In Hindu mythology, the god Vishnu is shielded under the hood of a cobra. The snake or Naga, has long been an object of devotion in India. This month, Hindus will celebrate the snake festival of Naga Panchami. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
“Thousands of people have snakes wrapped around their necks and heads and on their shoulders. They dance through the streets. The women treat it as a very important moment for fertility and conception, so they worship and pray to the snakes. All the snakes, and there must be ten to twenty thousand snakes in this one small town, are released into the wild after the festival is over.”
Valmik Thapar is the Executive Director of the Ranthambore Foundation.
“Well in India the snake is associated with a huge amount of mythology in terms of all our old texts. It’s the snake which is the great figure in the sea on which the gods sit, on which the earth is born, on which man arrives on the planet. So the snake is associated with fertility, with regeneration, with reproduction. Twenty thousand people in India die because of snake bite and still everybody worships the snake. This attitude toward the snake is phenomenal. It’s why we have a lot of snakes and why people will not kill snakes. Sometimes they don’t even use the name ‘Naga.’ They’ll call it an insect because if you use the name snake you’re supposed to get a slap from the snake. So you call it by another name. So I think there is a link right down where the first texts or the first visuals are seen with the snake which are about the snake being a great regenerative power in human life.”
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.