Who are the Nagas?
The question whether the nāgas were a real people or only a symbolic idea of the Āryanconcept of an evil must be dealt with before any causative problems of evil can be defined.
There are records from early Kashmir that indicate that theNāgaswere aboriginal inhabitants in India. Based on these records, it seems quite possible that some of the first encounters between the second wave of Āryans,who were moving westward from the Indus Valley,and the indigenous people may have occurred in Kashmir. Citing the Nīlmata Purāna, R.L. Raina(1993) suggests that the ―Āryans penetrated into Kashmir from the southern routes, while the valley was already inhabited by the Nāgas and the Piśācas, who did not see eye to eye with each other‖(p.24).7Rainagives evidence, dating back to 2400 BC, of indigenous settlements in Kashmir, which have been found in Burzahorm, 16 kilometers. east of Srinagar.
In addition, he explains that Āryan advance into the valley did not go unprotested in the beginning, but, as time passed, the Āryans assimilated the local traditions. To prove this assimilation, Raina gives an example of how the first enterprising Āryan settler,Candradeva, had to accept all the conditions laid down by the Nāga chief Nila‖ (ibid). Dr. Bali (1993) also cites from Nīlmata Purāna to present evidence that the people in Jammu and Kashmir had a Nāga connection. He cites the example of a Nāga chief exiled from Kashmir to Jammu,who was allotted rulership of Mount Usiraka in Jammu by Kashmir‘s Nāga king, Vibhunga. As evidence, Bali mentions that in theŚivatemple of Sudhamahādeva in Jammu a broken triśūl has been found with the name Vibhunga,‘inscribed on it in Sanskrit (p. 29).8
(Sudha Mahādeva),9which was around the time when the Āryans were settling in the area.
J. Vogel also connects the Nāgas to kingship in Kashmir and further suggests an association between their historiography and mythology. Hecites an example of the illustrious Rājā Lalitaditya of Kashmir who often boasted of belonging to the line of Nāgarāja Karkota (p10 a serpent king mentioned in the Mahābhārata as a devotee of Baladeva,who himself is considered a re-incarnation of Śeṣ a Nāga. This perception that nāgas were actually the Nāga tribe, and that they were not only indigenous to Kashmir but were also related to demi-gods is furthered by R. L. Raina, who points out that ‗nāga‘ in Kashmiri means ‗a water-spring‘ and each spring has a tutelary deity in the form of a Nāga.
This is a distinct feature of the Kashmiri Nāgas and it may lead us to suppose that the Nāgas [were] settled around water springs in mountainous valleys‖ (p. 23).11 In fact, the popular folk legend from the RājataraṃgiṇīaboutKashmir‘s formation not only situates Nāgas in Kashmir but also credits Kashmir‘s very creationto the relationship between nāgas and Ṛṣis and gods. According to this legend, the Nāgas lived in Lake Satisar. When a demon, Jaladeo (perhaps an Āryan enemy), began to harass them,their father, Ṛṣi Kaśyapa, did penance and acquired Viṣ ṇu‘s help to dewater the lake and destroy the demon; the Nāgas called this land Kaśyapa-mir (which corrupted into Kashmir)--ingratitude of Kaśyapa. Thus, all this evidence, whether it is of folkloric traditions, or archeological findings, clearly suggests that Nāgas were not only real people, but they were also indigenous inhabitants in India, and they may have been natives of Kashmir.
Aside from determining the human-ness of the nāgas, this evidence also strongly suggests the reason the Vedic Āryans could have borne animosity towards the Nāga people, and it also indicates the crimes they could have committed against them. It can be surmised that the Āryans, migrating to areas that were already inhabited, desired to acquire there sources of the land that the indigenous people had,but the latter opposed the incursion of theĀryans; therefore the Āryans seized what they desired by whatever means possible. Of course,the question whether the Āryans were emigrants to the Indus Valley or whether they themselves were indigenous, is still unanswered, and this question, if answered, may concretize the motive of Āryans‘ persecution of the Nāgas.
