Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s3.t1.28

v2.c27.s3.t1.28

The Nāgpanchami Festival : Serpent Worship.—The 5th is the Nagpanchami, or day set apart for the propitiation of the chief of the reptile race, the Naga or serpent. Few subjects have more occupied the notice of the learned world than the mysteries of Ophite worship, which are to be traced wherever there existed a remnant of civilization, or indeed of humanity; among the savages of the savannahs² of America, and the magi of Fars, with whom it was the type of evil,—their Ahrimanes.³ The Nagas, or serpent-genii of the Rajputs, have a semi-human structure, precisely as Diodorus describes the snake-mother of the Scythae, in whose country originated this serpent-worship, engrafted on the tenets of Zardusht, of the Puranas of the priesthood of Egypt, and on the fables of early Greece.¹ Dupuis, Volney, and other expounders of the mystery, have given an astronomical solution to what they deem a varied ramification of an ancient fable, of which that of Greece, ‘the dragon guarding the fruits of Hesperides,’ may be considered the most elegant version. Had these learned men seen those ancient sculptures in India, which represent ‘the fall,’ they might have changed their opinion. The traditions of the Jains or Buddhists (originating in the land of the Takshaks,² or Turkistan) assert the creation of the human species in pairs, called jugal, who fed off the ever-fructifying kalpa-vriksha, which possesses all the characters of the Tree of Life, like it bearing