Foreign friends always wonder at how we could possibly revere reptiles. I guess it’s to do with the mythology you inherit. To many people on the planet the snake is not really an avatar of Shaitan, as in the serpent of Eden. As D.H. Lawrence puts it in his poem, The Snake: “The voice of my education said to me/He must be killed.But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet..” But, conditioned to be most afraid, he throws a log at the snake, which convulses and vanishes. “And immediately I regretted it. I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! I despised myself.”Out in Korea, the Buddhist poet So Chong-Ju (pen-name, ‘Midang’) who was influenced by Baudelaire and Nietzsche, wrote Flower-Snake Poems (1941) that expressed the same ambivalence: “A back road pungent with musk and mint/So beautiful, that snake/What huge griefs brought it birth? Such a repulsive body!”We know our position on this. At a physical level, we’d be scared to death of being bitten by a real snake. But at an emotional level, we revere it as a mystical symbol of inmost energy, uniting body-mind-spirit. In mythology, it is embodied magnificently as Thousand-headed Ananta aka Seshnag (Bhagwan Vishnu’s waterbed). Equally it is wicked Kaliya who poisoned the Yamuna and was danced on by Krishna. It is Takshaka, the serpent Lord whose grandson Astika saved the race of Nagas from King Janmejaya’s vengeful sacrifice. It is Garuda’s cousin and enemy. But because it was feared and despised by the world, Shiva, the ever-compassionate, gave it a place of honour on his own neck. It’s not surprising actually that Shiva understood the snake’s position. As Rudra, the early Vedic deity, he too was regarded with very mixed feelings. The Vedic hymns to Rudra fear his wild Rudra-ness, and while seeming to praise him, actually beg him to stay as far away as possible.Meanwhile, modern Indian voices seem to show no fear, but only reverence. You can hear the praise from old Natya Sangeet songs like Nagasayana Narayana to a score of films about nagins, ichha-dhari saap and wicked jogis (always called Bhairon Nath, in bizarre parody of poor Shivji). So I tell my foreign friends: “Snakes are part of our package, in our land and in our heads”. And when we pass Nag Devta’s shrine, you bet I bob a namaste! It’s one more way to tryst with the Compassionate Lord and remind ourselves that despite God’s inordinate fondness for creepy things, perhaps His oddest creation is us.