However, at this time, most scholarly evidence not only suggests the former perspective that the Āryans were emigrants, but it also validates the culpability of the Āryans as that of a foreign community usurping the wealth of the original inhabitants. Butno matter the perspective—Migrationist or Indigenous Āryanist--the inflictions that the Nāga people suffered at the hands of the Vedic Āryans cannot be invalidated, and it isclear that the basis of injuring nāgas was established long before the Mahābhārata‘s snakes a crifice in which king Janamejaya tried to exterminate them. In fact, as Christopher Minkowski says, the story of the snake sacrifice has ―more Vedic precedent than the Bhārata story itself‖(2007, p. 386).
This early Āryan-Nāgaenmity over the earth‘s resources of land and water is not difficult to believe, especially in the context of the migrationist view, because it can be easily argued that the Āryans, as new arrivals to the land, needed these resources for their survival. However, this enmity turned to violence that the Āryans perpetrated against the Nāgas, because, the Nāgas proved to be a daunting enemy, and this practice of persecution became a bedrock for later interpolations and myth-making. Sukumari Bhattacharji(2000) explain this as follows:―Enemy chiefs… can withhold the water supply to an invading enemy and thus virtual lycreate the conditions of a siege (for the invader) and maintain these conditions indefinitely. In later mythology cosmic interpretations were given to what was perhaps originally a military situation. This became [Indra‘s] cosmic function, when his military prowess had ceased to retain the former glory because the invaders were already settled in the land.
Once they had become a peacefully settled agricultural people, the
memory of early warfare became transmuted to suit the needs of the day‖ (p. 256).13It is important to note here that some scholars, like Bhattacharji, equate nāgas and asuras: ―Historically it may be safe to assume that Indra‘s enemies (the asuras) were the nonĀryans (i.e. pre-Āryan on Indian soil) chiefs who offered resistance to the hordes of the Āryans;some may even have been rival tribal leaders among the Āryans. The numerous demons seemto have been indigenous tribal heads, rulers of petty principalities whom Indra had to defeat oneby one in order that the Āryan army could have access to wealth and land‖ (p. 253). However, Bhattacharji‘s use of the terms nāgasand asuras synonymously for events in the context of early Vedic times discounts the evidence which suggests that, unlike the nāgas, the asuras were either one of the five Āryans tribes, or at least within the Āryan fold.
(This will be explained in the next chapter). Perhaps, scholars see this synonymity because in the ṛg, Āryan enmity against the Nāga tribe resembles the animosity they bore towards the asuras. However, it is also important to note that in epic times the terms nāga and asura are not at all equivalent; in fact, inepic literatures, nāgas gain a scendency, while the asuras suffer degradation. Another reason for this perspective of equivalency in the concepts of nāga and asura could bethe Vedic asura chief,Varuna, and his association with water, rivers, and māyā—aspects that were also related to the serpents. After Varuna‘s degradation from being the Divine Asura and keeper of ṛ ta in the ṛg to simply lord of waters, he lives beneath the waters with his consort Varuni. There he is surrounded by serpents of all variety--the most notorious and the most pious, such as Takśaka, Airāvata, Padma, and Vāsuki--and all pay homage to Varuna in his under waterpalace. (Mbh 2.9).
It is also possible that the animosities the Āryans bore towards the asuras and Nāgaspeople came to be seen as equivalent, because both the Nāgas and asuras were a power that threatened the Āryans; hence, in Vedic literatures, they were both seen as practitioners of anṛ ta, which, in the Vedic Āryan vocabulary, was an evil against them. As Briffault explains,―power in egalitarian primitive society is intrinsically an evil thing; it is synonymous with power to harm‖ (cited in Patil, 1974, p. 33).
good‘ and ‗evil powers, to which our theological ideas attach so much importance, is of little relevance in primitive thought, and can indeed scarcely be said to exist‖(ibid). Briffault‘s claim can certainly be applied to the Vedas, which were a-moral texts; the practices described in themcannot be seen as ethical or unethical, let alone as exemplary of ethics; hence, to perceive something as evil because it was so in the Vedic times is to invite ethical falsity in norms.Therefore when the Mahābhārata, which operates within the ethical system of dharma,claims to be fixed in the truth of the Vedas, and it portrays the nāgas as normative evil based on Vedic conceptions; it creates ethical ambiguities.
In actuality, contrary to the Mahābhārata‘s ethics-based portrayal of the nāgas, the Vedic Āryans saw the nāgas as ‗evil‘ simply because they were equally powerful as their divines. Casein point is Vṛtra, who could have been a Nāga, and who matched Indra in strength and surpassed him in wealth. Jaan Puhvel (1987) calls Vṛtra a ―monstrous adversary‖ (p.
