The Naga Series

Center of Naga veneration may originally have been Kashmir. The Nagas are described as Kashmir’s first inhabitants. Myth and geology agree: the Valley of Kashmir was once filled with water like a huge reservoir or lake bounded by mountains. Myth explains that land was eventually elevated from the waters and placed in the Nagas’ care. (Geology suggests that earthquakes aided this process.) Some five-hundred-twenty-seven named Nagas were traditionally worshipped in Kashmir. A court historian for the sixteenth-century Mughal Emperor Akbar listed seven hundred places in Kashmir sacred to the Nagas. From Kashmir, veneration spread throughout the subcontinent, the Himalayas, and southeast Asia, especially Cambodia and Indonesia.

- Serpent and Shiva Worship and Mythology in Central America, Africa and Asia and The Origin of Serpent Worship.

by Hyde Clarke and Staniland Wake.

Veri Naga, 12x36 inches, Acrylic, Canvas

It is the association with the water, so conspicuous a feature in Indian serpent lore as said by scholar Hendrik Kern, that Naga's are essentially water spirits. They are to be regarded as personified forces of Nature; in the first instance the snake-like coiling rain-clouds emitting flashes of lightening - the serpents of the sky - which are transported to the lakes and pool and finally are "confounded" with real poisonous snakes. 

- Indian Serpent lore of the Nagas in the Hindu legend and Art