HKB
swallowed the rat, brings the dislocated gearing of his jaws together and thinks no more about it, or that the musk-rat is just as welcome to him as any other.
Sayings which treat the snake as purely noxious may be guessed to be mainly Muhammadan, but the Hindu is not prevented by a sense of veneration from speaking his mind, as the numerous gibes at Brahmans show. "The snake moves crookedly as a rule, but to his own hole he can go straight enough," is a reflection on a Brahman or a cunning and selfish person. "In a council of snakes tongues play fast," is a reproach to those who talk much and do little. The silent play of the serpent tongue, however, scarcely suggests talk. "Even the breath of a snake is bad" is a common saying. I have noticed an evil odour in the breath of a python, the only creature of the race I have ventured to be intimate with, and it may be this is based on observation.
"The gadding wife sees a snake in the roof of her own house" is a wise word for India, but inapt for England, where the customs of modern good society have elevated gadding into a duty and a fine art and falsified the folk-talk of ages. "Kill the snake but do not break the stick," is sensible advice often given to over-eager people; and to those who miss opportunities, "The snake is gone, beat the line of his track." To appreciate this it should be remembered that over the greater part of India is a layer of dust on which the track left by a snake is plainly imprinted. The hopelessness of snake-bite is acknowledged in "Bitten by a snake, wants no water," i.e. will not live to drink it. The snake's bite goes in like a needle but comes out like a ploughshare, is an expressive phrase used in Bengal. A rhyming saying might be Englished "After snake-bite sleep, after scorpion weep." In the first case the sleep of course is eternal. Of the deadly little Kupper snake they say in Western India, "Its bite begins with death." Another contrast with the relatively harmless scorpion is a saying applied to rash and foolish persons, "Doesn't even know the spell for a scorpion, but must stick his finger in a snake's mouth." "Even in a company of ten the serpent is safe," they are all so much afraid of it is the inference. "One serpent can frighten a whole army" is an expansion of the same notion. But there is something worse than even snake-bite: "You may survive the cobra's fang, but nothing avails against the evil eye," says popular superstition.
There is a popular belief that to see a couple of snakes entwined together, as on the wand of Esculapius and the caduceus of Hermes in classic sculpture, is a most fortunate event. It is certainly rare, and a friend of mine who saw a pair of cobras thus engaged says this encurled dalliance is a surprising and beautiful sight. A single cobra reared in act to strike stands high, but a pair twisted together and full of excitement rear up to a great height. The heads with expanded hoods are in constant movement, and the tongues play like forked lightnings. Then he fetched his gun and shot them both dead. A Hindu would have folded his hands in adoration and considered himself made lucky for life by this auspicious sight.