Record #106
Nagas
Serpent beings capable of taking human form and protecting sacred law.
Original Text
Nagas belong to the mythology of India. They are serpents but often take the form of a man.
In one of the books of the Mahabharata, Arjuna is pursued by Ulupi, the daughter of a Naga king, and firmly but gently has to remind her of his vow of chastity; the maiden tells him that his duty lies in soothing the unhappy. The hero grants her a night. The Buddha, meditating under a fig tree, is chastised by the wind and the rain; a Naga out of pity coils itself around him in a sevenfold embrace and opens over him its seven heads so as to form a kind of umbrella. The Buddha converts him to the Faith.
Kern in his Manual ofIndian Buddhism, speaks of the Nagas as cloudlike serpents. They live underground in deep palaces. Believers in the Greater Vehicle tell that the Buddha preached one law to mankind and another to the gods, and that this latter - the secret law - was kept in the heavens and palaces of the serpents, who revealed it centuries later to the monk Nagarjuna.
We give an Indian legend set down by the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hsien early in the fifth century:
King Asoka came to a lake near whose edge stood a lofty pagoda. He thought of pulling it down in order to raise a higher one. A Brahman let him into the tower and once inside told him:
‘My human form is an illusion. I am really a Naga, a dragon. My sins condemn me to inhabit this frightful body, but I obey the law preached by the Buddha and hope to work my redemption. You may pull down this shrine if you believe you can build a better one.’
The Naga showed him the vessels of the altar. The king looked at them with alarm, for they were quite unlike those made by the hands of men, and he left the pagoda standing.
In one of the books of the Mahabharata, Arjuna is pursued by Ulupi, the daughter of a Naga king, and firmly but gently has to remind her of his vow of chastity; the maiden tells him that his duty lies in soothing the unhappy. The hero grants her a night. The Buddha, meditating under a fig tree, is chastised by the wind and the rain; a Naga out of pity coils itself around him in a sevenfold embrace and opens over him its seven heads so as to form a kind of umbrella. The Buddha converts him to the Faith.
Kern in his Manual ofIndian Buddhism, speaks of the Nagas as cloudlike serpents. They live underground in deep palaces. Believers in the Greater Vehicle tell that the Buddha preached one law to mankind and another to the gods, and that this latter - the secret law - was kept in the heavens and palaces of the serpents, who revealed it centuries later to the monk Nagarjuna.
We give an Indian legend set down by the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hsien early in the fifth century:
King Asoka came to a lake near whose edge stood a lofty pagoda. He thought of pulling it down in order to raise a higher one. A Brahman let him into the tower and once inside told him:
‘My human form is an illusion. I am really a Naga, a dragon. My sins condemn me to inhabit this frightful body, but I obey the law preached by the Buddha and hope to work my redemption. You may pull down this shrine if you believe you can build a better one.’
The Naga showed him the vessels of the altar. The king looked at them with alarm, for they were quite unlike those made by the hands of men, and he left the pagoda standing.