How an American paper described Kerala’s snake-worshipping tradition in 1903

As someone who grew up in big cities outside Kerala, my only prolonged exposure to our ancestral home or ‘tharavadu’ was a summer spent in my great-grandmother’s home in the mid-1980s, when I was 8 years old. Like any city-dwelling child who saw TV programmes of snakes devouring unfortunate prey, I had a mortal fear of snakes. Our ancestral home in Tattamangalam, like many others, had its own sarpa kavu or sacred grove with idols of serpents.

I didn’t quite understand what to make of this kavu, but older-generation family members had a strong belief that our snake deities protected us and needed to be appeased for the well-being of the family. Many families who still consult astrologers for solutions to health or other woes are told of the anger of their snake gods and suggested remedies of varying types for this.

It’s next to impossible for a person with a scientific temper to take such recommendations seriously, but I am genuinely fascinated with the snake-revering traditions of my extended family, from which I am separated by just one generation.

A deep dive through the archives helped me find a report on the erstwhile New York Tribune from June 1903.

“A legend says the first batch of colonists who Parasu Rama marched into the country found it so arid that they fled back to their old homes,” the paper said, citing an article from the Chamber’s Journal. “During their absence, serpents from the lower world entered into possession, and when the colonists were taken back, they made a desperate effort to expel the invaders. The war was fierce and long, but nothing prevailed against the invaders, and at length a compromise was effected. The interlopers being allowed to remain, but to confine themselves strictly to the southwest corner of every occupied garden or compound. It was also arranged that the demarcated plots should be untouched by knife or spade, so as to allow the vegetation to flourish and afford a congenial habitation for the snakes.”

The article further said that locals in Travancore would actually refer to a live snake in the kavu as a god.

“How harmless these serpent divinities of Travancore are, we may further judge from the fact that the children of the household play about fearlessly in the neighbourhood of the groves, even while their serpentine friends are gliding about in the undergrowth or lie basking in the sun, and they have never been known to be harmed,” the New York Tribune wrote.

I personally did not hear of any family members from my grandparents’ generation being killed by snakebites, but it’s hard to believe that a venomous reptile spared a random unsuspecting child who stepped on it. Whoever this writer was, he seemed to take these stories or rather legends, at face value.

The report said snake-worshipping was popular in the then British Indian districts of South Canara and Malabar, as well as the princely states of Travancore and Cochin. It added that Travancore alone had 15,000 to 20,000 sarpa kavus.

It added that in all parts of Travancore, “Brahman gentlemen” are called to remove snakes from one grove to another. This would appear to be the most ludicrous part of the article for anyone who has even a remote understanding of the caste system.

The New York Tribune article also mentions the town of Nagercoil, which was then a part of Travancore. “The copper gilt idol of the serpent mother is carried in procession in a car once a year,” the report said. “Thousands of devotees assemble at the temple weekly and on special days during the year to worship the serpent goddess, and to carry offerings of milk, sugar and coconuts to the living cobras.”

The local belief at that time was that no snake bite within a one-mile radius of the temple would prove to be fatal, the paper said. This was obviously a popular myth of the time.

The 1903 article is nonetheless very informative for those interested in the history and folklore of Kerala. Snake-worshipping and sarpa kavus are a part of our Malayali cultural heritage. We must know more about the origins of these practices and how they greatly influenced our people over time.