Addressing the Bombay Anthropological Society on the night of November 30, 1892, its then-president — George Waters, a British surgeon and lieutenant colonel — discussed a rather esoteric work: a Zoroastrian book known as the Marnameh. His interest in the text? Ancient perceptions of snakes.

With India then being home to the largest Zoroastrian community outside Iran, whose members were visibly active in many spheres of society and politics, Waters’ lecture likely had local interest. The surgeon — who also expounded on such subjects as the 1896 plague in Bombay — first discussed attitudes toward snakes in antiquity before introducing the Marnameh and his own footnote-studded translation from the Persian.

Written sometime in the late fifteenth century, the Marnameh is a short text listing the thirty days of the Zoroastrian calendar — each, for the most part, corresponding to a Zoroastrian divinity or figure — and what the sighting of a snake on each portends. It comprises part of the Revayat of Darab Hormozdyar (“The Tale of Darab, Friend of Ahura Mazda”), which belongs to the revayat (literally “narration”) tradition. Composed between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, revayats featured opinions on an array of matters related to Zoroastrianism, and appeared in both prose and poetry. They are not, however, considered scripture, nor are they part of the Avesta, the central corpus of Zoroastrian religious teachings, which includes the Gathas (“hymns”) of the prophet Zoroaster.

Aside from the odd subject matter of the text, what also makes the Marnameh fascinating is its unexpected treatment of snakes, which Zoroastrians have historically viewed with contempt. As Waters remarked:

The ancient Persians or Zoroastrians were one of those nations that held the snake in no veneration. . . . It was always considered meritorious to kill [it]. A believer . . . was recommended to keep with him a snake-killer, which was a stick to kill the snakes with. This stick was also used to punish the criminals who were considered to be as poisonous spiritually as the snakes were physically.

This abhorrence toward snakes is perhaps best reflected in the story of the Arab demon-king Zahhak, who in the Shahnameh — the “Book of Kings”, Iran’s national epic — terrorises people with the brain-devouring snakes growing from his shoulders. This tracks with how, in the Zoroastrian religion, snakes belong to a category of creatures known as khrafstar. In contrast to gospand, the beneficent creatures of Ahura Mazda (God), khrafstar (like frogs, snakes, and scorpions) are the baneful spawn of Ahriman, the sole origin of all evil. These classifications were noted by Agathias, and, before him, Plutarch.

While the Marnameh does indeed contain ill omens, a good number are auspicious. “If you see a snake on the day of Sheherivar”, says one such omen, “you will (soon) find an absent friend in your arms”. Similarly, the Marnameh asserts that the sight of a snake on the day of Zamyâd will lead to the obtainment of “justice from the Creator of the world”.

How, one should rightly ask, could a khrafstar like the snake possibly be associated with good fortune? Waters, who pointed out the un-Zoroastrian sentiment reflected in the book’s happy auguries, was of the belief that the Marnameh had possibly been influenced by Egyptian thought. In concluding her discussion of the Marnameh as an anomaly, the Indo-Iranian philologist Martina Palladino states that “serpents have not always belonged to the Ahrimanic sphere . . . despite the clear Zoroastrian hatred for these animals”, even adding that, “in pre-Zoroastrian Iran, these animals were not perceived negatively”. Could the positive associations of snakes in the Marnameh, then, be echoes of pre-Zoroastrian perceptions?

Despite its strangeness (or, perhaps, because of it), the Marnameh remains, centuries on, a largely forgotten and esoteric text. Even as a work of literature, it can “lay no claim to elegance of style or beauty of language”, to quote Waters; yet, like the poems of Hafez and the grounds of Turkish coffee, both of which are popularly used in divination among Iranians, the more favourable omens of the Marnameh might be a source of solace to some. After all, who wouldn’t want the “revolving heavens” to fulfill their wishes or to have their “desires . . . satisfied from all directions” — especially after stumbling upon some fork-tongued fiend?