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Bestiary of Cryptids & Legendary CreaturesNāgas are serpent beings of Asian religious traditions, capable of sheltering the Buddha, guarding sacred teaching or carrying the earth itself.
Also recorded as Naga, Nāgas
For seven days, rain falls out of season. A serpent king leaves his dwelling and coils around the meditating Buddha, raising his hood against the weather. When the sky clears, the great body unwinds. Before the Buddha now stands a young man, his hands folded in reverence. [7]
Read the manuscriptNāga names a serpent being, while Muccalinda and Śeṣa name particular individuals. Their bodies can act on very different scales: one makes shelter around a seated person; another bears a world. Buddhist scripture and the Hindu Mahābhārata give these figures their own intentions and relationships. The same sinuous outline does not predict whether a serpent will protect, resent, bargain or renounce. [7][4][2]
The Muccalinda account belongs to the Udāna, a Buddhist collection of narratives and solemn utterances. Its setting is Uruvelā, beside the river Nerañjarā, soon after the Buddha’s awakening. The Mahābhārata’s serpent stories belong to a different religious and literary setting: an epic conversation in which the sage Śaunaka questions the storyteller Sauti about a vast family and its troubles. Śaunaka has heard that the serpents’ mother cursed them; he wants to know how her sons responded. [7][3][4]
In Udāna 2.1, the newly awakened Buddha sits at the foot of the Muccalinda tree, absorbed in meditation. The unseasonable storm brings cold wind and darkness as well as rain. Muccalinda, king of the serpents, comes out from his dwelling. He winds his body seven times around the Buddha and spreads his hood overhead. The coils that might enclose a victim instead surround someone he intends to keep unharmed. [7]
His concern extends beyond the storm. The account gives his wish that neither cold nor heat should disturb the Buddha, and that biting insects, wind and the sun’s heat should not trouble him. The great hood is a canopy, and the immense body attends to small discomforts. No request for rescue precedes the act. Muccalinda supplies the protection while the Buddha remains in meditation. [7]
At the close of the seventh day, the Buddha emerges from that state. Muccalinda sees that the sky has cleared, releases his coils and assumes a young man’s form. He stands with folded hands before the person he sheltered. The transformation changes the relationship visible in the scene: what first surrounded the Buddha now faces him in homage. [7]
The Buddha’s concluding utterance turns to the happiness of peaceful solitude, freedom from malice and restraint toward living beings. It ends with the overcoming of desire and the conceit of “I am.” The sheltering episode therefore closes with a teaching about the self, rather than a reward demanded by the powerful visitor. Muccalinda’s extraordinary body has done its work and is no longer needed. [7]
A very different bargain governs the Mahābhārata’s account of Garuḍa and the serpents. Garuḍa is a mighty bird; his mother Vinatā has been placed in bondage through the deceit of Kadru’s serpent sons. He carries the nectar of immortality needed to win her freedom. In section XXXIV, the god Indra asks about his strength. Reluctant to boast but pressed to answer, Garuḍa says that a single feather could support the earth with its mountains, forests and seas, and even Indra himself. [2][4]
Indra offers friendship and asks him to return the nectar, fearing what the serpents would do if they drank it. Garuḍa explains that he must first fulfil the purpose for which he took it. He promises, however, that the serpents will not drink. Once he has set it down, Indra may remove it. The agreement lets the bird keep his bargain with the captors while denying them its expected benefit. [2]
Offered a boon, Garuḍa remembers the deception against his mother and asks that serpents become his food. Indra agrees. The bird then returns to his mother and the serpents, puts the nectar on kuśa grass and tells them to bathe and perform their religious rites before drinking. His mother, he reminds them, is now free under their agreement. They consent and go to prepare themselves. [2]
During their absence, Indra carries the nectar back to heaven. The serpents return to the empty place and lick the grass where it stood, hoping to recover what remains. The story explains their divided tongues as the consequence of that licking; contact with the nectar also makes the grass sacred. Garuḍa leaves with his liberated mother and begins preying on the serpents. They have surrendered their captive, lost immortality and acquired a predator through the very exchange meant to strengthen them.
