Few places in the world do snakes feel as at ease as in India. You are not insured against meeting them not only in the jungle, on the banks of a river or lake, but also in the middle of a highway, and even in a comfortable hotel room. As a rule, creeping reptiles visit people's homes during the monsoon period, when streams of water flood their burrows. But the recent tsunami disrupted the established order - thousands of snakes from the flooded areas rushed inland. For people, this poses a serious danger, because snakes in India cannot be killed, since these animals are sacred. And it is not by chance that the craft of snake charmers exists only here …
The world stands on serpents
For Indians, deliberate or accidental killing of a snake is a grave sin. In the south of the country, mourning mantras are necessarily recited over a killed snake. Her remains are covered with a silk cloth embroidered with a ritual pattern, laid on sandalwood logs and burned on a funeral pyre.
The cult of the snake has been in India for more than five thousand years. Majestic temples have been erected in her honor. Reptiles carved on stones are found near villages, under sacred trees, near wells and reservoirs. The roots of this cult go back to the deep layers of pre-Aryan culture. According to the ancient cosmogonic ideas of the Indians, the support of the Universe is the numerous heads of the Shesh serpent floating in the waters of the World Ocean. The guardian Vishnu rests on a bed of serpent rings. Another great serpent, Ananta, wraps its dark blue body around the earth. Another powerful snake - Vasuki - is a formidable destroyer Shiva constantly wears on himself as a sacred thread. Sesha, Ananta, and Vasuki are the recognized kings of the nagas, semi-divine beings with snake bodies and one or more human heads.
In general, there are countless legends and tales about snakes in India, the most unexpected signs are associated with them. It is believed, for example, that the snake personifies perpetual motion, is the embodiment of the soul of the ancestor and the guardian of the house. For this reason, Hindus love to have the serpent mark on either side of the front door. For the same protective purpose, the peasants keep small serpentariums in their yards, where sacred cobras live. If an Indian family moves to a new place, then they definitely take all the snakes with them. In turn, those with some instinct distinguish the owners and never bite them.
An old snake skin found in India is called a good omen. The owner of such a trophy will certainly put a piece of snakeskin in his wallet, believing that it will bring him wealth. Many Indians believe that the cobra stores precious stones in its hood. It is also believed that snakes possess the secrets of medicinal herbs, but they carefully protect them and reveal only to a select few - spellcasters.
The inability of an Indian woman to give birth to a child is often explained by the offense that a woman inflicted on reptiles in this or one of her past lives. To earn forgiveness, Tamils - representatives of the people living in southern India and northern Sri Lanka - pray to a stone image of a snake. They say that in the town of Rajahmandi (near Madras) there was a once dilapidated termite mound, where an old cobra lived. Suffering women came in droves to the lonely mound. They sat for long hours near the termite mound, hoping to contemplate the sacred animal. Sometimes the cobra crawled out of its den to bask in the sun or taste the eggs, pieces of meat and rice balls brought to it. Those who managed to see the snake returned home happy, confident that their prayer was finally heard and the gods would grant them a child. Together with adult women, very little girls sometimes went to the cherished termite mound, praying in advance for a happy motherhood.
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An amazing story happened in the village of Irinchayam. The author of the article met a woman named Kiskhakumkara of Oman. The snakes bit her exactly twenty times - eighteen times by cobras and twice by vipers. This happened for the first time when Oman was 14 years old and she was swimming in the river. The snakes attacked the woman in the house, on the road to the market, in the walnut factory where she works, and even in the village Hindu temple. At the same time, Oman did not step on the snakes and did not in any way provoke them to take decisive action. After the last bite, the unfortunate woman turned to the local astrologer. He gave such an explanation for what happened. According to him, a woman in one of her previous lives caused the death of the snake king. And before giving up the spirit, the "high-ranking" serpent cursed the woman. He promised that in the next life the god of death Yama will come for her on a black buffalo,when twenty-one snakes poison her blood with their venom. Since then, Oman and her family have lived in constant fear. The wooden window frames of the dilapidated hut are tightly closed. The lamp is always on in the room. Every evening, the sons of Omani carefully examine the roof of the house, plug the cracks and cut down the bushes around the yard once a week. In case a guest appears, they always have sticks at hand …
We're the same blood
However, most Indians, having found a snake under their roof, will never raise a stick on it, but will try to persuade them to leave their home in peace. If the guest does not want to heed the pleas of the person, then one of the wandering snake charmers will be called for help. And such an act of the owner of the house is unlikely to cause surprise among his neighbors.