16However, Puhvel believes that adversaries like Vṛtra were neither real nor indigenous but part of a wholly Āryan mythology, because theĀryan divines were inherently dualistic; andmythical beings like Vṛtra were the flip side of their good‘ divines. But, no matter what origin Puhvel gives to Vṛtra, his explanation of the word Vṛtra lends meaning to the adversarialrelationship between Āryans and Nāgas. Puhvel states that ―Vṛtra‘s name is an original abstractnoun…from the same root [‗vr‘ meaning ‗to confine‘ or ‗to restrict]that yields Varuna-, thus15 Patil. S. April (1974). Earth Mother. Social Scientist, 2 (9), 31-58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3516111.
literally ‗Confinement‘, and then actively ‗Confiner, Obstructer‖ (ibid).17In fact,Monier Williams(2005) also defines ‗vṛtṛi‘as one who ―keeps back or wards off‖ or an ―expeller‖ (p. 922).18Puhvelgoes on to explain that ―confinement‖ can be for good or evil, just as māyā, which both Varuna and Vṛtra use, but since Varuna uses it to maintain ṛ ta, his māyā and ‗confinement‘ can be considered for good; whereas, Vṛtra‘s māyā and confinement is to bring evil (50-51).19Puhvel‘sexp lanation of the etymology of Vṛtra and Varuna can be used to arrive at a new understand ingof Vṛtra. It is possible that Vṛtra was not a name of a single Āryan enemy—Nāga or asura--buta generic name to refer to the quality of someone who confines‘ a desired object, is powerful; and hence a threat. For example, in the famous Indra vs. Vṛtraṛg Vedic myth, Vṛtrais not defined as a nāga, but his ‗shoulder less‘ and ‗coiled‘ characteristics could simply have been a metaphorto describe him as similar to a serpent who sits coiled over something he wishes to protect or‗confine‘.
The idea that Vṛtra was a name used for someone powerful, perhaps a chief of a Nāga tribe,is further evidenced in other Vedic hymns in which Nāgas oppose the Āryans in the way Vṛtra does. For instance, many of Indra‘s battles to release the waters in the ṛg are against Ahi—a term that has cognate Greek forms Ophis and Echis, meaning serpent (Bhattacharji,2000, p. 255).20As an example, in the following hymn, Indra slays Ahi (a word Griffith translates as dragon) to cleave the waters from the mountain.
I will declare the manly deeds of Indra, the first that he achieved, the Thunder-wielder.
He slew the Dragon [Ahi], then disclosed the waters, and cleft the channels of the mountain torrents (RV 1.32:1).
And in this hymn, Indra once again slays Ahi to free the seven rivers.
Who slew the Dragon [Ahi], freed the Seven Rivers, and drove the kine forth from the cave of Vala, Begat the fire between two stones, the spoiler in warrior‘[s battle, he, Omen, is Indra. (RV 11.12:3.).
In these hymns Ahi could have been a term used to refer to the Nāgas, whose chief was the confiner‘ or a vṛtra and who opposed Āryans‘ acquisition of water. But no matter the identityof Vṛtra, the fact is that he and the Nāgas were a ―roadblock on the path of Āryan progress‖vṛtṛi. In Sanskrit English Dictionary. (2005). Ed. Monier Williams. (New Ed). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.
Puhvel states that the good and evil of ‗confinement‘, too, depends on who is jailed and who isthe jailor (ibid); hence suggesting that while Indra may have been fighting Vṛ tra for Āryaninterest, and Varuna may have been safeguarding that interest;Vṛtra, the Āryan victim, mayhave been represented as the evil criminal because he opposed Āryan interest by holding backthe water, and his power threatened to bring harm to Āryan interest.
