The Household Snake.
The belief in the influence of the guardian domestic or national snake is universal. When the Persians invaded Athens the people would not leave the city till they learned that the guardian snake had refused its food and abandoned the citadel. A snake at Lanuvium and at Epirus resided in a grove and was waited on by a virgin priestess, who entered naked and fed it once a year, when by its acceptance or refusal of the offering, the prospects of the harvest were ascertained. The Teutons and Celts had also their sacred guardian snake.
IMAGE OF THE HOUSEHOLD SNAKE.
In the Panjâb Hills, every householder keeps an image of the Nâga or harmless snake, as contrasted with the Sânp, which is venomous. This snake is put in charge of the householder’s homestead, and is held responsible that no cobra or dangerous serpent enters it. It is supposed to have the power of driving all cobras out of the place. Should rain drive the house snake out of his hole, he is worshipped. No image of a cobra or other venomous snake is ever made for purposes of worship. Ant-hills are believed to be the homes of snakes, and there the people offer sugar, rice, and millet for forty days.147 These correspond to the benevolent domestic snakes, of whom Aubrey says that “the Bramens have them in great veneration; they keep their corne. I think it is Tavernier mentions it.”148
They are, in fact, as we have already seen, the representatives of the benevolent ancestral ghosts. Hence the deep-rooted prejudice against killing the snake, which is both guardian and god. “If,” says Mr. Lang,149 “the serpent were the deity of an earlier race, we could understand the prejudice against killing it, as shown in the Apollo legend.” The evidence accumulated in this chapter will perhaps go some way to settle this question, as far as India is concerned.