Captain Jaurs Low on Bupp ma and the Phrabdt. 95 
and, being afraid of the anger of the Brahman, he ate it up himself, and 
prepared some common rice in its stead. 
“ During the next night the youth felt divinely inspired: his senses 
became quickened, and his understanding expanded ; all nature seemed to 
have a voice ; the herbs and flowers of the field, and the shrubs and trees 
of the forest, uttered intelligible sounds, and disclosed to him the hidden 
virtues inherent in their several juices. He wrote down all that he heard, 
and after a time became renowned for his knowledge ; and hence mankind 
have derived all that they know of the healing properties of many species of 
the vegetable kingdom.”* 
We find from Wilford’s account, in the tenth volume of the Asiatic 
Researches, that the Sacshacas, a serpent tribe famous in the Purdnas, 
have two countenances, which they assume at pleasure ; and, in the ninth 
volume, that a tribe of Nagas resided on the banks of the Jumna. Sacya 
is, in the same Researches, represented as Saka SaLivAHANA (an incarna- 
tion of the great serpent), whose period dates from the year 79 of Christ, 
and who is, perhaps, Sesostris; and the BuppHa, worshipped by the 
Siamese, is also, by Bali accounts,t the P,hoti d hatta, or king of snakes in 
the country of P haranasi (Benares), or the sixth minor Avatar, or Sri Saxya 
Mini Knovom. A serpent is the distinguishing mark of the famous Parswa- 
natTHa, cited by Mr. H. T. Colebrooke as the twenty-third deified saint of 
the Jainas, and perhaps the founder of their sect. And Major M‘Kenzie has 
remarked that snakes are pourtrayed above the statues of Jar Deo. I have 
seen them well depicted on the legs of the colossal statue of the Jaina god, 
or Gumut Deo, as the natives of the place term it, at Ellore, on the Malabar 
coast. Bupp,1A, when represented sleeping with serpents around him, is 
Visunu.t 
Serpents breathing fire guarded the mountain Meru. The wisdom or 
guile, of which the serpent has ever been a type, is thus accounted for in 
Sanscrit writings :§ 
« When Garupa stole the Amrita, or water of immortality, from Kailds, 
some of it fell from his mouth upon some grass. The serpents licked 
* Esculapius, the Grecian god of physic, according to Lieut.-Colonel Francklin, has the 
emblem of a serpent among his attributes. 
+ The Milinda Raja. + Vol. viii. Asiatic Researches, p. 74. 
§ Vide Asiatic Researches. 