The case thatthe Nāgaswereseen as evil because they were powerful and were not easyto subjugate by theĀryans can be made more strongly with the metaphor that the serpents mayhave created in the Āryan mind. The Āryans may have known serpents in their own land oforigin. J. Vogel (1995) points out that the word nāga is related to the English word ‗snake‘ and,consequently, is Indo-Germanic in origin (p. 6),
22 which, from a migrationist perspective, suggests that the Āryans already had a vocabulary for serpents. In addition, the Āryans alsoencountered venomous serpents in India; therefore, when they met powerful human adversarieswho they felt reflected the attributes of the reptiles that were baneful to their existence, they saw an equation between them and the dangerous serpents. This then may have contributed to theĀryans creating myths not only aboutenemy Nāgas but also about their own gods who theyinvested with powerful qualities similar to or superior to the nāgas. For example, in some ṛgVedic hymns, Agni is given snake-like qualities.―He [Agni] in mid-air‘s expanse hath goldentresses; a raging serpent, like the rushing tempest‖ (RV 2.79:1). Coomaraswamy (1935) point sout that this―fire," [is] more correctly, Agni ab intra as Ahi Budhnya, Aupia, the ‗"flesh-eating,man-hurting"‘ (kravydt . . . purusa-resanah) Agni of Atharva Veda (ref. AV III. 21. 8-9)‖ (p.
279).23Perhaps, the bite that the venomous serpents delivered, which, in some instances, was capable of delivering instantaneous death was seen by the Āryans as being as lethal as Agni‘sflesh-eating capability. For the Āryans, Agni‘s heat was a result of his tējas, and they may have felt that the serpents possessed the same tējas (Vogel 1995, p. 15).24
The Nāgas also may have been seen to possess qualities that were beyond the Āryancomprehension—qualities that bordered on divine mysteries. For example, Sukumari Bhattacharji (2000) suggests that the Nāgas probably lived ―on the other side of the forest‖ (p.
149),25 or, from ṛg Vedic hymns, we can surmise that they lived beyond water bodies. In other words, the Nāgas lived in places that were hard for the Āryans to traverse. These were probably dense forests and deep water bodies that the Āryans were afraid to cross, but the Nāgas, who were more familiar with the lay of land, were able to not only cross them but also execute surprise attacks and then disappear.
In addition, because the Āryans didn‘t have access to the ‗other side‘, they believed that the Nāgas were hoarding wealth there. But this ability to disappear is what the Āryans equated with the serpents that disappeared into the earth after delivering a death bite and became‗invisible‘,and this was , perhaps, the most mystifying,because it suggested a quality of māyā or illusion to the Āryans.In their mind, this was a divine attribute, albeit of a dark nature; therefore, both Varuna and Indra were made to posses smāyāan attribute, which significantly, in earlier hymns, meant wisdom, extraordinary or supernatural power and later came to mean ‗illusion, unreality, deception, fraud, trick, sorcery, witchcraft, and magic. (Bhattacharji2000, p. 35).
Another cause of envy bordering on awe may have been the Āryan belief that the Nāgashad the secret to immortality, because the serpents, who the Nāgas resembled,were able to castoff their skin and live in a new body; thus giving the impression of immortality, and this secret to immortality the Āryans wanted to possess. In fact, a hymn in the ṛig Veda compares a serpent gliding out of his skin to a stream of soma, the elixir which was seen as a means to attain immortality:
Sing forth to Pavamana skilled in holy song: the juice is flowing onward like a mighty stream. He glide th like a serpent from his ancient skin…(RVIX. 86:44).
Vogel (1995) gives another example from the Tandya-Mahabrāhmaṇ aof how the serpents‘ability to discard their skin made them equal to the deathless Adityas:
By this sacrifice, verily, the serpents have conquered death; death is conquered by those who will perform this sacrifice. Therefore, they cast off their old skin; and having cast the same, they creep out of it. The serpents are Adityas; like unto the splendor of the Adityas is the splendor of those who perform this sacrifice (p.14).
These qualities that rendered the serpents immortal, full of tējas, and māyāvi are what made the Nāgas not only more powerful than the Vedic Āryans but also more wealthy, because25 Bhattacharji. S. (2000). The Indian Theogony Brahmā, Viṣṇu &Śiva. New Delhi: Penguin Books26 Bhattacharji. S. (2000). The Indian Theogony Brahmā, Viṣṇu &Śiva. New Delhi: Penguin Books27 Vogel, J. (1995). Indian Serpent Lore Or the Nagas In Hindu Legend and Art. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing.
they possessed treasures that were beyond material assets, and all this power and wealth is what the Āryans desired to ‗steal‘ from the Nāgas, so that they could empower themselves and,most importantly, their divines. Conversely, these were also qualities that, perhaps, came to be seen as evil, because they made the Āryans feel threatened, and consequently, inferior.
