Kathasaritsagara (the Ocean of Story)
by Somadeva | 1924 | 1,023,469 words | ISBN-13: 9789350501351
This is the English translation of the Kathasaritsagara written by Somadeva around 1070. The principle story line revolves around prince Naravāhanadatta and his quest to become the emperor of the Vidhyādharas (‘celestial beings’). The work is one of the adoptations of the now lost Bṛhatkathā, a great Indian epic tale said to have been composed by ...
Note on serpent-worship
Note: this text is extracted from Book VI, chapter 34.
“Then naravāhanadatta himself worshipped the snakes in that grove of snakes, and went back to his palace with his retinue”
For serpent-worship see Tylor's Primitive Culture, vol. ii, pp. 217-220. The author of Sagas from the Far East remarks:
“Serpent-cultus was of very ancient observance, and is practised by both followers of Brāhmanism and Buddhism. The Brāhmans seem to have desired to show their disapproval of it by placing the serpent-gods in the lower ranks of their mythology (Lassen, i, 544n2 and 707). This cultus, however, seems to have received a fresh development about the time of Aśoka, circa 250 b.c. (vol. ii, p. 467). When Madhyantika went into Kashmir and Gandhāra to teach Buddhism after the holding of the third synod, it is mentioned that he found sacrifices to serpents practised there (ii, 234, 235). There is a passage in Plutarch from which it appears to have been the custom to sacrifice an old woman (previously condemned to death for some crime) to the serpent-gods by burying her alive on the banks of the Indus (ii, 467n4). Ktesias also mentions the serpent-worship (ii, 642). In Buddhist legends serpents are often mentioned as protecting patrons of certain towns”
(Sagas from the Far East, p. 355). See also Mr F. S. Growse’s Mathurā: A District Memoir, p. 71.
——See also the references already given in Vol. I, pp. 144n1, 203, 204; and Vol. II, p. 307n2, to which I would add Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-Lore, vol. ii, pp. 125-145; C. Staniland Wake, Serpent-Worship and other Essays, London, 1888; Anonymous, Ophiolatreia, privately printed, London, 1889. See also the Index Volume of Frazer’s Golden Bough under “Serpent” and “Serpents,” p. 455.—n.m.p.