Note 149 — Chapter II · TREE AND SERPENT WORSHIP.
Reading edition
They are, in fact, as we have already seen, the representatives of the benevolent ancestral ghosts. Hence the deep-rooted prejudice against killing the snake, which is both guardian and god. “If,” says Mr. Lang,149 “the serpent were the deity of an earlier race, we could understand the prejudice against killing it, as shown in the Apollo legend.” The evidence accumulated in this chapter will perhaps go some way to settle this question, as far as India is concerned.