The tangli snake bf Assam causes much anxiety from its fierceness; a pair of them in possession of a bamboo clump in the rear of a house, kept the whole family in a state of great alarm for days. Unable to move about their house but with the greatest precaution, they applied for relief, which was afforded by shooting the pair. The tangli is quite as active in the water as on dry laud. Whilst pursuing in a canoe, over inundated ground, a large deer, it happened . to pass one of these snakes, which, when first noticed, must have been at least 30 yards off, but, raising his head, he made for the canoe with such velocity, that though it was paddled by four strong men, it overtook the canoe, and would inevitably have been aboard, if it had not been prevented by a shot.
Snakes breed in captivity. A Russell's viper (Daboia elegans), which Dr. Shortt had kept for some seven weeks, measuring feet in length, on the 30th July 1872 produced thirty-nine young. Each little one measured inches in length, and one out of these, w hen about six hours old, in an experiment, killed in ten seconds a young partridge weighing nine and a half tolas, or 1710 grains.
Lady Faulkland mentions the case of a half witted boy of the wild tribe of Bhils, in Kandesh. He was found by his relations playing with wild snakes, and had the power of attracting and taming them. He had numbers of all kinds of snakes in the jungle, near the hut where his parents lived, and these suakes would come to him and allow him to handle them with impunity. After some months he began to be known to the people round about as a prodigy, but as the part of the country where he lived was very remote, it was long before his fame spread to any distance ; and soon after he had been heard of by the Government officials, and official inquiry had been made to an extent sufficient to verify the main facts of the story, the poor boy was bitten by one of his favourites, and died. Another case occurred in the Satara territory about A.D. 1815. It was noised abroad that the son of a Brahman, not far from Waee, had the power of attracting the most venomous snakes, and handling them with impunity. Num bers visited him, and, seeinu the story was true, spread his fame ; and his rerations finding that his reputation was likely to be profitable to them, added all sorts of man'els to the current tales. He was one of the promised avatars of the god Krishna, which are yet to come. He was to restore IIin
duism in its purity, and re-establish Brahmanical superiority in the Dekhan. Thousands flocked to see him, and pay their respects, and bring obla tions ; and so great was the excitement, that the raja of Satara and the English Government officials got alarmed. The poor boy, however, like. the Kandesh Bhil, was bitten, and died just when his village had become the point to which every devotee in the Dekhan was hastening, and the excitement subsided as quickly as it arose.
Mr. Fergusson regards tree-worship, in associa tion with serpent-worship, as the primitive faith of mankind. Ile considers it to be established that wherever human sacrifices existed, there also was the serpent an object of worship ; and where they have been most frequent and terrible, as in Mexico and Dahomey, there also has serpent-worship been the typical forni of the popular religion. Dahomey is the present chief seat of serpent-worship, where it is now practised with more completeness than anywhere else, and where this most ancient of idolatries may probably have remained from the earliest times ahnost unchanged. The chief god of the national triad is the serpent, the second the tree god, and the third the ocean. The first of these, called Danh gbwe, has 1000 female votaries, and. is worshipped with all the splendour that savage people can afford. The customs of Daho mey, with their sacrifices of 500 or 600 victims at the death of a king, or of 30 or 40 as an annual slaughter to the honour of ancestors, are here seen in that unaccountable connection with a worship of which they form no part.
The existing influence in India of the snake worship may be illustrated by mentioning that in Madras, in A.D. 1872, a daughter born to a Brahman gentleman of rare intellect, was named Nagama-h, or snake-mother, because a snake was supposed to have been seen at conception.—Macgillivray's Voyage, i. p. 66 ; APCu/. in Records, G. L F. D.; Eng. Cyc.; Tennent's Ceylon; Sharpe's Egypt, i. p. 59 ; TVard's Hindoos ; Tod's Rajasthan, i. p. 535; Forbes Rasamala ; Davy's Ceylon ; Williams' Story of Nala ; Taylor's Hind. Myth. ; Lubbock's Origin of Civil. ; Moor's Pantheon ; Spanheim; Milner's Seven Churches of Asia ; Cunningham's India ; Frere's Antipodes; Fytche, Burma ; Mason's Burma ; Bunsen's Egypt ; Fergusson's Tree and Se7ent TVorship ; Mrs. Hervey, Lady in Tartary ; _Travels in Mexico ; Darwinism in Morals, p. 199.