Snake charmers can be found in almost every street in India. And if it is difficult for foreign tourists to imagine Russia without matryoshkas and samovars, then snake charmers are considered an integral part of the Indian flavor. Armed with homemade pipes with a large resonator made of dried pumpkin, they sit over wicker baskets for long periods of time, waiting for tourists. To the beat of an uncomplicated melody, trained snakes raise their heads from baskets, hiss menacingly and swing their hoods. Each caster has his own, only he knows methods of working with deadly creatures. He carefully guards the secrets of the profession and passes them on to his sons. However, Indians do not consider training snakes as a profession, for them it is a way of life.
During a trip to India, the journalist visited the village of snake charmers. This is how the name of the village of Saperagaon, located in the state of Uttar Pradesh, is translated from Hindi. Here, in the Indian hinterland, people live who own this exotic and dangerous craft. The entire population of the village knows how to handle snakes. A young hostess is watering the floors from a copper jug, and a two-meter cobra lies curled up at her feet. An elderly woman prepares dinner and, with a grunt, shakes a tangled viper out of her sari. Instead of plush toys, local kids take a cobra in their bed. Each family has 4-5 different types of snakes. The pets of the fakirs are quite diverse - from a king cobra to a boa constrictor. In addition to the intricacies of snake training, saperagaonians learn the basics of catching creeping reptiles. Even for experienced spellcasters, this business remains one of the most difficult and dangerous. It takes patience and special skills to catch a snake. Old-timers of the village say that a successful hunt will not take place without a certain luck and heightened intuition. Highly skilled catchers in the village can be counted on one hand. Zmeelov enjoys special respect and receives an honorary status. Over time, when his authority becomes indisputable, he stops going out into the street with a basket and a pipe. Usually this village character is surrounded by a variety of myths and a halo of mystery. They say that the great master possesses some secret knowledge that the gods gave him. He supposedly speaks to the snakes, and they dutifully slide into his basket. It is almost impossible to become his student. In general, the inhabitants of Saperagaon are very jealous of the secrets of their skill and, when it comes to the details of catching snakes, they turn the conversation to another topic. Perhaps spellcasters have known from childhood a mysterious phrase similar to the one that Mowgli, in Kipling's The Jungle Book, won the respect of the old python. "You and I are of the same blood," said the jungle dweller.
Caster summoned?
However, market conditions are unforgiving. As it turned out, this ancient profession fell into the category of the dying. The average earnings of a snake charmer are small - 30-40 rupees per day. There is barely enough money to feed the family and their creeping pets. In addition, almost all people who practice spells suffer from severe pulmonary diseases. Doctors say that diseases are acquired as a result of over-straining the lungs when playing a wind instrument and progress rapidly in humid climates. Recently, representatives of the younger generation are not eager to follow in the footsteps of their fathers and are leaving the family business.
Therefore, spellcasters often repurpose their business and create small companies that catch snakes in large cities. Or they go to work in government agencies, for example, in the rescue service, where they remember the lessons of village elders, among whom the theory of catching snakes was considered one of the main disciplines. After all, India is the country where the death rate from snake venom is the highest in the world. According to official statistics, more than a quarter of a million people suffer from snakebites in the country every year, of which 75,000 die. This is thirty times the number of victims of tigers, leopards, panthers and other predatory animals combined. The states of West Bengal, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu hold a sad record for the number of deaths from snake bites.
The most dangerous of the snakes is the one favored by spellcasters: the cobra. Its poison begins to act a few minutes after the bite - a person is suddenly overcome by sleep. Then speech is upset, consciousness is clouded, paralysis of the respiratory muscles occurs - and death occurs.
Bites from krait, a coral snake and a small green viper found in the northeastern states are often fatal. An appropriate vaccine has been developed against the venom of each of these snakes, but it is not always possible to apply it in a timely manner. In addition, of the two hundred and sixteen species of snakes found in India, fifty-two are poisonous, and even the most prudent Indian does not carry so many vaccines with him. Therefore, it remains only to rely on the mercy of the gods and their own discretion.
Today, in Indian phone books and among advertisements in newspapers, one can find numbers of services specializing in trapping poisonous snakes. Many of the former spellcasters were employed in these services. However, why the former? They remained spellcasters, only now they switched to state support. The lords of the snakes put their pipes aside for a while and catch the reptiles with the help of a split bamboo stick, take them out of the city limits and set them free. Many hope that such a kind of reincarnation of the ancient profession will benefit the spellcasters, and the new qualification "caster-rescuer" will make it in demand.