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The Tales in Mahābhārata
is called Suparni ("the fair-winged one") in the Satapatha Brāhmaṇa, III.62 ... She is possibly the canopy of heaven, regarded as the mother of birds and of the Sun-bird Garuda in particular.?49 He also notes the fact that the 'serpent sacrifice of Janamejaya has been expressly designated as a sacrifice taught in the Purāņas, and a Sūta well-versed in the Puiānas (and not a Brāhmin sacrificing priest) marks out the sacrificial ground ... From this also we find that we have not in this case .. to deal with a Vedic sacrifice, but with a popular magic practice. 50 The stories of other countries normally run like this: A magician sets up either a burning pole, or an oven or a hollow pillar filled with inflammable things, and exorcises the noxious serpents which trouble the people of a particular place. There is. however, either an uncounted serpent or a white ser pent about which the people have either not known or not informed the magician. He appears and drags the magician also alongwith him into the fire. In one story, 51 the magician has taken the precaution to sit upon a consecrated object; therefore, the final serpent is not able to drag him alongwith him. Winternitz refers to an actual ceremony witnessed by Sir Vincent Eyre at Luchon in Pyrennes52 in which the people of that place set up a hollow column of plaited work, sixty feet high, decorate it with green leaves and plants, fill it with inflammable material, and then on the evening preceding the mid-summer day, throw very many living serpents into that column which is set on fire, and dance around it. This anthropological evidence of an actual ceremony is indeed very striking. Winternitz notes that Jacobi believes the Janamejaya-story to be a myth conceived on account of the new geographical conditions as the Aryans advanced towards Eastern India, Ludwig believes it to be rains-and-snow myth, whereas C. F. Oldham “regards the serpent-demons or the Nāgas as being only a tribe of people, holds that the legends of the serpent sacrifice is a reminiscence of the victory of Janamejaya over some Nāga tribe and of somewhat violent extermination of the Nāga captives of war53 and that J. J. Bachofen agrees with him. Winter nitz himself believes that the resemblance of the extra-Indian tales with that of Janamejaya's snake-sacrifice is not accidental. Either it points to some Indo-Germanic pre-historic myth or to the similar psychological motive everywhere. In either case, all the stories must be explained in the same way. They all agree in this 'that the serpents are constrained, by the power of the magicians, to hurl themselves in the flames. The primary thing is the fear of the serpents; the extirpation of the serpents has become the motive of a magnified magic process, in which - as in Luchon - even living serpents are thrown into the fire. The reminiscence of such primeval magic practices his preserved itself in the legands where, by exaggerating the power of the magician, the serpents as such are represented 49 Winternitz's article (fn. 46), p.79. Cf also Suparņādhyāya : 1.11.1: dyaur asit tatra vinată
suparni bhumis tu năgy abhavat kadrü-nämā // 50 ibid. p.90. 51 ibid. p.88. fq.15. 52 ibid. p.89. 53 ibid. p.90
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