RACE OR ORIGIN in 



The members of his family, down to an unclothed, 

 precocious imp of ten, accompany him, carrying 

 similar baskets, or capacious wallets, or long, cylin- 

 drical drums, on which they play with their fingers. 

 The dramatic effect of the whole is enhanced when 

 one of them allows a huge python, a snake of the 

 Boa constrictor tribe, which kills its prey by crushing 

 it, to wind its hideous, speckled coils round his body. 



What the snake-charmer is by race or origin 

 ethnologists may determine when they have done 

 with the gipsy. He is not a Hindu. No particular 

 part of the country acknowledges him as its native. 

 He is to the great races, castes, and creeds of India 

 what the waif is to the billows of the sea. His 

 language, in public at least, is Hindustanee, but 

 this is a sort of lingua franca, the common property 

 of all the inhabitants of the country. His religion 

 is probably one of the many forms of demon worship 

 which grow rank on the fringes of Hinduism. He 

 must be classed, no doubt, with the other wandering 

 tribes which roam the country, camping under 

 umbrellas, or something little better, each conse- 

 crated to some particular form of common crime, 

 and each professing some not in itself dishonest occu- 

 pation, like the tinkering of gipsies. 



But the snake-charmer is the best known and most 

 widely spread of them all. By occupation he is a 

 professor of three occult sciences. First, he is a 

 juggler, and in this art he has some skill. His 

 masterpiece is the famous mango trick, which 

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