n and preserved as
possessing similar virtues. He being thus made the organ to obtain
fertility for the lands of others, the Badi is supposed to entail
sterility on his own; and it is firmly believed that no grain sown
with his hand can ever vegetate. Each District has its hereditary
Badi, who is supported by annual contributions of grain from the
inhabitants." It is not improbable that the performance of the Nat
is a reminiscence of a period when human victims were sacrificed
for the crops, this being a common practice among primitive peoples,
as shown by Sir J.G. Frazer in _Attis, Adonis, Osiris_. Similarly the
spirits of Nats which are revered in the Central Provinces may really
be those of victims killed during the performance of some charm for the
good of the crops, akin to that still prevalent in the Himalayas. The
custom of making the Nat slide down a rope is of the same character
as that of swinging a man in the air by a hook secured in his flesh,
which was formerly common in these Provinces. But in both cases the
meaning of the rite is obscure.

6. Snake-charmers

The groups who practise snake-charming are known as Sapera or Garudi
and in the Maratha Districts as Madari. Another name for them is
Nag-Nathi, or one who seizes a cobra. They keep cobras, pythons,
scorpions, and the iguana or large lizard, which they consider to be
poisonous. Some of them when engaged with their snakes wear two pieces
of tiger-skin on their back and chest, and a cap of tiger-skin in
which they fix the eyes of various birds. They have a hollow gourd
on which they produce a kind of music and this is supposed to charm
the snakes. When catching a cobra they pin its head to the ground
with a stick and then seize it in a cleft bamboo and prick out the
poison-fangs with a large needle. They think that the teeth of the
iguana are also poisonous and they knock them out with a stick,
and if fresh teeth afterwards grow they believe them not to contain
poison. The python is called Ajgar, which is said to mean eater of
goats. In captivity the pythons will not eat of themselves, and the
snake-charmers chop up pieces of meat and fowls and placing the food
in the reptile's mouth massage it down the body. They feed the pythons
only once in four or five days. They have antidotes for snake-bite,
the root of a creeper called _kalipar_ and the bark of the _karheya_
tree. When a patient is brought to them they give him a little pepper,
and if he