huge human nose. He would help the mortal by carrying loads and mending hedges, but usually worked only while the farmer slept at noon, and always expected as his guerdon a portion of the toast and ale which his friend had for dinner in the field. If none was left for him he would cease to work, and he once roused the farmer from his noontide slumbers by thrashing him soundly with his own hedging-stake, as a punishment for such neglect.
The Peris or Fairies of these stories have nothing distinctive about them. Like the fairies of other lands they often fall in love with mortal men, and are visible to the pure eyes of childhood when hidden from the grosser vision of maturer years.
Next to the Rakshas, the Cobra, or deadly hooded snake, plays the most important part in these legends as a supernatural personage. This is one only of the many traces still extant of that serpent-worship formerly so general in Western India. As Mr. Fergusson, in his work on Buddist antiquities,[1] has thrown much light on this curious subject, I will only now observe that the serpent-worship as it still exists is something more active than a mere popular superstition. The Cobra, unless disturbed, rarely goes far from home, and is supposed to watch jealously over a hidden treasure. He is in the estimation of the lower classes invested with supernatural powers, and according to the treatment he receives he builds up or destroys the fortunes of the house to which he belongs. No native will willingly kill him if he can get rid of him in any other way; and the poorer classes always, after he is killed, give him all the honours of a regular cremation, assuring him, with many protestations, as the pile burns, 'that they are guiltless of his blood; that they slew him by order of their master,' or 'that they had no other way to prevent his biting the children or the chickens.'
A very interesting discussion on the subject of the Snake Race of Ancient India between Mr. Bayley and Baboo Rajendralal Mitr, will be found in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for February 1867.
- ↑ Fergusson's Tree and Serpent Worship: Mythology and Art in India.
