.
11 Thurston, Castes and Tribes, vii. 105 f.
p. 89.
ia For rites at conical mounds compare the Greek omphalos
s PJ?2 i. 211 ff,, a, 140; for a full account of the cult of Qfiga
and other sacred mounds (Harrison, Themis, pp. S84, 396 S.; ee Rose, i. 143 ff.
Frazer, Paitsanias, v, 314 S.), and the bell-shaped mound in
8 Eth. Su.ro. iii, [1907] 33; Russell, ii, 247.
marriage and other rites among the pagan Malays (Skeat? Nim&r Gazetteer, 1908, i. 59,
Blagden, i. 189, ii 57, 67, 72 S,, 83).
8 Eth. Sure, Mysore, s,v,' Besthas,' p. 11; Thurston, Oment,
!3 Russell, ii. 480.
). 124.
M Thurston, Castes and Tribes, i. 196, ii 256*,, vi. 236, 356.
9 j&amoh Gazetteer, 1906, i 38.
Mh, Snro, Mysore, ix, 6, xsdi 8, saii. 8; L. K. Anantha
10 Chhindw&ra Gazetteer, 1907, i, 551
Krishna Iyer, ii. 376.
11 Nagpur Gazetteer, 1908, i, 94,
W NINQ ii 202.
17 Eth. Sttrv,, 1909, p. 30.
w Balaji Sitaram Kothare, JEKntim Holidays, Bombay, 190*
JSWaddell, BvMhism of Tibet, p. 508; for a similar rite i. 243.
among the PuLavans of 8. India see Anantha Krishna Iyer,
!3 Atkinson, ii. 851.
M Hunter, i. 131,
i, 1531
!5 Mem, ASS i 174t
M J7J^VQ i, [1891-92173,

SSBPBNT-WOBSHIP (Teutonic and Balto-Slavio)

godhan in Bihar. 1 In other parts of N, India people go about
begging during the rainy season for two and a half days,
during which time they do not sleep under a roof or eat salt;
the object ia said to he to avert the danger_oLsnake.?bite.__ ._

419

ii. 1213.; A. de Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, do. 1872,31,

388 ff. For other references see-B-BriixxJv. 676 ff. Some of the
abundant and scattered literature on the subject has been
. quoted .in the article. _
"W. CROOKE.

34. The snake in Hindu religious art,RepreSERPENT-WORSHIP (Teutonic and Baltosentations of the snake and its worship appear
Slavic). I. TEUTONIC, I. Lombard snakethroughout Hindu religious art.
Figures of the Naga Raja, often in connexion with those of worship. In the 7th cent. St. Barbatus melted
Buddha, appear in many cave-temples. 3 The figures of the down the golden image of a viper, which the
nagas at Ajanta (q.v.) are specially interesting.? A favourite Lombards worshipped in secret. Unfortunately
subject is Visnu as Narayana resting on the world-snake, Sesa,4 we know nothing further of this cult.1
15, The snake in folk-lore.The snake natur2, Wisdom and healing powers.The Teutons,
ally plays a leading part in the folk-lore of India. like most other peoples, believed in the wisdom of
Here only a few instances can he given.*
the serpent and in his powers of giving" Tiealth and
The snake knows the powers of life-giving plants, and the strength.
language of hirds and animals can be acquired by eating some

part of the flesh of a serpent,' According to Philostratos of

Lemnos, their hearts and livers were eaten in India, and
knowledge of the language and thoughts of animals waa thus
attained.? According to the Santals, the power of understanding the speech of animals is given by Manasa, king of
serpents, 8 In another Santal tale a snake teaches a woman an
incantation which, if used when dust is thrown into the air,
will cause the person against whom it is aimed to be burned to
ashes.9 Omens are naturally token from snakes. In Madras a
person should postpone his journey if he sees a cobra or a ratsnake ; and in Kumaun, when a snake crosses a man's path, he
must tear a rag from his clothing and place it on the trail of
the reptile; if he fails to do so, he falls sick or suffers some
other evil lo In Madras any one who dreams of a snake is
considered to be proof against its bite; if a man dreams of a
cobra, his wife or some other near female relative has conceived.il u a man has marks of a snake on his right foot, or a
woman on her left, they are incarnations of some deity.M In the
PanjSb some snakes which drink buffaloes' milk are so swift as
to be able to bite a galloping horse; two-headed snakes are
common; there is a snake which poisons the breath of a sleeper,
strikes him with its tail, and is able to remove from th bedside
sticks which might be used against it.53 The Sanskrit names
for the snake, drig-visha, driahti-visha, 'having poison in the
eyes,' imply that it can poison by a mere glance,i4 The hamadryad is supposed to pursue its victim over hill, dale, and
water.15 Among the Todas a person whom a snako has bitten
must not cross a stream; if it is absolutely necessary that he
should cross, he must be carried over it.1' The same people
explain eclipses by the fact that a snake once hunted a hare,
which took refuge in the moon; the moon promised to protect
it. 'The snake still goes sometimes to catch the hare in the
moon, and when he goes the moon becomes dark and some
people fire guns and send up rockets and the Todas shout.' w
The Kadu Gollas of Mysore believe that, if a woman in her
courses enters the house, they will be bitten by snakes or stung
by scorpions.18 In N. India a. snake is said to become blind on
seeing a pregnant woman, w In the Konkan the bite of the ratmake is poisonous on Sunday, but harmless on other days; if
it is in a field with a buffalo, whichever sees the othr first will
iurvive, while the one first seen will die; when buffaloes bathe,
this snake sucks their milk under water.so One snake in
Katnagiri can kill people by merely casting its shadow on them
from a tree or the roof of a house.21
LITERATURE,To the knowledge of the writer no comprehensive monograph on serpent-worship in India has been
published. Some aspects of the subject have been investigated
by J. Fetrgusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, or Illustrations
of Mythology and Art in India*, London, 1873; C. F. Oldham,
The Sun and the Serpent, do. 1905; W. Crooke, P-R2, do. 1896,

