CREATURES OF MYSTERY 
195 
of office, showing a rod with two serpents entwined around it 
and topped by a pair of wings. 
In one form or another, the healing powers of the serpent 
are familiar in legend and custom. Siegfried bathed in the 
blood of the dragon he slew and thus became invulnerable; the 
blind emperor Theodosius recovered his sight when a grateful 
serpent laid a precious stone upon his eyes; Cadmus and his 
wife were turned into serpents to cure human ills. At Fer¬ 
nando Po, when there is an epidemic among children, they are 
brought to touch a serpent’s skin which hangs on a pole. The 
same ideas underlie the story of the brazen serpent which cured 
the Israelites of the bites of the serpents in the wilderness. 
In Burma and India the snake is closely connected with 
religious ceremonies, and it is not only protected but wor¬ 
shipped. The priests handle these poisonous serpents without 
fear, and receive no harm from them. Whether they exert a 
true form of hypnotic influence over them is a matter not defi¬ 
nitely determined, but like other animals, the snakes respond 
to kindness and show the results of generations of friendly 
treatment by entire absence of fear. 
A snake temple at Calicut contains several living cobras, 
which are fed by priests and worshippers; they are carefully 
protected, and allow themselves to be handled and made into 
necklaces by those who feed them. They are venerated as 
representing the spirits of ancestors. The worship of living 
snakes is also found at Mysore and at Vaisarpadi near Madras, 
where crowds of votaries assemble, generally on Sundays, in 
the hope of seeing the snakes preserved in the temple grounds. 
In the island of Nainatavoe, Ceylon, consecrated snakes used 
to be tenderly reared by the Pandaram priests, and fed daily 
at the expense of their votaries. At Bhandak, in the Central 
Provinces, a cobra appears in the snake temple on all public 
occasions, and similar cases are reported at Rajamundri, Sam- 
balpur, and Manipur. 
At the most ancient temple in Bilaspur and in Chattisgarh, 
the only temple is that of the cobra. At Nagarcoil is a temple 
of the snake-god containing many stone images of snakes; 
snakebite is considered not fatal within a mile of the temple. 
