Markup View

Author: MatthewTheRaven

Jun 2nd 2010 at 9:46:10 AM

Here is a possible page image from Wikimedia: 
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Indischer_Maler_um_1640_001.jpg
It is one of the few images of Naga that resemble the Western bastardization that this trope is going to be about. Usually they're multiheaded snakes, but this painting shows snake bodied women.

In Hinduism, Nagas (more properly nagin or nagini if a female) are a very diverse group of snake-related entities, ranging from nature spirits to gods. Their king is either the Vedic god of storms, Varuna, or a being called the Nagaraja, and they live in the seventh underworld, Patala, its capital known as Bogavat. They are nature spirits associated with water - rainfall, lakes, rivers, wells, seas, and springs, and will bring droughts and floods if provoked.

Naga occur frequently in the ''{{Mahabharata}}''. Even though the text proclaims them to be the "persecutors of all creatures" and they are powerful, poisonous creatures that are hellbent on biting other creatures, the naga we see in the story vary between good and evil.

The Buddhist tradition, on the other hand, tends to associate the naga with whatever dragon-like deity exists in the local culture, such as the Chinese long or Tibetan klu. The Buddhist naga is usually depicted as a cobra, sometimes with several heads, or as a human with a snake behind its head, indicating that it shapeshifted into a human form.

The most famous naga in Buddhism is Mucalinda, the naga that protected the Buddha. When you see the Buddha meditating under the hood of a coiled cobra, that is Mucalinda.

* In Thailand, the Naga is a pluto-analogue, an underworld deity associated with wealth. Another related being is a dragon that lives in the Mekong River, where the Naga Fireball phenomenon occurs.
* The Malay believe nagas are multiple headed dragons.
* Laosians view the naga as sea serpents with beaks.
* Cambodians believe they are descended from the daughter of the King of the Nagas, a race of snake creatures with a vast empire under the Pacific Ocean. Seven-headed Nagas decorate Angkor Wat, hinting at this union.

The snake headed Roman deity Glycon, worshipped by AlanMoore, is closer to the trope, as are certain depictions of the serpent in the garden of Eden, sometimes shown with a woman's head.