Hother, the adversary of Balder, came to his enemy's camp,

and heard that' three maidens had gone out carrying the secret
feast of Balder. . . . Now they had three snakes, of whose
venom they were wont to mix a strengthening compound for
the food of Balder, and even now a flood of slaver was dripping
on the food from the open mouths of the serpents,' The eldest
maiden refused to give the food to Hother, 'declaring that
Balder would he cheated, if they increased the bodily powers
of his enemy.'8
Saxo also tells us how Boiler saw his mother preparing a meal
for himself and his step-brother Eric. ' He looked up at three
snakes hanging from above ... from whose mouthsfloweda
slaver which dribbled drops of moisture on the meal. Now two
of these were pitchy of hue, while the third seemed to have
whitish scales . . . Roller thought that the affair looked like
magic. . . . For he did not know that the snakes were naturally
harmless, or how much strength was being brewed for that
meal.1 Eric chooses the broth made from the dark snake,
judging the feast not by the colours but by the inward
strengthening effected,' and so he attains ' to the highest pitch
of human wisdom,' knowledge of animal language, and success
in war.3

Somewhat similar results come from the eating

of the heart of the snake or dragon, Pafnir, by
Sigurd the Volsung,4 We find a parallel for this
superstition of the potency of the snake's slaver
in the Lithuanian custom of putting their sacred
house-snake on the table and letting him touch
their food.5
3, The snake and the soul.The cult of the
house-snake probably prevailed at one time among
the Teutons.
' Plenty of old tales are still told of home snakes and vnkes,
On meadows and pastures, and even in houses, snakes come to
children when alone, sip milk with them out of their bowl . . ,
they watch infants in the cradle, and to bigger children they
shew treasures: to Mil them is unlucky. ... If the parents
surprise the snake with the child, and kill it, the child begins to
fall away, and dies before long.' 6
' In some districts they say every house has two snakes, a
male and a female, but they never shew themselves tall the
master or mistress of the house dies, and then they undergo the
same fate.'7

The cult of the house-snake is a wide-spread

religious practice, and seems to be a form of
ancestor-worship, arising from the notion that
snakes embody the souls of the dead. In some
I Q. A. Grierson, Bihar Peasant Life, Calcutta, 1885, p. 400. Teutonic legends and superstitions the snakes
3 Fergusson-Burgess, Cave Temples of India, pp. 156 f., 306, appear to embody the souls of those who are still
817, 325, 331, 343, 421; Grtinwedel, pp. 29, 94,106 ff., 133.
alivea survival perhaps of the primitive belief in
3 Grflnwedel, p. 43 ff.
* Areh, Sura. Rep. 1905-^6, p. 114; J. Fergusson, Sist. of the ' external soul.'

2nd. and Eastern Arch., i, 341; Smith, Sist. of fine Art, p.

162 f. For other sculptures see A. Cunningham, The Stupa of
Sharhut, and The Bhilsa Topes, London, 1854; F. C. Maisey,
Sanchi and its Remains.
5SeePJJ2ii. 141 f.
8 GJB^, pt. iv, A&onis, Attis, Osiris, i, 186, pt. v. Spirits of the
Corn and of the Wild, ii. 146; J. A. MacCulloch, Rel, of the
Ane. Celts, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 149 n.
' McCrindle, Anc. India in doss. Literature, p. 194.
8 A. Campbell, Santal Folk-tales, Pokhuria, 1891, p. 22.
9 Bompas, p. 153.
i Thurston, Omens, p. 25; NINQ ii. 136; for other omens
from snakes see J. E. Padfield, The Hindu at Some, Madras,
1896, p. 288 ff.
II Above, 7 (&); Thurston, Omens, p. 20,
12 NINQ v. [1892-93] 17.
13 Malik Muhammad Din, Key, Bahawalpur State, Lahore,
1908, p.-8 f.
1* Cf. FL xvi. [1905] 150.
i5 H. Tule, Narr. of the Mission to the Court ofAva, London,
1858, p. 100 n.; Thurston, Castes and Tribes, vii. 136.
is Rivers, p. 267.
" Ib. p. 593.
18 Hth. Surv. xiv. [Bangalore, 1908] 14.
IB N1NQ v. {1895-96] 70.
so BG xvin. i. 75.
Ib. x. [1880] 50.

