Nala Damajanti

Nala Damajanti was the stage name of a late 19th-century snake charmer who toured with P.T. Barnum's circus and performed at the famed Folies Bergère in Paris. French sources identify her as Emilie Poupon (1861-?) of Nantey, Jura Department, France. Promotional posters of Nala Damajanti have been widely reproduced and are thought to have inspired one of the popular folk images of the African water spirit Mami Wata. Similar acts performing under slightly variant names such as Mala Damajaute, Nata Damajaute, and Nala Damajante are thought to have been the same person.

A 17 March 1887 French-language article in Le Gaulois revealed that Nala Damajanti was born Emilie Poupon in Nantey, France on 4 July 1861. In 1881 she was working as a governess with a French family in St. Petersburg, Russia, when she fell in love with and later married a ceiling-walking acrobat by the name of Palmer who introduced her to the art of snake charming. After developing her skills, she toured in America and joined Barnum's famous circus troupe in 1885. She then returned to Paris to perform at the Folies Bergère (debuting on 18 February 1887).

The revelation of Nala Damajanti's given name was prompted by a lawsuit, in which the plaintiff had confused her with another person. As Poupon was scheduled to depart for Hamburg in the near future, with her eight enormous boas, she allowed her true identity to be revealed to have the case resolved as soon as possible.

Most Nala Damajanti posters claim that she was a Hindu, and the name is apparently a combination of the names of husband-and-wife characters from the Indian epic the Mahabharata, Nala and Damajanti.

Henry Drewal indicated that in Hamburg, Germany, a professional animal dealer named Breitwieser who often worked as a specialist snake procurer with the Tierpark Hagenbeck, a famous zoo in Hamburg, returned from a supposed trip to Asia with a new wife who performed as a snake charmer under the name of Maladamajaute, starting around 1880. Drewal supposed that she might have come from Samoa or Borneo. Lademann-Priemer goes to some lengths to demonstrate the possibility of this idea. Lorenz Hagenbeck, son of Carl Hagenbeck, the zoo's founder, recalled in his autobiography that Breitwieser's wife had "done stage business with snakes" and that Breitwieser had been a showman at one time.

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