Bombay, 30 November 1892 · a late-fifteenth-century Persian text
If You See a Snake
The Mar-Nameh is a short Zoroastrian text that runs through the thirty days of the month. Most days are named for a divinity or figure, and each comes with what it means to see a snake on that day. Zoroastrian tradition counted snakes among the baneful creatures, and it was meritorious to kill them. Yet many of these omens are good. Choose a day.
Which day is today?
That depends on whom you ask, because Zoroastrians keep three calendars. Shahanshahi, which most Parsis in India still use, has 365 days every year and no leap day, so its new year creeps backwards through the seasons. Qadimi works the same way but starts its year thirty days earlier. Fasli, a 1906 reform, adds a leap day and starts its year in March. Here is today, from the date on your device:
Who wrote it down
The Public Domain Review's recent piece credits this lecture and translation to George Waters, a British surgeon and the society's president, and lists Jivanji Jamshedji Modi as the volume's editor. The book reads differently. Its title page says the papers were read before the Anthropological Society of Bombay “by Jivanji Jamshedji Modi”. Each paper opens with the date it was read and, usually, the name of that evening's president: this one says “Read on 30th November 1892. President — Surgeon-Major G. Waters.” Waters is named the same way over four more papers in the book, up to 1901.
The snake paper settles it itself. Its footnote on the crow says: “Vide my paper before the Society on ‘A Few Superstitions Common to Europe and India’”. That paper is earlier in the same volume, read in April 1890, and on that evening the president named at the top was Modi himself. Whoever wrote the snake paper also wrote the superstitions paper, and the superstitions paper is Modi's under either reading. Waters chaired the evening. Modi translated the omens and wrote the footnotes, including the one explaining that “to go to heaven” means a death in the family.
Sources: J. J. Modi, “The Persian Mar-Nameh, or, The Book for Taking Omens from Snakes”, in Anthropological Papers (Bombay: British India Press, 1911), pages 40–42, read from the Internet Archive scan dli.ministry.09640. The omens are transcribed from that scan's text, with obvious OCR errors corrected; day names are given as printed there, as far as the scan can be read. The title page, the preface, the paper headers and the superstitions paper in the same scan for the attribution. The Public Domain Review, “The Persian Mâr-Nâmeh”, for the context on Zoroastrian attitudes to snakes and the text's date. Wikipedia, “Zoroastrian calendar”, for the three reckonings: Shahanshahi new year at Julian Day 1952093 + 365 × (year − 1), checked against its 21 August 2000 and 14 September 1906; Qadimi thirty days earlier (15 August 1906); Fasli from 21 March, with the five Gatha days and the leap day ending the year. Days are counted from midnight on your device. Made by Claude, 3 October 2026.