Paul the Deacon tells the story of King Gunther, whose ' soul
crept out of his mouth in the shape of a snake . . . jpassed_a
little brook and entered a mountain, afterwards returning again
to the mouth of the king. . . . The king in the meantime had
dreamt that he crossed a bridge over a river, and arrived in a
mountain full of gold. The treasure . . . was afterwards
actually lifted.'8

Several Northern stories appear to contain

reminiscences of the custom of rearing housesnakes.
Thora, daughter of Herodd, king of Sweden, at the command
of her father,' endured to rear a race of adders with her maiden
hands,' which grew until they became a public nuisance and
were killed by her wooer, Ragnar Lodbrog-9 According to the
version of the story in the Saga of Sing JRagnar Lodbrok,w the
1 Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, tr. Stallybrass, ii. 684.
2 Saxo, tr. Elton, p. 93.
3 j&. p. 153 f,
* Volsunga Saga, in Die prosaische Sdda, ed. Wilken, p. 182.
5 See below, n.
6 Grimm, ii. 686.
7 Jfc. p. 687.
8 See Saussaye, Religion of the Teutons, p. 297.
9 Saxo, p, 364 f.
19 Fornaldar Sogur tferdrlanda, Kaupmannahofn, 1829, i, 2371

420

SERPENT-WORSHIP (Teutonic and Balto-Slavie)

princess kept a snake in a box, with gold tinder him. The

snake grew until he encircled the whole room, and the gold
grew with his growth.
Both snakes and dragons (which often play a very
similar part in popular belief) are frequently,Bupposed to bring wealth or guard gold.
Fafnir was originally human, but guarded his treasure by
lying on top of it, in the form of a great snake or dragon.* The
dragon in Bemmilf kept watch over treasure in a burial-mound,
It is probable that originally the dead man was
thought to appear in the form of a snake or dragon
guarding the treasures that were buried with him
in his grave,
Saxo tells of another snake-rearing princess:
' Siward, the king of the Goths, is said to have had . . . a
daughter Alfhild, who showed almost from her cradle such
.faithfulness to modesty, that she continually kept her face
muffled in her robe. . . Her father banished her into very
close keeping, and gave her a viper and a snake to rear, wishing
to defend her chastity by the protection of these reptiles,'2
Saxo has probably misunderstood the king's
motive. Sacred snakes are often tended by virgin
priestesses, who are supposed to be their wives,
the fundamental belief being that women 'can
conceive by the dead in the form of serpents.'3
A legend recorded by Grimm4 is noteworthy in
this connexion:
f Once, when a woman lay asleep, a snake crept into her open
mouth, and when she gave birth to a child, the snake lay coiled
tightly round its neck, and could only be got away by a milkbath ; but it never left the baby's side, it lay in bed with it,
and ate out of its bowl, without doing it any harm.'
4, The snake in the other world,Saxo gives
a detailed account of ThorkUPs visits to the other
world:
After crossing the bridge which divided the world of men
from the world of monsters, he came to the dwelling of Geirrod
where ' theflooringwas covered wi th snakes.' Afterwards ThorHLI and bis companions went to visit TJtgarda-Loki. They came
afc last to a cave of giants, situated in a land of eternal night.
' The entrance was hideous, the door-posts were decayed . . .
the floor swarming with snakes.' Then in another cavern ' he
beheld a number of iron seats among a swarm of gliding
serpents. Next there met his eye a sluggish mass of water
gently/ 'flowing over a sandy bottom. . . . Again . . . a foul
and gloomy room was disclosed to the visitors, wherein they
saw Utgarda-LoH, laden hand and foot with enormous chains.
. . . They could scarcely make their way out, and were bespattered by the snakes which darted at them on every side.*B
We may compare this with the description of the
place of punishment in the Prose Edda;
1 In Corpse Strand there is a great and evil hall, and the doors
face the north; it is all wrought of snake-backs, but the snakeheads look into the house, and breathe out poison, so that the
poison-streams run along the halls, and oath-breakers and
murderers wade those rivers as it is here said:
1" I know a hall standing
Far from the sun
In Corpse Strand,
The doors face north
Poison drops fall
In from the windows."' 8
1 There NitJhoggr devours
The corpses of the departed.' 1
NiShoggr lives with a great number of snakes in the spring
Hvergelmir under the great World-Tree, the Ash TggdrasU.
The Ash Tggdrasil,
Suffers hardships
More than men know , . .
NiShoggr crawls underneath.' *
* More snakes lie
Beneath the Ash Yggdrasil
Than unwise fools can think of ...
I think they will always
Be spoiling the boughs of that tree.* 9
The conception of the universal tree was perhaps
suggested by tree-sanctuaries such as the Upsala
sanctuary and the great Remove sanctuary of the
1 Volswnga Saga, ed. Wilken, p. 175.
2 P. 274.
s J. G. Frazer, GSS, pt. 5v., Admin, Attis, Osiris^, London,
1914, i. 90; cf. ib. pt. v., Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, do
1912, ii, 17!., pt, i., The Magic Art, do. 1911, ii. 149 f.: C. F.
Oldham, The Sun and the Serpent, do. 1905, p. 154.
* 886.
5 Pp. 344-356.
" Voluspd, 38.
7 Qylj. lij. SB.
a Grvmnismal, 35, quoted in GW. ed. Wilken, p. 28.
91&. 34, quoted in Qylf, p. S3,

