Then there is the festival called "The Feast of the Serpents," at which every worshipper, in the hope of propitiating the reptiles during the ensuing year, sets by a portion of his rice for the hooded snake on the outside of his house. The deities of India and the wonderful temples and caves, as those at Salsette and Elephanta, as may be seen in Maurice's _Indian Antiquities_, Moor's _Hindu Pantheon_, _The Asiatic Researches_, Faber's _Pagan Idolatry_ and numerous other works, are universally adorned with, or represented by this great symbol. Thus we have the statue of Jeyne, the Indian Æsculapius, turbaned by a seven-headed snake; that of Vishnu on a rock in the Ganges, reposing on a coiled serpent whose numerous folds form a canopy over the sleeping god; Parus Nauth symbolized by a serpent; Jagan-Nath worshipped under the form of a seven-headed dragon. Hari, appears to be one of the titles of Vishnu--that of the deity in his preserving quality--and his appearance on the rock, as just mentioned, is thus noticed in Wilkins' _Hitopadesa_: "Nearly opposite Sultan Ganj, a considerable town in the province of Bahar, there stands a rock of granite, forming a small island in the Ganges, known to Europeans by the name of 'the rock of Ichangiri,' which is highly worthy of the traveller's notice for the vast number of images carved upon every part of its surface. Among the rest there is Hari, of a gigantic size, recumbent upon a coiled serpent, whose heads (which are numerous) the artist has contrived to spread into a kind of canopy over the sleeping god; and from each of its mouths issues a forked tongue, seeming to threaten instant death to any whom rashness might prompt to disturb him. The whole lies almost clear of the block on which it is hewn. It is finely imagined and is executed with great skill. The Hindus are taught to believe that at the end of every _Calpa_ (creation or formation) all things are absorbed in the Deity, and that in the interval of another creation, he reposeth himself upon the serpent Sesha (duration) who is also called Ananta (endlessness)."