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of any priest. The cock to Aesculapius ("huic gallinae immolabantur") may have had the same function originally, for the cock is always the sun-bird. Seldom is Vet[=alla personified. When he has an image (and in the North he sometimes has temples) it is that of an armless and legless man; but again he is occasionally represented as a giant 'perfect in all his parts.'[27] To the Brahman, Vet[=a]la is still a mere fiend, and presides over fiends; nor will they admit that the red on his stones means aught but blood. In such a god, one has a clue to the gradual intrusion of Civa himself into Brahmanic worship. At first a mountain lightning fiend, then identified with Rudra, a recognized deity, then made anthropomorphic. There are, especially in the South, a host of minor Hindu deities, half-acknowledged, all more or less of a fiendish nature in the eyes of the orthodox or even of the Çivaite. Seen through such eyes they are no longer recognizable, but doubtless in many instances they represent a crude form of natureworship or demonology, which has been taken from the cult of the wild tribes, and is now more or less thoroughly engrafted upon that of their civilized neighbors. [28]
One of the most interesting, though not remarkable, cases of similarity between savage and civilized religions is found in the worship of snakes and trees.[29] In the N[=a]ga or dragon form the latter cult may have been aided by the dragon-worshipping barbarians in the period of the northern conquest. But in essentials not only is the snake and dragon worship of the wild tribes one with that of Hinduism, but, as has been seen, the tatter has a root in the cult of Brahmanism also, and this in that of the Rig Veda itself. The poisonous snake is feared, but his beautiful wave-like motion and the water-habitat of many of the species cause him to be associated as a divinity with Varuna, the watergod. Thus in early Hinduism one finds snake-sacrifices of two sorts. One is to cause the extirpation of snakes, one is to propitiate them, Apart from the real snake, there is revered also the N[=a]ga, a beautiful chimerical creature, human, divine, and snake-like all in one. These are worshipped by sectaries and by many wild tribes alike. The N[=a]ga tribe of Chota N[=a]gpur, for instance, not only had three snakes as its battleensign, but built a serpent-temple.[30]
