Serpent Cults

Human Sacrifice.

The control of the weather was ascribed to the naga demi-gods and rajahs of India and to the "king of snakes" among North American Indians. It is significant that in India the widely-distributed Nagapane"ami-festival occurs in the rainy season. There are popular stories of springs and waters which could only be used in return for regular human sacrifices. A very rich dynasty in the Upper Niger was supposed to owe its wealth to a serpent in a well which received yearly a maiden attired as a bride ; the cessation of the practice brought drought and sickness (Hartland iii. 57 seq.). In Mexico the half-serpent Ahuizotl dragged into its pool hapless passers-by; however, their souls were supposed to go to the terrestrial para dise, and the relatives became rich through the unhappy accident. But in India human sacrifice was actually made in the expecta tion of gaining hidden treasure, and doubtless we have a survival of this when snake-charmers, for a drop of blood from the finger of a first-born, will track the snakes which are guardians of treasure (Crooke ii. 135, 17o seq.). Indian traditions tell how reformers have persuaded the people in the past to stop their human sacrifices to serpent-spirits.

The Famous Dahomey Cult.—Conspicuous in serpent cults is the prominence of women. In India, in Behar, during August, there is a colourless festival in which women, "wives of the snake," go round begging on behalf of the Brahmans and the villages. Among the Nayars of Malabar at the ceremonies of the Pambantullel, the household serpent-deities show their benev olence by inspiring with oracles certain women who must be of perfect purity: In Travancore a serpent-god is the property of a family, the priests of a temple; the eldest female carries the image at the festal processions and must lead a celibate life. The cult of the Python Danh-gbi of Whydah, after taking root in Dahomey, became the most remarkable example of a thoroughly organic serpent cult (A. B. Ellis, Ewe-speaking Peoples of Slave Coast of W. Africa, pp. 47 sqq., 140 sqq.). The python-deity is god of wisdom and earthly bliss and the benefactor of man: he opened the eyes of the first human pair who were born blind. He is specially invoked on behalf of the king (the nominal head of the priesthood) and the crops, and a very close connexion was supposed to exist between the god's agency and all agricul tural life. Initiated priests, after remaining silent in his temple for seven days, receive a new name and thus become ordained. They possess a knowledge of poisons and antidotes and thereby acquire considerable income. Children who touch or are touched by one of the many temple-snakes are sequestered for a year and learn the songs and dances of the cult. Women who are touched become "possessed" by the god. In addition to his ministrant priestesses, the god has numerous "wives," who form a complete organization. Neither of these classes may marry, and the latter are specially sought at the season when the crops begin to sprout. These "wives" take part in licentious rites with the priests and male worshippers, and the python is the reputed father of the offspring. Every snake of its kind receives the profound

veneration of the native of Whydah, who salutes it as master, father, mother and benefactor. Such snakes must be treated with every respect, and if they are even accidentally killed, the offend ing native may be burned alive. Occasional human sacrifice in honour of the god is attested.

Various Developments of Cults.

In the gloomy rites of the Diasia, the Olympian Zeus, as Zeus Meilichios god of wealth, has been imposed upon a chthonic snake-deity who is propitiated by holocausts of pigs and by a ritual of purgation (Harrison, Prol. 12-28). In the Thesmophoria (q.v.), a sowing festival of im memorial antiquity performed by women, cakes and pigs were thrown to serpents kept in caves and sacred to the corn-goddess Demeter, who, like the Bona Dea, was representative of the fertility of nature. The Maenads ("mad ones") or Bacchae, the women attendants of Dionysus, with their snake-accompaniments, are only one of the various snake-features associated with the cult of a deity who was also a god of healing. The symbol of the Bacchic orgies was a consecrated serpent, and the snakes kept in the sacred cistae of the cult of Dionysus find a parallel among the sect of the Ophites where, at the sacramental rites, bread was offered to the living serpent and afterwards distributed among the worshippers. Other developments may be illustrated from the cult of Aesculapius, who seems to have been merely a deified ancestor, or the interesting Indian healer Sokha Baba (Crooke i. 147, ii. 122) (see AESCULAPIUS).

Contests with Serpents.—For the retention of older cults under a new name, Mohammedanism supplies several examples, as when a forest-serpent of India receives a Mohammedan name (Oldham, p. 128). But sometimes there is a contest between the new cult and the old. Thus Apollo has to fight the oracle serpent of Gaia, and it has been observed that where Apollo pre vailed in Greek religion the serpent became a monster to be slain. At Thebes—the Thebans were Serpentigenae—Apollo took the place of Cadmus, who, after killing the dragon which guarded a well and freeing the district, had ended by being turned into a serpent. This looks like the assumption of indigenous traits by a foreigner—much in the same way as Hercules has contests with serpents and dragons, becomes the patron of medicinal springs, and by marrying the serpent Echidna is the ancestor of the snake-worshipping Scythians. But an ethnological tradi tion appears when Phorbas killed the serpent Ophiusa, freed Rhodes of snakes and obtained supremacy, or when Cychreus slew the dragon of Salamis and took the kingdom : compare the similar view of serpent-conflicts in Persian tradition (Fergusson, P. 44 seq.), and the story of the colonization of Cambodia, where the new-comer marries the dragon-king's daughter. A story told by Herodotus (i. 78) admirably shows how the serpent as a child of earth was a type of indigenous peoples.