Section XXXVI follows a serpent who cannot bear this family’s hostility. Śeṣa leaves his mother and brothers because they are jealous, foolish and cruel toward Vinatā and Garuḍa. He recognizes the bird as a brother too, born to the same father, Kaśyapa. His withdrawal takes him through sacred places, including Gandhamādana, Gokarṇa, Puṣkara and the foot of the Himalaya. He undertakes severe ascetic discipline, living on air, until his flesh wastes away. [4]
The god Brahmā sees the emaciated serpent in rags and matted hair and asks what he hopes to gain. The intensity of his austerities is troubling other beings. Śeṣa answers that he wants to abandon his body and escape his wicked brothers forever. Brahmā tells him that he already knows about their wrongdoing and has provided a remedy. He offers Śeṣa a boon. The serpent asks that his mind should remain fixed on virtue, tranquillity and ascetic practice. [4]
Brahmā praises his restraint, then asks him to serve the world. The earth, with its mountains, forests, seas, towns and places of retreat, needs someone to hold it steady. Śeṣa accepts. Rather than asking to be spared the weight, he requests that the earth be placed upon his head. Brahmā directs him below it; the earth opens a passage, and Śeṣa descends. There he supports the world, pictured as a goddess encircled by the seas. [4]
Brahmā honours this service and calls him the god Dharma. Sauti identifies the earth-bearer as Ananta, another name for Śeṣa, and ends with an unexpected companion: Brahmā appoints Garuḍa to help him. The serpent who refused his brothers’ hatred receives the bird they feared as an ally. His journey away from them has taken him beneath every home and forest he now sustains. [4]
Between the nectar bargain and Śeṣa’s departure, Śaunaka asks for the principal serpents’ names. Sauti begins with Śeṣa and Vāsuki, then names Airāvata, Takṣaka, Karkoṭaka and many others. He stops because their descendants are too numerous to enumerate. The catalogue makes the family larger than any one encounter. Even its first name leads to a story about refusing the conduct of the others. [3][4]
The English editions preserve different routes into these accounts. Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s Mahābhārata appeared between 1883 and 1896; its numbered sections keep the three serpent passages together. D. M. Strong’s 1902 Udāna calls the sheltering king Mucilinda, while Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s 2012 translation uses Muccalinda. Both translations retain the seven coils, the clearing sky and the young man’s homage. Their dates belong to the translations, not to the events narrated. [2][3][4][7][1]
Seven serpent hoods rise above a seated teacher in a seventeenth-century Tibetan sculpture at the Walters Art Museum. The figure is Nāgārjuna, a philosopher associated with second-century southern India. According to the tradition explained by the museum, he recovered the Perfection of Wisdom teachings from an underwater serpent king entrusted with them by the Buddha. The sculpture’s hoods identify the recipient of that teaching, rather than illustrating Muccalinda’s seven coils. [5]
The gilded copper-alloy figure holds his hands in a teaching gesture, thumbs and index fingers forming wheels of doctrine. Its inscription names the sculptor Tsapa Namgyal and records an unnamed senior monk as its intended recipient. Tibetan tradition also combined later teachers called Nāgārjuna with the earlier philosopher. That layered identity is part of the object’s history; the person beneath the hood is not simply a generic Buddha or an unnamed serpent worshipper. [5]
In Laos, a serpent can be carried on the body in cloth. Writing for the textile organization Ock Pop Tok, Valerie Olla describes naga motifs on sinh skirts and wall hangings, as well as their presence on temples in Luang Prabang. Her account presents a water being able to assume human or animal form. Benevolence offers protection against illness, hunger and harmful spirits; anger can bring floods, storms or death. [6]
Olla links women’s woven naga motifs with protection, strength and guidance, and those worn by brides or newly married women with fertility. She briefly mentions a naga prince who falls in love with a weaver. The serpent enters this account through the choices and uses of textile makers, among patterns carrying stories, status and relationships. Its presence on a garment can accompany marriage and ordinary movement, as well as appearing in a religious image. [6]
Śeṣa’s request is strikingly modest beside Garuḍa’s declaration of strength. The bird can carry worlds; the serpent first asks for a steadfast mind. Brahmā gives that inward resolve a weight to bear. Yet Śeṣa’s earlier wish to destroy his body is not praised as the solution to family suffering. He is asked to consider other beings and receives a continuing task among them. Withdrawal becomes service without requiring him to return to his brothers’ conduct. [4][2]
The epic leaves an awkward relationship intact. Garuḍa has obtained serpents as his food, yet becomes the helper of one serpent who recognized their kinship. The text does not cancel either relationship or explain away the contradiction. Instead, Śeṣa’s individual choice changes who can stand beside him. After the lost nectar, the divided tongues and the bitter family quarrel, the earth rests on a being who asked to keep his mind at peace. [2][4]
Udāna 2.1 appears in the translations by Strong and Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Ganguli’s Ādi Parva XXXIV–XXXVI supplies the epic sequence. The Walters record identifies the Tibetan sculpture; Olla describes the Lao textile motifs. [1][7][2][3][4][5][6]
Udāna textual tradition · Access to Insight / Barre Center for Buddhist Studies · 2012-08-30 · Access to Insight, BCBS edition · English translation of Pāli · Translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Udāna 2.1; PTS Ud 10; complete narrative and verse
Checked 2026-10-11
Mahābhārata textual tradition, traditionally attributed to Vyāsa · Wisdom Library; Ganguli translation · Ganguli translation originally issued 1883–1896 · English translation of Sanskrit · Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
Book 1, Astika Parva, section XXXIV
Checked 2026-10-11
Artwork
Select a folio to enlarge it. Its caption describes the account, landscape or artistic choices behind the image.
Manuscript checked 2026-10-13. Artistic interpretations © Scott Schubr / Luminary Oddities.
Return to the Bestiary ↑Mahābhārata textual tradition, traditionally attributed to Vyāsa · Wisdom Library; Ganguli translation · English translation of Sanskrit · Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
Book 1, Astika Parva, section XXXV
Checked 2026-10-11
Mahābhārata textual tradition, traditionally attributed to Vyāsa · Wisdom Library; Ganguli translation · English translation of Sanskrit · Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
Book 1, Astika Parva, section XXXVI
Checked 2026-10-11
Walters Art Museum curatorial team · Walters Art Museum · English
Object 54.3008, main description and object data
Checked 2026-10-11
Valerie Olla · Ock Pop Tok · 2021-11-10 · Page revised 2024-06-24 per public structured metadata · English
Animals and mythical creatures; All about the Naga; surrounding motif context
Checked 2026-10-11
Udāna textual tradition · Luzac & Co.; Internet Sacred Text Archive transcription · 1902 · London: Luzac & Co., 1902 · English translation of Pāli · Translated by D. M. Strong
Chapter II, Mucilinda, §1, pp. 13–14; complete narrative and concluding verse
Checked 2026-10-13