Baltic peoples.1 The above-quoted lines point to

the conclusion that at one time it was customary
to keep snakes in these sanctuaries ; we know
that a sacred serpent was kept at Remove.3
Snakes evidently appear irrthe'other world because
they embody the souls of the dead. Two of the
snakes who gnaw Yggdrasil's Ash are called Ofnir
and SvMnirnames which are also given to Odin,
the god of death,8
5. The world-snake. Just as the sacred tree
seems to have given rise to the idea of a universal
world-tree, so probably the sacred snake gave rise
to the idea of MiSgartSsormr, the great world-snake,
which lies in the sea, coiled round the~wholB"BaTbb:.
MiSgartSsormr, Hell, and the wolf Fenrir are children of Loki
and adversaries of the gods. At the end of the world MiSgartSsormr will come up on to the land, breathing out poison. Thor,
the thunder-god, will do battle with him and be killed by his
poisonous breath,*
6. Conclusion, "We know something of the
beliefs about snakes prevalent among the Teutonic
peoples, but practically nothing about the ritual
of the snake-cult. The Teutons seem to have
regarded the snake as possessed of special gifts of
knowledge and healing power; but on the whole
its malignant aspect seems to be predominant.
The snake is clearly regarded as an embodiment
of the soul, and so comes to be connected with
death, the land of the dead, and the powers of
destruction,
II. LETTISH, LITHUANIAN, AND OLD PRUSSIAN,
i. The house-snake, The cult of the housesnake was one of the 'almost incredible things'
which Jerome of Prague related to the Council of
Basel (1431-37) when describing his experiences as
a missionary among the Lithuanians, Each paterfamilias had his own serpent in a corner of the
house, to which he gave food and did sacrifice.5
In the middle of the next century Joannes
Meletius (Menecius) gives similar evidence :
1 Moreover the Lithuanians and Samogitas keep snakes warm
under the stove, or in a corner of the steam-room where the
table stands. These snakes they worship as -they would a divine
being ; and at a regular season of the year the sacrificers summon
them forth to share the meal. They come out and climb up
over a clean cloth and sit on the table. When they have there
tasted the several dishes, they go down again and hide themselves
in their holes. When the snakes have gone away the men gladly
eat up the dishes of which they have had a first taste, and
expect that for that year all things will turn out happily for
them. If, however, the snakes have not come in answer to the
prayers of the saerificer, or have refused to taste the dishes
placed on the table, then they believe that hi that year they
will suffer some great calamity."6
About thirty years later Alexander Guagnini
describes the worship of house-snakes, which was
still kept up by many of the country people in
Samogitia,
They reverenced a particular kind of snake 'with four tiny
feet, like lizards, and black and fat in body, called in their
native tongue givojitos,' Guagnini tells the story of a pagan,
living in a village near "Vilna, who, having been persuaded by
a Christian to kill hia sacred snake, was horribly deformed,
because, as he said, he 'laid wicked hands on the serpent, hia
domestic god.' 7
The Letts also were in the habit of rearing and
worshipping house-snakes, which were so tame
that they could not harm man or beast belonging
to the house ; even the children would play with
them and have them in rbeir beds.8 It was the
duty of the Lettish goddess Brehkina to cry out
to all who entered : ' You must leave the milk1 Cf. art. NATTJKB (Teutonic) ; H. M. Ohadwick, in JA I xxx.
[1900] 30.
2 See below, rt.
3 Grimnismdl, 64, in Die laeder tier Slteren Edda, ed, Hildabrand and Gering, p. 93.
4 Gylf, xxxiv. 37 f., Ii. 82.
5 Seriptores Rerum Prussicarwn, 6 vols., Leipzig, 1861-74, iv.
239.
6 PL xii. [1910] 298.
7 RespubKw site status regni PolvnitG LituanieB
Mvonite, Leyden, 1627, p. 276.
a Seriptores Rerum JUtveni
venimrum, Biga and Leipzig, 1848, H.

SEBPENT-WOBSHIP ^Teutonic and Balto-Slavic)

mothers [is. house-snakes, toads] unharmed in the
house.'1
MatthseuB Prsetoriug quotes from BretMus a
detailed description of th-eo:nsecrationof-thQ
house-snake,
* A wefcJwZwt or maldininks is called, who brings with Mm one
or more snakes. Thereupon the table is laid, and a kauszele
\i,e, howl] full of drink, and a can of beer set out.' The weiduliit
prays and the snake creeps up on to the table. 'Soon he
makes a circle round the snake, which thereupon lies as if
dead, tmtol the toeidulnt has finished his prayers, which are
many. Then the snake is sprinkled with beer out of the consecrated Jscvuszeh and after that it moves again, and, on the"
command of the imeiauM,, touches some of the food and gets
down from the table by means of a towel, The weidulut
notices the place that the snake will occupy and hallows it by
prayer. Thereupon the snake establishes itself in its place.
The host, however, with the weidulvt and the inmates of his
house, is joyful and concludes this consecration with much
drinking and all manner of amusements.'2

