Nagas

Summary

The Nāgas are, in the myths of India, the serpent people, sons of Kadrū by the sage Kaśyapa, a thousand sons hatched from a thousand eggs. They live in the waters and beneath the earth, where they have a city called Bhogavatī; they are pictured with human faces and serpent bodies; and their kings are Śeṣa, Vāsuki and Takṣaka. Their Sanskrit name, नाग, nāga, means serpent.

Their story, in the first book of the Mahābhārata, is one of a curse and an escape. Kadrū and her sister Vinatā wagered on the colour of the tail of the horse that had come out of the churning of the ocean, and Kadrū told her sons to become black hairs in its tail so that she would win. Some refused, and she cursed them to be devoured by fire in the sacrifice of King Janamejaya. Brahmā let the curse stand, because the serpents had multiplied and their venom with them. The others obeyed, Vinatā became a slave, and so her son Garuḍa became the serpents' enemy and devourer from that day.

The Nāgas met to take counsel, and Vāsuki, their king, gave his sister Jaratkāru in marriage to an ascetic sage also named Jaratkāru, and she bore him a son, Āstīka. Then the serpent Takṣaka bit King Parikṣit, grandson of Arjuna, and he died, and his son Janamejaya held the snake sacrifice to avenge his father. The serpents fell into the fire by thousands, and Takṣaka took refuge with Indra. Then Āstīka, son of the serpent king's sister, came and so pleased the king that he granted whatever he asked, and he asked for the sacrifice to stop. Takṣaka had already fallen from Indra's hands towards the fire, and Āstīka said to him three times: stay, stay, stay; and he hung between heaven and earth. The sacrifice ended, and the serpents told Āstīka: we have all been saved by you. They promised not to bite anyone who called his name to mind.

The idea the story turns on is that those cursed by their mother were saved by their sister's son. Destruction came out of the household, from a mother angry with her sons, and rescue came out of the household too, from a marriage the brother arranged for his sister to that end. In these books the Nāgas are enemies and pillars at once: among them is Takṣaka, who killed the king, and Śeṣa, who left his brothers and holds the earth on his head, and Vāsuki, who became the rope for churning the ocean, and Ananta, on whom Viṣṇu sleeps above the water.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Without its final short vowel, the Sanskrit stem vowel, nāga is nāg, which the project's Hindu essay reads as Arabic najā: the voiced Sanskrit g is Arabic j, and n is n. The essay joins najā to nakhkha and glosses the pair as "the huge immortal ones". In Lane, najā is "he became safe, or secure; he escaped", and najjāhu, "he saved him, rescued him". On this reading the Nāgas are those who escaped, which is what the story makes them: a people their mother condemned to the fire who escaped it, and who told Āstīka "we have all been saved by you". Sanskrit itself bears this out: the name of their eldest, Śeṣa, means in the dictionary "what remains", "that which is saved or spared or allowed to escape".

Linguistic Root

Monier-Williams records nāga as a snake, then the serpent people of Kadrū's race who live in the waters or in the city Bhogavatī beneath the earth, with human faces and serpent-like lower parts, their kings being Śeṣa, Vāsuki and Takṣaka. He says the word is probably derived neither from na-ga, "not going", nor from the word for naked. The word also means elephant and cloud.

Lane under n-j-w: najā, "he became safe, or secure; he escaped"; najā, "he was quick, or swift, and outstripped"; anjāhu and najjāhu, "he saved him, rescued him, preserved him"; manjāh, a means of safety. N and j answer the n and g of nāga as the correspondences run: Arabic j is g in the other languages. Lane's nakhkha, though, is going vehemently and driving camels, not the hugeness the essay gives it.

The Hindu essay sets beside the Nāga the Hebrew serpent נָחָשׁ, nāḥāš, pairing g with ḥ, and notes that the Hebrew verb of the same root means to divine, to seek hidden things, so that in both civilisations the serpent holds hidden knowledge. Brown, Driver and Briggs record both words and cite the view that the verb of divining derives from the noun for serpent. This comparison needs ḥ to become g and leaves the š without a counterpart, so it stands further off than najā.

Key Mythic Narratives

Śeṣa who carries the earth

Śeṣa, the eldest of the serpents, left his brothers because they were wicked and did long austerities, and Brahmā told him: carry the earth so that it stands firm. He went through a crevice to the underside of the earth and held it on his head with its mountains and seas. Then Brahmā gave him Garuḍa as a helper. Ādi Parva 36. He is Ananta, on whom Viṣṇu lies between one cycle and the next above the waters of dissolution, when the lotus on which Brahmā is born rises from his navel. Bhāgavata Purāṇa 3.8. In the Matsya Purāṇa fire comes from his thousand mouths at the end of the cycle, and then he appears as the rope that ties Manu's ship to the horn of the fish; in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa the rope is Vāsuki.

Vāsuki the churning rope

In the churning of the ocean Ananta pulled up Mount Mandara and Vāsuki became the rope wound round it; the asuras held his head and the gods his tail, and smoke and flame came from his mouth. In the Viṣṇu Purāṇa the serpents take the poison that came out of the ocean; in the Mahābhārata and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa Śiva drinks it.

Ulūpī and Arjuna

At the source of the Gaṅgā Arjuna went down to bathe, and Ulūpī, daughter of Kauravya, king of the Nāgas, dragged him to the bottom of the water, to her father's palace, saying that the god of desire had robbed her of her reason when she saw him.

Kāliya in the Yamunā

The Nāgas used to offer Garuḍa a share, and the serpent Kāliya ate it; Garuḍa struck him with his wing, and he fled to a lake in the Yamunā that Garuḍa could not enter, and poisoned its water until birds flying over it fell dead. Kṛṣṇa jumped into the lake, Kāliya coiled round him, and then Kṛṣṇa climbed onto his thousand heads and danced on them until he broke them. Kāliya's wives came out and pleaded, and Kṛṣṇa spared him, told him to go back to the sea, and made him safe from Garuḍa by the marks of his feet on his heads.

Symbolic Reading

The Hindu rereading essay reads Ananta, the serpent who carries Viṣṇu, as a name for infinity, since his name means "the endless", and reads the mountain round which Vāsuki was wound in the churning as a post with a cord wrapped round it, like the tool used to churn milk.

In the texts themselves the Nāgas live where serpents live: in the water and in the cracks of the earth. Poison and remedy meet in them: Takṣaka bites the king and his palace burns with the venom; Brahmā gives Kaśyapa, father of the serpents, the knowledge to undo poison; and Āstīka's name becomes a charm against snakebite that people say morning and evening.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the Norse world tree an eagle sits at the top, Níðhöggr gnaws its root from below with many serpents, and a squirrel runs up and down carrying words of enmity between them. In India Garuḍa alights on the great tree, the serpents live under the earth, and their enmity dates from the day of the wager. For both peoples bird and serpent are endless enemies, and both have a place in the structure of the world: Śeṣa holds up the earth, and Níðhöggr lies at the tree's root.

In Japan Susanoo kills Yamata no Orochi, the eight-headed serpent that eats the old couple's daughters upriver, after making it drunk on liquor. Kāliya too is a many-headed serpent who lives in a river and poisons its water; Kṛṣṇa dances on his heads, then spares him and sends him off to the sea.

In China the Nāgas became lóng, dragons, in the translation of Buddhist texts: the first chapter of the Lotus Sutra names eight dragon kings present at the Buddha's assembly, Vāsuki and Takṣaka among them.

Ananta lying on the water between cycles, and Śeṣa becoming the rope of the ship in the flood, belong with the primordial waters and the flood traditions.