SERPENT WORSHIP and Spirit Worship are the prevalent cults in the East Indies ; and through: out British India, apirits, snakes, stones, shells, trees, and fossils are worshipped. The last is the saligramma of the Hindus, and is found in the river Gandak. Also the ban-lang, or rude lingam of the Hindus, is a stone rounded by attrition, found in the rivers of Rajputana. According to the Earl of Roden, a stone at Mayo was carefully wrapped up in flannel, periodically worshipped, aud supplicated to send wrecks on the coast. Stones were till recently worshipped in Fiji, New Hebrides, and related to the lingani worship of other races. The chank shell, species of Tur binella, is found in abundance in the Pambaum Channel, between Ceylon and Tinnevelly; some fetch great prices. Psalm lxxxi. 3, says, Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time ap pointed, on our solemn feast-day.' And Hindus shnilarly announce some of their festivals by the souud of this sacred shell.
Snakes have been worshipped by many races ; the Jews, 2000 years B.C., adopted this worship. At Lanuvium, 16 miles from Rome, was a dark grove sacred •to Juno, and near it the abode of a great serpent, the oracle of female chastity.
The imp snake of India, cobra di eapello, is revered by all IIindus, and Hindu women resoit to the white ant nests in which the cobra generally takes up its home. If a cobra be killed, the Hindus give it a funeral, as if it were a human being ; their gods and deified warriors, and the lingam, are figured shadowed by the outspreading hoods of 3, 5, 7, 9, or 11 cobras.
In all mythological language the snake is an emblem of itnmortality ; its endless figure, when its tail is inserted in its mouth, and the repeated renewal of its skin and vigour, afford symbols of continued youth and eternity. In Hindu myth ology serpents are of universal occurrence and importance, and the fabulous histories of Eg,ypt and Greeee are also decorated with serpentine machinery. The accepted explanation of the tradi tions of the Garuda, and his victories over the snakes, is that Garuda is the type of the religion of Vishnu, and the snakes alluded to are the naga or snake race who followed the Buddhist faith of Sakya Muni. There is ample proof to show that at one time the ophite or snake worship extended all over India ; and everywhere throughout the Peninsula, and Ceylon, snakes are to this day woishipped. In the holy books of the Hindus, the destruction of the entire serpent race by the raja Janatnejaya, the son of Paricshit, is chron icled as a historical event, but probably it is merely a typical and emblematical shadowing forth of the actual faet, i.e. that the faith of the Vedas was founded on the ruins of the original and local superstition of the nagas, when Janame jaya subverted the ancient ophite worship. At all events, there is no doubt whatever that this singular superstition existed originally in Kashmir, as snakes and snake deities play an important part in the legendary histOry of the valley.
Abul Faz1 (alluding to an epoch about 350 or 400 years n c.) mentions that there are 70U plaeet whero carved snakes are worshipped in the provine,e.' The Hindu races worship three classes of deities, — the gramma deva, or village god ; the ktila deva, or household god ; and the ista deva, the personal or patron god. Snake woi.ship is general throughout psninsular India, both of the sculptured form and of the living creature, invariably the nag or cobra, and almost every hamlet has its serpent deity. Sotnetimes this is a single snake, the hood of the cobra being spread open. Occasionally the sculptured figures are nine in number, and this form ifs called nao-nag ; but the prevailing form is that of two snakes in the form of the Esculapian rod. IVIlatever be the origin of the adoration, throughout Southern India the worahippeis resort to the snake's residence, called in Urdu the Sainp-ki-latt, which they orna ment with streaks of vermilion, and daubs of turmeric and of wheat flour mixed with sugar, and they hang, garlands of flowers near, strung on white cotton thread, and placed over wooden frames. The Mahratta women go a limber together to the snake's hut, and, joining hands, for five times circle round and round it, singing songs, praying for their desires, and then prostrating themselves. Also in the month Sravan, which falls in the rainy season, the Nag-panchatui festival occurs, on which Hindus go in search of snakes, or have them brought to their houses by the Sampeli sualce-chartters. The snakes are then worshipped, and offerings are made to them of milk, and nearly every house has figures of snakes drawn on wood or on paper, which are fixed on the walls and worshipped. Alike in the several vihara and the chaitya at Ajunta are sculptured figures of snakes. The gramma deva of Assaye, where Sir Arthur Wellesley defeated the Mah ragas, is a figure of Hanuman with a lingam, attd the Nanda or Basava, the valian bull of Siva, and the tulai plant growing near ; but on the western wall of the village chatram a cobra snake is sketched, in white colours, in the wavy form which snakes assume when inoving on the ground. The worshippers believe that it is travelling to Lanka (Ceylon), but they smiled on it being remarked to them that it would be a long thne on its journey. Figures of the cobra snake are often drawn on paper and in sculpture, with the hood spread like a canopy over the lingain, the emblem of Siva ; and this deity is often represented sitting on a tiger skin with a cobra snake wound around his head. Siva is fabled to have drunk up the poison produced in the churning of the ocean, and, in his agony, wrapped. snakes around his neck to cool himself. Vishnu, in his prolonged sleep, while passing from one avatar to another, is shaded by the canopy of a cobra's head.