Word: indias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...India snake charmers are an impoverished, filthy, untouchable lot of Jogis. With woven baskets containing their trained pythons or cobras they traipse about villages and towns. For an anna or two the charmer sets his serpent on the ground and blows through his pungi. The pungi is a bottle-shaped gourd with two reeds or bamboos inserted. One tube has finger stop-holes and emits a shrill penetrating whine. The other has no holes and gives out a drone. Snakes have no ears. But under their skin they have two primitive ear drums and through those the Indian snake feels...
...whistles is still an unsettled problem in animal psychology. Snakes have little brain and much spine. They are quick to respond to stimuli, and perhaps react directly to seductive vibrations. More probably their swaying-it is no dance-is a conditioned reflex. Charmers feed their snakes well, in India with milk, flour balls and meat (frogs). And it is doubtless with mounting hope of meals that snakes raise themselves to the fakir's minor music. Charmers who have tried their art in U. S. zoos and serpentaria have always failed, despite all their wheezing and whining...
Where the fangs enter, a sharp burning pain is immediately felt. It gets worse. The wounds bleed; the parts get blue and swell. Numbness sets in and spreads; vomiting begins; breathing becomes difficult; paralysis starts. The victim suffocates, dies. Each year some 5,000 such tortured deaths occur in India. In the U. S. last year there were 27 reported. There might have been more, for at least 507 persons here were bitten by rattlers, moccasins, copperheads, massasaugas and corals. They are the only poisonous snakes in Canada and the U. S. More of the bitten might have died...
Vernay Expedition to Indo-China for the Sondaicus rhino, and to India and Africa for field studies for the Asiatic and African Hall groups. Financed by Arthur S. Vernay, antique dealer, Manhattan...
...Mohammedan sects. No fool, the Aga Khan keeps fat. Also he is at pleasure to stand in with the British Government,* which pays him privily a fat subsidy for his good offices among the Mohammedan subjects of George V, Last week at Delhi, the splendrous new Capital of British India, it was His Highness the Aga Khan who presided as Chairman of the All Indian Mohammedan Conference (TIME, Jan. 7). On the agenda was a momentous question. Should the assembled Mohammedans endorse the demand that India be given ''Dominion Status" within a year, which was voiced last fortnight...