ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 71 



and cement, ages old, and on its wide, smooth surface were 

 always to be seen several cobras, either slumbering or 

 moving drowsily towards the food unfailingly placed there 

 for them by the priests and the worshippers at the shrine. 1 

 These snakes lived constantly under the shelter of the 

 sacred stately tree, rearing their broods in the recesses of its 

 trunk, and basking in the sun on the terrace prepared for 

 their use. Thus tended they kept to their own home, and 

 were carefully guarded lest harm should befall them at the 

 hands of any one to whom their persons were not so sacred. 

 They were far too well housed and fed to think of being in 

 the least vicious. Perfectly at ease and harming no one, 

 they let themselves be handled freely, or made necklaces 

 of, by those who gave them fresh milk, eggs, cooked rice, 

 and other delicacies. And yet they were not rendered in- 

 capable of dealing death had they been so minded, not 

 being deprived of their poison fangs or mutilated in any 

 way ; to do that would have been deemed desecration 

 and an evidence of want of faith — a real, working faith 

 that, by the way. Thus was respect for their ancestors 

 shown by the people in caring for them in their pre- 

 sent incarnation. 



At a place called Capecotes, some distance from Calicut, 

 but also in Malabar, there was, and probably is still, a very 

 extraordinary temple or church of quite a different kind, 

 which strangers are welcome to see. 



I believe it was first erected by the early Portuguese 

 settlers of the fifteenth century ; but the worship conducted 

 there must have been a very bastard form of Christianity, 

 judging by the appearance of the place. Indeed, on entering 

 it and looking round it was hard to know what manner 

 of church it could be. 



The building was of country stone, roofed with tiles ; 



1 The cobras themselves were not objects of worship, but venerated as the 

 form in which ancestors were living. 



