Page:South-Indian Images of Gods and Goddesses.djvu/268

 an umbrella held over his head. The goddesses Ganga and Yamuna, holding chauns in their hands, stand on either side of him, the former riding on the crocodile and the latter on the tortoise.

Vayu, the lord of the north-west, is blue in colour. In his hands are seen a fan, flag, varada and abhaya. He rides on a deer (fig. 151). An image of Vayu at Chidambaram shows him only with two hands of which the right holds the flag and the left rests on the waist.

Kubera, the lord of the north and the god of treasures, is a fat, ugly person as his name implies, but serene or self-satisfied and rides on a horse (fig. 152). Hemadri describes him as riding on a man with his wife Riddhi l seated on his left thigh. He is the chief of the demi-gods called Yakshas and Kinnaras. Two treasures personified, viz., Sankhanidhi and Padmanidhi, are supposed to attend upon him on either side. He is the friend of Siva the lord of the adjoining north-east quarter.

The worship of the "serpents" (Nagas) 2 is prevalent all over India and particularly so in the west coast of the Madras Presidency, where a corner of a house or of a field is exclu- sively dedicated to the living cobra so that it may dwell there with its family group. In other parts of the Presidency on a particular day of the year sacred to the Nagas, milk, fruit and coconut are placed near a snake-hole with the object of feeding the cobra. Naga-images cut on stones as plain serpents with one, three, five, seven or nine hoods, are also worshipped. Sometimes these have a human body above the navel and a serpent's coils below. Female snakes are said to have one hood only.

Snake-stones are installed in temples and other places, on specially prepared platforms under the shade of the pipal and the margosa trees. A ceremony called " the marriage of the pipal-tree " is performed both by Brahmans and non- Brahmans, when Naga stones are also fixed under these trees amidst great rejoicing. The connexion of the Nagas with the pipal and the margosa trees is evidently a relic of the ancient tree and serpent worship. Serpents have been worshipped in India from very early times, earlier even, perhaps, than the

1 The Bhattabkaskartya calls her Chitrini.

2 It is mentioned in the Buddhist NiJdesa among the various systems of belief and superstition that prevailed in the fourth century B.C. (Dr. R. (j Bhandarkar's Vaishnavisw, Saivism, etc., p. 3).