Indian Serpent-Lore, or the Nagas in Hindu Legend and Art

...and finally are "confused" original: "confounded" with real poisonous snakes. Kern’s view, thus briefly formulated, is undoubtedly somewhat one-sided. It emphasizes, at any rate, a very important aspect of Nāga worship: the close relationship between the Nāgas and water, an element which in a hot country like India is of vital significance for human and animal existence. In many legends, the Nāgas are said to inhabit lakes, ponds, and the sources of rivers. They are beneficial givers of rain, but if roused to anger, they send down destructive hailstorms and ravage the crops in the fields.

Dr. C. F. Oldham, a Brigade-Surgeon of the Indian Army, has offered a totally different explanation of Nāga worship.¹ In his opinion, the Nāgas were originally not demons, but a human people who claimed descent from the Sun and used the hooded serpent as a totem a natural object or animal believed by a particular society to have spiritual significance and adopted by it as an emblem. Takshaśīlā—the "Taxila" of the ancient Greeks—was, he says, the chief city of the Nāga people in northern India. Takshaka was one of their chiefs. "It was on his return from a raid into the country of Takshaśīlā that Janamejaya, the Bhārata King original: "rāja" of Indraprastha, at the urging of the Brahmin Uttanka, held his serpent sacrifice. The victims on this occasion were the Nāga prisoners taken in the raid, who were burned alive with Brahminical rites, as recorded in the Mahābhārata."

Mr. Oldham’s interpretation of Nāga worship has met with very little support.² In the absence of historical data, such an explanation inevitably carries a strongly subjective character. For our knowledge of the history of King Parikshit and King Janamejaya, no sources are available except the highly fantastic legends preserved in the Mahābhārata. It is possible, even probable, that those stories are ultimately based on historical fact, but an attempt to determine what that historical basis was is likely to produce results as fantastic as the legends themselves.

It is certainly noteworthy that some Nāga kings (for the serpent demons, too, are organized as a monarchy, like most other classes of beings) bear names that are identical to those of certain royal personages in the Great Epic. In both Brahminical and Buddhist literature, frequent mention is made of a Nāga king named Dhritarāshtra. It is hardly necessary to point out that the same name is borne by the father of the hundred Kaurava princes, who are the opponents of the five Pāndavas.³ Another Nāga king who figures in the Great Epic is...

¹ C. F. Oldham, The Sun and the Serpent (London, 1905), pp. 30 f. and 57 f. Previously, the same author had published a paper in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for the year 1901, pp. 461 ff.

² Professor E. W. Hopkins, in Epic Mythology, p. 23, appears also to be inclined to explain the Nāgas on a euhemeristic the theory that mythological gods were actually historical human beings whose stories were exaggerated over time basis. "Garudas and Tārkshyas," he says, "may conceivably have been human chieftains of the Western coast, though they scarcely present as strong a claim to a historical original: "euhemeristic" interpretation as do their natural foes, the Nāgas." See also p. 46, footnote.

³ It must, however, be observed that the father-name or mother-name original: "patronymic or metronymic" of the serpent-demon Dhritarāshtra is Airāvata, a name by which he is frequently called. In contrast, Dhritarāshtra, the blind king of the Kuru race, is the son of Vyāsa by Ambikā, the widow of Vichitravīrya.