Erasmus Stella and Guagnini call the saered

serpents of the Baltic peoplespenates. It is almost
certain that here, as elsewhere, the cult of the
house-snake was a form of ancestor-worship. The
Lithuanians named their house-snakes givojitos,
givoitos (cf. ahove), 'the living ones' (of. Lith,
gyvate, 'snake,' derived from Lith. gyvas, 'living'). It is therefore highly probable that they
shared the almost universal idea that the snake,
owing to his power of sloughing his skin, is immortal and a fit embodiment for the spirit of the
dead, the ever-living ancestor.3 The association
of the paterfamilias with a special snake, and the
Lettish term peena maates (ei. below), point to the
same conclusion.
The snake as household god or ancestral spirit
would naturally further the interests of his own
family at the expense of others. The Letts, we are
told by Fabricius, reared huge serpents which
would steal milk-pails from neighbouring herds
and bring them back to their own people,4 Prom
the same authority we learn that these people
knew how to injure their enemies' crops by magic
arts, but he does not state that they used snakes
for the purpose. Preetorius, however, gives an
interesting piece of evidence for such practices
among the Lithuanians in the 17th century:
A certain man who had been a servant in Insterburg, near
Lithuanian Georgenburg, told how various villages in the
neighbourhood still kept (though in great secrecy) a moninin&s,
At certain times in the year, usually spring or autumn, this
monininks called the people together and collected various
snakes through magic prayers, and charmed them by certain
magic characters. The table was then laid, food and drink set
out, a special place prepared for the snakes, and millt set
out for them. The snakes were brought up on to the table,
and at the command of the monininKs touched all the food,
after which the feast took place and was concluded with much
drinking. After the meal each person present told the WMMJininks the name of his enemy, and how he wished htm to be
injured. ' If some one wished his enemy's grain to be injured
in the field, the weideler took a snake in his two hands,
charmed it anew, prayed again some magic prayers, and let it
dart away to the door or window, with these words: Szmiftsst
per JSsze, i.e,, Go through the fields. . . thereupon the specified corn, and other grain in the field was injured through hail.
. . . If the weideler said: Szmiksst per arnida, then the
supply of bread was injured.' *

This seems to be a survival of beliefs and practices

connected with the house-snake.
2. The sanctuary-snake,The serpent cult was
not confined to the house. In Samland, it seems,
large numbers of snakes were reared in an oakwood in honour of the gods.6 Prsetorius 7 explains
that saltones were snake-charmers, who had charge
of the snakes consecrated to Padrympus. This
information, however, can scarcely be drawn from
personal observation, as Prsetorius tells us else1 Mag,

dertettisah-literarischenGesettschaft, VL xiv, 144.

a Definite Prussiccs, ed. W. Pierson, Berlin, 1871, p. 35.
3 See J. G. Frazer, GJB3, pt. vS., The Scapegoat, London, 1913,
p. 302 ff., pt. iii., The Dying God, do. 1911, p. 86, The Belief in
Immortality, do. 1913, i. 60, 69 fi., 74 f., 83.
* Script. Her. Livon., ii. 441.
5 Cf. Delie, Priiss., p, 36.
6 Lucas David, Preussische Cftromft, ed. E. Hennig, Konigssrg, 1812, i. 62.
* P. 46-

421

where that in his day Padrympus was no longer

invoked by name.1 Padrympus, or Potrimpus,
was one of the deities to whom the famous Remove
-sanctuary "wa's consecrated. In his honour a snake
was kept in a large jar, crowned with sheaves of
corn, and fed with milk by virgin priestesses,2
Grunau's account of Old Prussian beliefs has perhaps been regarded with undue scepticism. In this
case his statement is supported by the evidence of
comparative religion. In diverse parts of the
world snakes are tended by virgins, who apparently
are considered as their wives.3 The custom of
giving milk to serpents is even-Tnore'Tunversal,
most likely because milk is the food of children.
The fundamental idea seems to have been that
the dead could be born again into their own
families. "We find traces of this belief among the
Scandinavians and elsewhere.
'Behind the Greek notion that women may conceive by a
serpent-god seems to lie the belief that they can conceive by
the dead in the form of serpents.'4
Hence the snake's influence over human fertility.
The term peena maates, 'mothers of milk/ suggests that some such conception prevailed among
the Letts. The word maates, ' mothers,' is due to
the Lettish preference for female deities.
It is easy to understand why the snake was the
peculiar treasure of Potrimpus.
Among the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast' a close
connexion is apparently supposed to exist between the fertility
of the soil and the marriage of these women to the serpent.
For the time when new brides are sought for the reptile god is
the season when the millet is beginning to sprout.'B
Snakes are commonly credited with power over
the weather and the crops; Potrimpus is an agricultural deity one of the many agricultural
deities whose cult was ultimately merged into that
of Zemynele (Lettish, semmes maat, 'mother of
earth'), the great earth-goddess. It is worth
noting that the name Potrimpus may be connected with Old Prussian trnmpa^fliivi'us, and
that David tells us that 'flowing waters were
appropriated to him.'6 Water-spirits are often
thought to have the appearance of snakes, and,
like Potrimpus, they ' have an especial taste for
human blood.'7 Possibly Potrimpus was originally a water-snake deity. This, however, is mere
conjecture.
It is not improbable that at one time the serpent
was a common feature of Northern sanctuaries,
but here again we have no conclusive evidence.8
3, The god of healing,Michalo, a Lithuanian
writer of the 16th cent., believed that his nation
was of Italian origin on account of the striking
similarity of Lithuanian and ancient Roman rites,
'especially on account of the cult of JEseulapius,
who is worshipped in the form of a serpentthe
same form in which formerly he migrated from
Epidaurus to Rome.'9 This serpent-god can be
none other than the Ausschauts who in the 16th
cent, was still worshipped by the Sudavians in
Samland, and who is equated with JEsculapius in
the Constit. Synod, Evangel, of 1530. His name
occurs in various forms:
1 Ausceutum deum ineolumitatis et aegritudinis.'10 Auschleuts (also Ausehkauts) ' der Qott aller Gebreohen, Krankheiten und Gesundheit.'!1 'Auszweitis, nach Bretkius Auszweikua, ein Gott der Kranken trod Gesunden, von sweikas
gesund, sweikata Gesundheit.' M This derivation is probably
correct.
IP. 18,
2 Simon Grunau, Preussische Chronik, ed. M. Perlbach, Leipzig, 1876-77, i. 28,
s Cf. GB&, pt, v,, Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, London,
1912, ii. 17 f., pt. i., The Magic Art, do. 1911, ii. 1491; Old>
ham, The Sun and the Serpent, p. 154.
* &B3, pt. iv., Adonis, Attis, Osiris^, London, 1907, i. 76t
5 J6. i. 59.
8 i. 87.
7 See G3, pt. i. The Mttgie Art, ii. 150,165 f.
8 Of. above, i,
9 Respubliea Polonies Idt-uanice Prussics I/monies, p. 266.
10 Meletius, JSpist, ad Sabinum (FL xii. 296).
u David, i. 91,
i2 Prcetorius, p. 27.

