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People in southern India carry the corpse of the sacred crocodile
Photo: - / AFP
Hundreds of people paid their last respects to a crocodile at a ritual funeral ceremony in India.
The reptile called Babiya was considered sacred, also because it allegedly ate a purely vegetarian diet for decades and guarded a Hindu temple.
The crocodile is said to have never attacked another animal or human.
Babiya was found floating lifeless in the lake in the morning after the reptile reportedly went without food for several days.
It guarded the Sri Ananthapadmanabha Swamy Temple in Kasaragod, southern Kerala, known for its intricate sculptures, and lived in the associated lake for almost 80 years, Temple Secretary Ramachandran Bhat told AFP.
At the funeral ceremony, the scaly corpse was decorated with flowers and blessed before being carried on a sedan chair on a bed of coconut leaves through the crowd of mourners and then buried in the temple grounds.
Already the second "divine" crocodile
The temple at Kasaragod dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu is around 3,000 years old.
For centuries it has been protected by a single "divine" crocodile, Bhat said.
"The last divine crocodile was shot by the British military in 1940 and after that Babiya appeared in the lake," Bhat said.
Nobody could say where it came from.
According to believers, Babiya subsisted on prasadam, a portion of rice and sugar blessed by temple priests.
But Bhat did not support this assumption - "because there are fish in the lake".
India is a majority Hindu country.
Many Hindus see vegetarianism as a virtue.
Crocodiles are usually primarily carnivores.
However, researchers have also examined animals that were only fed a vegetarian diet.
czl/AFP/dpa