TREE AND SERPENT WORSHIP OR ILLUSTRATIONS OF MYTHOLOGY AND ART IN INDIA

There are few things which at first sight appear to us at the present day so strange, or less easy to account for, than that worship which was once so generally offered to the Serpent God. If not the oldest, it ranks at least among the earliest forms through which the human intellect sought to propitiate the unknown powers. Traces of its existence are found not only in every country of the old world; but before the new was discovered by us, the same strange idolatry had long prevailed there, and even now the worship of the Serpent is found lurking in outoftheway corners of the globe, and startles us at times with the unhallowed rites which seem generally to have been associated with its prevalence.