422

SSBPEDSTT-WORSHIP (Teutonic and. Balto-Slavic)

David gives us a further piece of information about

Aussehauts, He describes in detail the usual
harvest festival at which four special gods were
invoiced.
-
If, however, the harvest was unsuccessful, the priest prayed
' to their excellent and most mighty god Auschkaut, that he
would intercede for them with the above-named four goda:
Pergubrius, Perkunus, Schaystix and Palwittis.' Every one
must then contribute some barley, for the brewing of the beer,
and atonement must be made for every breach of village law.
The women then brought bread (made from the first crop of
wheat) for them to eat at'their consecrated feast. The festival
lasted until all the beer had been consumed.1

There is a parallel to this in the customs of the

Ewe-speaking people.
'They invoke the snake in excessively wet, dry, or barren
seasons ; on all occasions relating to their government and the
preservation of their cattle; or rather, in one word, in all
necessities and difficulties in which they do not apply to their
new batch of gods.'2

4. The mythical serpent, The worship of

actual, living snakes may develop into the belief
in an imaginary, idealized serpent, and so give
rise to snake- or dragon-myths. Some such process may be traced in the customs and superstitions of the Letts, recorded by JFabrieius and
Paul Einhorn.

'Some of them rear dragons, in their houses, which steal

crops, which they bring back to their own people; others
nourish huge serpents, etc.' 3

Paul Einhorn seems to have been much puzzled as

to the true nature of the Lettish house-dragon, of
whose appearance and habits he gives a detailed
description:

the Letts, Lithuanians, and Old Prussians. To a

certain extent we can supply this gap in our
knowledge by comparison with the beliefs and
-r-ites-efether- -peoplesthere -being-no important
feature of Baltic serpent-worship for which WQ
cannot find parallels elsewhere. The Lithuanians,
Letts, and Old Prussians seem to have credited
the snake with healing powers and with influence
over the weather, crops, and human fertility.
The souls of the dead were probably thought to
be incarnate in snakes. The serpent, in its malignant aspect, seems to have played little part in
Baltic religion, unless, perhaps, we mayH;race-it
in the superstitions connected with the aitwars
and the puke,
III. SLAVIC,The Slavic snake-cult was probably very similar to that which prevailed among
the Baltic peoples.1
According to Afanasief, Russian peasants' consider it a happy
omen if a snake takes up its quarters in a cottage, and they
gladly set out milk for it. To kill such a snake would be a very
great sin.'3

Popular superstition preserved the belief that

the snake brings wealth and has the gift of
healing. In Slavic fairy-tales the power of the
snake depends on its possession of ' living waters.'3
Certain features of the old cult of the housesnake survive in the superstitions connected with
the domvvoy, a house-spirit not unlike the Lithuanian aitwars and the Lettish pwke,4 The domovoy
lives behind the stove, but may be found wherever
fires are lighted. He hides behind the stove in
the daytime, but comes out at night and eats the
food that has been left out for him. He is in the
habit of robbing neighbouring peasants for the
sake of his own people; occasionally he even
harms those of his own household, sometimes going
so far as to burn down the house. His close connexion with the domestic hearth, and the fact
that he appears at times in the likeness of the
master of the house, show that he is really an
ancestral spirit. He is usually thought of as in
human shape, but

' This nation has also had just such an evil and horrible god
of. wealth [i.e, as Pluto], whom they call Puke . . . but the
Germans . . . call him the dragon.' This dragon was still kept
by many people even in Einhorn's day. He would steal riches
ind crops and bring them to the people who entertained him.
* He is fiery-red in appearance and flies quietly through the air
like a burning fire." ' He is red when he is hungry; when he is
well-fed with the corn he has stolen, he is quite blue and
horrible to see. If any householder wishes to keep him and
gain wealth through his services, he must prepare a special
chamber for him . . . which must be kept perfectly clean . . ,
nobody must enter there, except the master of the house, and
those whom he will have withiu . . . not every one must know
what sort of a chamber it is,* He must always have the first
share of all beer a_nd bread and other food, otherwise he will
consider himself insulted and burn down the house. He is 1 in White Russia the Domovoy is called Tsmok, a snake, . . .
often to be seen in the evening, but those who keep him do so This House Snake brings all sorts of good to the master who
in great secrecy, and either cannot or will not say much about treats it well and gives it omelettes, ... if this be not done
him.*
the snake will burn down the house.' 5