Therefore, to overcome this sense of inferiority, they not only attacked the Nāgas and stole from them, but they also hailed the irown criminal actions as victories. In addition,to validate these wrongful actions, they attributed them to divine help. For example, in the following hymn, Indra is praised for helping his worshippers kill the enemies and win riches:
For success in this battle where there are prizes to be won, we will invoke the generous Indra, most manly and brawny, who listens and gives help in combat, who kills enemies and wins riches (The Rig Veda, 1981, p. 154.).
And, in this following myth, Indra helps the worshippers overcome weakness so that they can subdue the enemy:
All that is weak in us, Excellent God, make firm, make our foes easy to subdue. (RVIt was this fact of Āryan envy of the Nāgas that may actually have destroyed the Nāgasand their way of life and, in a broader sense, brought about the end of the Indus Valley civilization. D.D. Kosambi says,―this decline is attributed to the Āryans who destroyed the agricultural system by breaking the embankments [perhaps, created by the Nāgas] to retain the flood from the river water,‖ which action, he maintains, ―is symbolically referred to in the ṛgVedicdescriptions of Indra destroying Vṛtra, and releasing the waters‖ (cited in Thapar, 1993, p.
101).29In fact, the Āryan actions destroyed not just the land and its resources but also a belief system about which we may never learn. Promatha Nath Mullick and M.N. Dutt (1934) suggest that Nāgas themselves may not have been people but deities of the indigenous people.
Referencing an article by Kasten Rönnow, "Visvarupa in the Indian Studies", Mullick and Duttsay that Vişvarūpa, son of Tvastra [in the Indra vs. Vṛ tra myth] was a ―serpent deity closely connected with pre-Vedic sacrifices (p. 35).
have been a symbolic killing between divines-- the Āryan divine destroying an indigenous divine to establish supremacy. Rönnow‘s suggestion is an important one, because it introduces another kind of usurping--one that is more destructive than the material theft of land, water, and wealth. This is the disintegration of the very foundation that holds a people together—its connection with the mythic divine and cosmic order.
There is much polemic about the pre-Āryan, indigenous theology of the Indus Valley people, and whether the solarity of the Āryan male divines may have supplanted the lunar earth/ mother goddess and possibly also a male nature god, perhaps an earlier form of Śiva‘s Paśupata form. The extant literature from those early times is only Āryan, since the Indus Valley seals have yet to be deciphered; hence this argument cannot be concretized.
But the fact that the Ṛg Vedic hymns eulogize mostly solar male gods that are obviously only Āryan carries much weight, because, this not only creates a one dimensional gender-biased pantheon, it also discounts the theology that must have belonged to the non-Āryans of the Indus Valley, which may have included a chief Mother Goddess. Whatever the case may be about the gender or nature of indigenous divines, it can be surmised that the gods of the indigenous people, (whether they were Nāgagods or divines of other aboriginal tribes), were seen as the ‗other‘ by theĀryans; and hence they were discredited so that the Āryans could install their own cosmology and the supremacy of their own divines.
In the Mahābhārata, too, there is no real evidence of Nāga deities or the Nāga cosmos,or even the Āryans‘ persecution of the Nāgas,except in the snake sacrifice. In fact, it is also not clear whether there were actually humans belonging to the Nāga race in epic times, because in the myths of the Mahābhārata, the Nāgas appear both as humans and as serpents, and since myth-making is most often symbolic and metaphoric, it is hard to determine whether the stories in the myths are about Nāgaswho were human, about humans who were serpent-like in appearance and/or attributes, or about serpents who were human-like.
A good example of this ambiguity is the story of Śeṣ a Nāga in Mahābhārata‘s ĀdiParva (Mbh 1.36):Śeṣ aNāga, unlike,the other sons of Kadru, who are of ―wicked hearts,‖ is a virtuous and pious ascetic, practicing great penances. When Brahmā sees him ―with knotted hair, clad in rags, his flesh, his skin and news dried up,‖ he asks him what he is doing and why. Śeṣ a tells him that he wants to dissociate himself from his younger brothers, who never show kindness to their cousin, Garuda,Vinata‘s son, and wants to discard his body so that he does not have to live with them.
