‘Ophiology of India’: snakes, colonial medicine and orientalism

This essay focuses on the emergence of a medical-zoological discipline in colonial India under the auspices of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. This historically unheeded institutional exercise, framed as ‘Ophiology of India’, fashioned a particular medical ideology and played a significant role in the conductive process of colonization. ‘Ophiology of India’ not only gave enough credence in confronting an ‘alarming disease’, but also became an integral part of colonial Orientalist scholarship. Medicine and Orientalism both became important forms of colonial knowledge and was conveniently employed by imperial authority for the purpose of command. In course of discussion this paper both employed and questioned Saidian insight of Orientalism.