The Lettish puke may be compared with the Dlugosz, in his History of Polaiid (15th cent.),
Lithuanian aitwars. Opinions seem to have mentions a certain 'deus vitae quern vocabant
differed as to the appearance of this being.
Zywie.'5 Bruckner7 suggests that this Eywie,
'The Aitwars, or Incubus, is described by_ the Nadravian and also perhaps ' Siwa dea Polaborum' mentioned
peasant as having human shape, but with incredibly large by Helmold, may be really the house-snake.
hands and feet.'5
may be derived from smib (ef. Lath.
The Nadravians draw a distinction between the Both names
'living'; ef. Lith, gywate, 'snake').
aitwars, the barzdukkas, and the kaukitcsits, who gywas,
The snake, as the ' living one,' was often supbring wealth and crops to people.
posed to embody a dead man's soul, and so came
' The Barsdukkai live beneath, the Aitwars above, the earth. to be connected with death, and to assume a
These Barsdukkai look like men, but the Aitwars has the
malignant character. It is this aspect of the
appearance of dragon w great snake, with fiery head,' 6
The aitwars, like the puke, sometimes does good snake that appears in Slavic fairy-stories.
' In that kingdom in which Ivan lived there was no day, but
and sometimes ill to those with whom he lives.
night: that was a snake's doing.'8 'The Serpent
He is in the habit of stealing. He flies through always
[Zmyei] is described in the stories as "winged," "fiery,"
the air. He must have the first taste of all food. " many-headed" ... he is spoken Of as guarding treasures of
Occasionally he burns down the house in which he bright metals and gleaming gems, and as carrying off and imfair maidens.' He is the great antagonist of the hero.
lives,7 It is dangerous to have an aitwars in the prisoning
'In some of the stories he bears a surname which points to his
house during a thunder-storm, because Perkunus, connexion
with the Deity of the Hearth, being called Zapechny,
the thunder-god, is likely to strike him for being or Zatrubnik, or Popyaloffrom peek [the stove], or truba [the
too familiar with men, and, since it is owing to stove-pipe or chimney], orpepel [ashes].'9
men that he is punished, he will revenge himself
The snake seems to be similar to, or even identiby burning down their home.8
cal with, other evil beings who figure in the
5, Conclusion.We have some detailed descrip- stories, especially ' Koshchei the Immortal' and
tions of the ritual, but little direct information as the flying witch, or Baba Yaga.
to the ideas which lay behind the serpent-cult of
1 See above, n.

3 David, i, 92.
2 W, Bosman, ' Description of the Coast of Guinea,' tr. from
Dutch in 3. Pinkerton, General Collection of Voyages and
Travels, London, 1808-14, xvi. 494.
3 Of. above ; Fabrieius, in Script. Rer. Linon. ii. 441,
* 'Ein christlicher Unterrieht,' Script, tier, Livon, ii. 824.
5 Prsetorius, p. 13.
6 Jft p 29
lib, p. 30.
8/6. p. 21

2 W. R. S. Ralston, Tkt Smgs of the Russian People*, p. 175.

3 IT), p. 1741
4 See above, rr., and art. DBMONS AND SPIRITS (Slavic).
5 Ralston, p. 125.
5 Histories Polcmicce, Leipzig, 1711-12, i., Opera, ed. Cracow,
1873, x. 47 f.
7 Arohi-ofUr slav, Philologie, siv. [1892] 179.
8 Ralston, p. 176.
8 /&, p. 174.

SSTTLSJMSNTS

423

In the Ukraine the flying witch ia usually called a snake ; in was Arnold Toynbee (1852-83), who stayed with
a Slovak tale the sons of a Baba Taga are described as " baneful snakes," One of the tastes which characterise the snake of the Barnetts rather oftener than the other men,
fable ia sometimes attributed to the Baba Taga also. She is and once for a few weeks took rooms in Commercial
supposed "to love to suck the white breasts of beautiful Road; but his health was too fragile to bear the
women." Like the Snake, also, she keeps guard over and knows pain and strain of residence, and the experiment
the use of the founts of "Living Water"that water which
curea wounds and restores the dead to life. . . . But, as a soon ended.
It was in the rooms of Mr. Cosmo Lang (aftergf ueral rule, the Baba Taga is described as a being utterly
nialevolent and always hungering after human flesh. Accord- wards Archbishop of York) that the undergraduates
ing to some traditions, ahe even feeds on the souls of the dead. in Oxford ' first gathered to support the founding
The White Bussians, for instance, affirm that "Death gives the
dead to the Baba Taga, with whom she often goes prowling of a settlement to enable men to live with the
about."'i
poor,' After eleven years of service at St. Jude'a
.I. Die prosaische Edda?, ed. Ernst Wilken, in Whiteehapel, the settlement premises having
Paderborn, 1912 ; Die Lieder der alteren JSddaP, ed. K. Eilde- been built, Canon Barnett consented to become itl
brand and H. Gering, do. 1912; Saxo Grammaticus, Hist. Warden. On the anniversary of Arnold Toynbee'a
Danica, i.-ix., tr. O. Elton and F. T, Powell, London, 1894 ; death, 10th March 1884, when Balliol Chapel was
J. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, tr. J. S. Stallybrass, 4 vols.,
London, 1882-88; P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, The filled with men to do honour to his memory, ana
Religion of the Teutons, tr. B. J. Yos, Boston, 1902; J. G. after Barnett had spoken on Arnold's example, thf
Frazer, G3&, Index, s.w. ' Serpent,' ' Snake.'
II. J. G. Frazer, G&, Index, s.tro, 'Serpent,' 'Snake'; idea came to Mrs. Barnett and to Mr. Bolton King,
C. F. Oldham, The Sun and the Serpent, London, 1905; * Let us call the settlement Toynbee Hall.' So the
JBr^, $.v, 'Serpent-Worship'; Mag. herausgegeben von der first settlement began in the spirit of An^old
leUisoMiterarisehen Gesettsoha.fi, TT, xiv. [1868] ; sea artt. OLD Toynbee. And of Mm Benjamin Jowett wrotw:
PRUSSIANS and NATURE (Lettish, Lithuanian, and Old Prussian)
"The "imitation of Christ" was to Mm the essence of
for further literature.
1IL W. R. S. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People*, Christianity; the life of Christ needed no other witness. His
London, 1872; A. Bruckner, 'Mythologische Studien,' iii. in labours among the poor were constantly sustained by the conviction that some better thing was reserved both for them and
Archivfur slav. Philologie, adv. [1892].
for us: he saw them as they were in the presence of God; h
ENED WELSFOBD,
thought ol them as the heirs of immortality.'1