Brahmā then gives him a boon that he will hold the earth steady ―for the good of all creatures,‖ and he directs Śeṣa to go underneath the earth through a passage that the Earth herself will make for him. Śeṣa enters into a hole in the earth and, going to the other side, takes on the duty of keeping the earth steady. Clearly, in this myth, Śeṣ a‘s appearance, after he spends years inpenance, becomes like a serpent‘s, and the fact that he is able to borrow into the earth is a serpent‘s characteristic. This myth suggests that Śeṣ a is a human being with serpent-like qualities, which, in turn suggests that there may have been a Nāga race—or, at least a brethren community of Nāgas—a people that may have had physical attributes that resembles serpents.
But, on the other hand, the fact that Śeṣ a is born to Kadru, the mother of serpents,creates ambiguity about his human-ness.
Another example of this cryptic nature of nāgas reference in the Mahābhārata is provided byŚiva and his association with nāgas. In fact, Śiva‘s connection with ―many dark and dread objects, including serpents‖(Bhattacharji, 2000, p. 149),31is in almost all the texts in which he is referenced, and his connections with the serpents becomes integral to the portrayal of his divinity. In the Mahābhārata, for example, Śiva‘s Paśupata weapon is a serpent, which is revealed in Drona Parva when Arjuna, in his dream, visits Śivato ask him for the Paśupata sothat he can destroy Abhimanyu‘s killer, Jayadaratha. In Śiva‘s abode, Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa see a―terrible serpent‖ and another ―foremost of serpents possessing a thousand hoods, of the effulgence of fire…vomiting terrible flames‖ (Mbh7.81:13)
As Arjuna and Krishna praise Śiva, the two serpents assume the form of a bow and arrow (Mbh 7.81, 82).In addition to using serpents as weapons, Śiva is also Nīlakantha because he swallows the deadly poison Halāhaladuring the churning of the ocean (Mbh1.18:41-42), and since poison is the tējas of serpents, byŚiva swallowing it, he takes the tējas of serpents within him and becomes one with them.Thus,in these myths, the human element of nāgas is missing, because many of Śiva‘s attributes are derived from serpent power; but, what can be inferred from these Śiva myths is that the serpents were either themselves deities of a community, whose divinity Śiva assumes or thatŚiva himself was a divine for a people who were nāga-like; that is why Śiva embodies their most powerful and transcendent qualities.
However ambiguous the Mahābhārata myths maybe in determining the nature of nāgas,what is quite apparent is that the Mahābhārata inherited from the Vedic myths about nāgas the concept of the persecution of ‗the other‘. The metaphor of evil that the nāgascreatedin the Āryan mind became the nāga legacy in the serpent myth cycle and sacrifice in the epic,and this became the reason for not just their elimination but also the annihilation of their world31 Bhattacharji. S. (2000). The Indian The ogony Brahmā, Viṣṇu &Śiva. .
through a sacrificial ritual. How this total elimination can be accomplished through ritual sacrificeis explained by Mircea Eliade (1959). He says a sacrifice is a ‗taking over‘ or an establishing ofa new ‗fixed point‘ or a sacred space:
All this becomes very clear from the Vedic ritual for taking possession of a territory;possession becomes legally valid through the erection of a fire altar consecrated to Agni.
―One says that one is installed when one has built a fire altar [grahapatya] and all those who build the fire altar are legally established‖ (ŚatapathaBrāhmaṇa, VII, 1, 1, 1-4). By erection of a fire altar Agni is made present, and communication with the world of the gods is ensured; the space of the altar becomes a sacred space (p, 32).32
Hence, through the medium of ritual sacrifice, a pre-existing divine or space is taken over and a new divine and sacred space is established. In addition, Eliade goes on to explain how a new sacred space re-creates the very cosmos of the sacrificers, replacing the old cosmos. He explains that ―consecrating a territory is equivalent to making it a cosmos, to cosmicizing it. For, in fact, the erection of an altar to Agni is nothing but the reproduction—on the microcosmic scale—of the Creation (ŚatapathaBrāhmaṇa, 1. 9, 2, 29, etc.).
Hence the erection of the fire altar—which alone validates taking possession of a new territory—is equivalent to a cosmogony‖ (p. 33).33This ‗taking possession‘ of the nāga world is the key motif in the entire nāga myth cycle in the Mahābhārata--not just in mythical terms but also in terms of real societal paradig
