Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

Serpent Faith,
i8i
India, however, Is down to our time the high seat of
Ophiolatreia.
The Maruts, Rudras, and Pitris are esteemed "Fiery
dragons of wisdom," as magicians and Druids were of old.
Abulfazl states that there are seven hundred locahtics
where carved figures of snakes are objects of adoration.
There are tribes in the Punjaub that will not kill a snake.
Vishnu is associated with the reptile in various ways.
Sesha,
the serpent king, with one hundred heads, holds up the
earth. The Nagas are given up to this peculiar worship.
The Buddhist poem Nagananda relates the contest
between Garuda, king of the birds, and the prince of the
Naga or snake deities.
India beyond the Ganges has, as in Cambodia, magnificent
temples in its honour. The soul of a tree in Siam may
appear as a serpent. " In every ancient language," writes
Madame Blavatski, " the word Dragon signified what it now
does in Chinese, i.e. the being who excels in intelligence."
The brazen serpent is in the East the Divine Healer. yEsculapius
cannot do without his serpent. In the Hell of
the Persians, says Hyde, " The snake ascends in vast
rolls
from this dark gulf, and the inside is full of scorpions
and serpents."
In the poem Voluspa of the Edda we read
— " I know there is in Nastzande (Hell) an abode remote
from the sun, the gates of which look towards the north.
It is built of the carcases of serpents."
The ancient Greeks borrow^ed their serpent notions from
older lands through the medium of Phoenician traders.
Hesiod's monster, the Echidna, w^as half "a speckled serpent,
terrible and vast."
The Atmedan of Constantinople, showing
three brazen serpents interwined, \vas said to have been
taken by the Greeks from the Persians at PlatcXa.
Apollo,
the Greek Horus, fights the Python of darkness, as a sungod
should do, but owns a serpent symbol. Euripides