Note 1 — X.—SERPENTS, DRAGONS, FABULOUS ANIMALS AND MONSTERS.

See Kitto’s Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature, Art. Serpents, too long for transcription in this place, but giving a most interesting sketch of serpent worship. Briefly summarized, it touches on the Naga Kings of Hinduism; the astronomical fables of the serpent Ananta, or the Milky Way, and the sun-and-moon-devouring dragons; the Scandinavian legend of the kater serpent of the deep; the Celtic, Basque and Asiatic legends of the dragon guardian of riches. “These fables were a residue of that antique dragon worship which had its temples from High Asia and Colchis to the North of Great Britain and once flourished both in Greece and Northern Africa—structures with avenues of upright stones of several miles in length whereof the ruins may still be traced at Carnak in Brittany, Abury in Wiltshire and Redruth in Cornwall.”… The author refers to the sect of Christian heretics known as Ophitæ or Ophiani, who were professed serpent worshippers; and he gives some curious details of the Egyptian Python worship, emblems of which have even been discovered in British Archæology. ↑