To kill a snake - whether it a soul-winning business?

Ideas of snakes - reptiles for different nations, in particular, for East Slavic nation in many respects kept particles of early mythological ideas, and at the same time reflected those cardinal changes in the attitude towards snakes which happened in snake mythology with transition of national consciousness from paganism to one of monotheist religious systems. Especially brightly it was shown in national instructions how the person should behave on meeting with a snake. In the offered article are analyzed East Slavic, Turkic and Buryat modern field materials, and also folklore and ethnographic publications of the end of XIX - beginnings of XX centuries on this subject.