Pungi or Bin — Cobra charmers’ magic and musical wand
Snake charming in India is almost gone and the musical instrument used by them — Pungi or Bin (in Tamil Makudi) can be seen only in selected museums. The cobra has neither ears nor the hearing ability and is controlled by the snake charmers with their peculiar hand movements. Snake charming is simply an act of pretense
Snake charming is a tricky way/practice of hypnotizing the snake preferably a cobra. It is simply a purported act of controlling the snake by playing and waving around a specially- designed musical instrument called a pungi. A snake charmer is also supposed to perform certain dangerous jobs — - physical handling of cobras and also other street performance staples, like juggling and sleight of hand. The practice of snake charming is more a pretense than a real thing. Invariably,, they will sit out at a safe distance from the critter; being sluggish, snake wont attack him.Yet another protection is they will remove the reptile’s fangs or venom glands, or even sew the snake’s mouth. The traditional snake charmers normally hail from some tribal families and there were people from other community too.
Snake charming in India in on the decline as it was banned by the Indian Government way back in 1991. However, in the recent past the snake charmers used to conduct shows in secluded areas in villages and towns to avoid cops. Nowadays, you seldom see either the snake charmers nor their showas as the traffic has become heavy in the past several years. Indian people themselves have no idea whatsoever about the instrument being used by the various tribes of snake charmers.
The musical instrument commonly used by them is called Bin or Pungi (in Tamil ‘’Magudi’’), a reed instrument carved out of dried gourd which is widely available through out India.This strange instrument has to be played without pauses with circular breathing. When air is blown, the bulbous portion (gourd) stores the air from where the air passes through two reed pipes made of dried bamboo, one pipe has holes for playing tune or melody and the other one is for drone.
As we are aware now, snakes don’t have ears. Nor have they got hearing capability sometimes it is wrongly portrayed in the Indian movies. As such, you can’t charm a deaf snake by playing a wind instrument before it. Snake-charming is a misnomer as it does not have anything to do with charming the deadly snake or making it do things for you. You can not control the movement of a live cobra by playing a jazz tune — ‘’Chattanooga Choo, Choo’’ in big band Glen Miller style or ‘’Peanut Vendor’’ in tango style as played by Xavier Cugat. However, snakes like cobras can pick up ground vibrations easily, based on which they move around in search of prey.
On several occasions I heard people from villages and hill places tell me that they saw stray snakes in the houses near the wooded areas. On request or emergency call, the snake charmer or catcher came there with his standard bin instrument, mumbled some ‘’mantras’’ while playing the instrument. The snake or snakes, hidden in the house, automatically came before him, raised their hood and swayed following the player’s hand movement. He effortlessly caught the snakes in a short time, kept them safely in a basket and went away with the subdued snake that was in a state of stupor. The snake catcher was cool and collected, whereas the the people in the house were really tense and scared.
Snake song and movie: This Hindi movie “Nagin” was more a romance than a thriller. This film is about the heroine Vyjayanthimala, a jungle lass who fell in love with a snake charmer (Pradeep Kumar) and how they solved the hurdles caused by their tribes who were on the war path.. This well-known Hindi film was dubbed in many Indian languages. For several years all over India at social functions, playing this particular song was a must. This song became a theme of India’s snake charmers in those days when they ran ‘sidewalk shows’(in the olden days the streets were almost free with fewer motor vehicles and people) before a tense, motley crowd. when they opened the basket, the lethal reptile cobra would raise his head in defense initially and then later sway beautifully as if he liked the tune very much. When the film was shown in the theaters, the owners would bring the snake charmers to the theater compound for the fans to listen to a session of music and ‘live snake dance.’It was a sort of promotional gimmick that worked well.
The famous Hindi movie “Nagin’’ ( 1954) — Vyjayanthimala-Predeep Kumar starer was a very popular flick for its mesmerizing snake song “Man Dole Mera Tan.’’ The heroine Vyjayanthimala, a well-known actress from Tamil Nadu and a great ‘Bharata Natyam’ exponent, became more popular after this movie. This immortal old movie song set to music by Hemanta Kumar, a great Music director still lingers in the heart of old timers (like me) and compel them to go on a short trip down the memory lane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_charming
Originally published at http://navrangindia.blogspot.com. (modified:20 June 2020)