SETTLEMENTS. I. Origin and development, Settlements (university, college, public

school, or generically social) represent an attempt
made by the Christian spirit in the latter part of
the 19fch cent, to obviate one of the gravest moral
and social dangers attendant on the growth of great
cities. In the days of small towns all classes the
feudal chief or lord of the manor, the leading
citizens, the tradesmen, the working peoplewere
housed not very far apart. In the cluster of
villages which afterwards expanded into the
metropolis there was a similar juxtaposition of
the various social grades. This meant always the
possibility, and often the reality, of neighbourly
relations. Rich and poor, high and low, were
personally known to each other and could be
mutuaDy helpful. But the expansion of the town
and the absorption of the adjoining villages almost
entirely swept away the old neighbourliness, The
well-to-do chose for their residence the most delirable regions, where the soil, the elevation, the
salubrity of the atmosphere, made for the general
amenity of life. The less desirable areas were left
to the inflowing tide of the wage-earning poor,
Thus arose that menace to civic stability and
negation of Christian neighbourliness known as
the residential separation of the classes. Revolutionary Paris had shown what fearful evils might
result. It was to bridge over the social chasm
thus formed that the settlement came> into being.
It was the direct outcome of the Christian spirit.
The first modern settlement practically began
when the Rev, Samuel Barnett and his well-to-do
bride decided to accept the living of St. Jude's,
Whitechapel, which the then Bishop of London
described as the worst parish in his diocese,
inhabited mainly by a criminal population, and
one which had, he feared, been much corrupted by
doles. Animated by as profound a spirit of
Christian self-sacrifice as any Francis or Damien,
the pair who were married on 28th January 1873
entered on their work in Whiteehapel on March
6 of the same year. Two years later they paid
their first visit together to Oxford, when they
talked over to the men ' the mighty problems of
poverty and the people.' Mrs, Barnett writes :
' We used to ask each undergraduate as he developed
interest to come and stay in Whiteehapel and see
for himself : and they came, some to spend a few
weeks, some for the Long Vacation, while others
took lodgings in East London.' Among these men
1 Ealston, p. 162 f.

Thus, prompted by the ethical and religious

motive, the first university settlement at Toynbee
Hall was founded in 1884. The aim of this, as
of every true settlement, was to heal the breach
between the classes, to bring at least representatives of all classes into helpful contact, to create
a better mutual understanding, to promote _ by
personal friendship and social study a truer civic
synthesis. In other words, the settlement is
designed to bring those who have many social
advantages, such as education, influence, leisure, or
wealth, into touch with those who have few social
advantages or none, to become acquainted with the
real needs of the people, to supply where^lacking
the elements of social leadership, and to. smooth
down the rough edges of social antagonism.
This general idea is capable of vast variation.
There are in the British Isles nearly 50 settlements;
in the United States, it is reckoned, more than 400,
Kindred institutions have sprung up in Paris,
Berlin, and other cities on the Continent, Almost
every settlement has developed differently. The
two chief causes of difference are the difference of
the neighbourhood and the difference of the staff,
Some settlements are pre-eminently academic *, they
have become a permanent resident society for
university extension. Others have been intensely
ecclesiastical in motive. Others, again, have been
what may be termed broadly religious, shading
off into merely ethical or cultural centres. A
number of settlements, particularly in America,
have been chiefly training schools for social workers,
American settlements are often on a larger scale
than British, With characteristic munificence
money is poured out on large buildings and in
many salaries. Perhaps the most important work
of the American settlements has been the development of a common spirit and of a civic unity amid
the crowd of different nationalities and languages
among which-they were planted,
Women's settlements, both in England and in
America, have done excellent work, chiefly among
woman and children, in tending invalid children,
in providing children's country holidays, maintaining maternity societies, co-operating with employment exchanges and care committees, training and
shepherding domestic servants, health visiting,
relief committee work, and training of social
workers. Where the women's settlement works in
conjunction with the men's settlement, the effect
* Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution*
London, 1887, prefatory memoir, p. xvii.