Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/263

Rh his appearance in his shirt-sleeves, and welcoming us to Arnee, gave us the keys of one of the barracks. Having deposited our goods, and got a breakfast from our own resources—for you find no inns or cook-shops in the villages of India—we looked about us a little. The temple within the fort is surrounded by a granite wall. Before it, stands a bull, also of granite, representing the divine Bursava, on which Siva rides; and also a place for offerings. Passing these, I looked within through the grated gateway. As I stood, in such a revery as the place might well give birth to, gazing through the bars, I was startled by a sudden “Ar-athu?” (Who's that?) from a scowling Brahmin, who started up, I know not whence.

Within this temple live a number of cobra di capellas, venomous serpents, worshipped by the people, and daily fed with eggs by the priests. Fearful of offending these sacred reptiles, the people always speak of them as the “nulla pambu,” (the good snake,) and pay to them divine honours. Thus do they exemplify the character ascribed to the heathen in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, that “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incor-