The Python and Other Snakes in Traditional Culture and Oral Literature of the Filipinos and Their Neighbors

For a long time, studies on Insular Southeast Asia concentrated not so much on indigenous Austronesian mythology as on Indian and Chinese influences and the ways of their adaptation. The purpose of the present paper is to define ‘snake concepts’ on the basis of mythology of the Philippines, the least Indianized part of the area. Present-day ethnographic facts are compared with those from early Spanish records and epic texts of the indigenous groups recorded in the 20th and 21st centuries. The data collected by the author during fieldwork since 1990s till present among the indigenous highland groups and coastal communities of the archipelago are juxtaposed to the data from the early Spanish records and later publications on the anthropology, ethnography and linguistics. Corresponding materials from other parts of Southeast Asia are added. The paper concentrates on everyday human-animal (snake) interactions among the hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, coastal fishing communities; it treats about snake symbolism in material culture, body modifications, traditional folk medicine, as well as on the predominant ideas on the functions of a snake (python) in shamanistic practices, rituals and beliefs. Concepts of interaction between the living and the dead, offsprings and ancestors, including the snake-twin narratives, are of special interest. The paper gives a brief overview of the roles ascribed to python in Philippine mythology and oral epics. The Philippine mythological snake is predominantly a python, an ‘Austronesian prototypical snake’, as R. Blust described it on the basis of historical linguistics. We suggest that the local sawa, the python, was overshadowed in the course of Indianization of Southeast Asia by naga the cobra, especially in the eyes of the researchers, charmed by its Sanskrit name. The author declares no conflict of interests.

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