Vasukiवासुकि

Vasuki is the snake around Shiva's neck, and he is the rope they churned the ocean with, and those two facts are the same story.

When the gods and the asuras set out to churn the Kshira Sagara for the amrita, they used Mount Mandara as the churning-stick and Vasuki as the rope. The gods took one end and the asuras the other, and they pulled him back and forth for an age.

It is worth being plain about what that means. The king of the serpents was wrapped around a mountain and dragged in both directions by two armies until the sea gave up its treasures. The texts say his teeth and his coils were ground, that he suffered, and that in his agony he vomited venom — the Halahala, the poison that rose and began to kill the world, until Shiva drank it and held it in his throat, and turned blue, and became Nilakantha.

So: the poison that Shiva is famous for swallowing came out of Vasuki, because of what was being done to him. And Vasuki is the snake that Shiva afterwards wears around that same throat.

He is king of the nagas — one of the three great serpents of the tradition with Shesha, his elder brother, and Takshaka — a son of Kashyapa and Kadru, and therefore half-brother to Garuda, who eats snakes. His sister, in Bengal, is Manasa.

And he is worshipped, in a small and very persistent way, by an enormous number of people: on Naga Panchami, in the naga stones set under trees in every part of India, in the serpent groves of Kerala, and at Kedarnath, below which a lake bears his name.

He is in this encyclopedia because thirteen references across six existing pages kept pointing at a snake who had no article.

The churning. The Samudra Manthana is told in the Mahabharata's Adi Parva, in the Bhagavata's eighth canto, and in the Vishnu, Padma and Matsya Puranas. Vasuki's role is constant across all of them: he is the rope.

One detail varies and is worth knowing, because it tells you who is telling the story. In most versions the asuras take the head end — and are burned by his breath and scorched by his fiery mouth — while the gods take the tail. In some tellings the asuras insisted on the head, considering the tail beneath them, and were punished by their own pride for it. Either way the arrangement is presented as a trick played on them, and the Mahabali and Kashyapa pages set out how routinely the asuras come off worse in narratives told by the other side.

The naga world. Vasuki belongs to a stratum of Indian religion much older than the Puranas. Serpent worship is attested in the subcontinent from the earliest periods, is widespread, is largely aniconic or semi-aniconic — carved naga stones, termite mounds, groves — and cuts across the Sanskritic tradition entirely. Buddhism and Jainism have their own nagas: the Buddha is sheltered by Mucalinda, and Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Jain Tirthankara, is canopied by a serpent in every image of him. This is a shared subcontinental substratum, not a Hindu possession, and the encyclopedia says so.

Kadru and Vinata. His mother's wager against her co-wife, and the servitude that followed, is the origin of the permanent war between snakes and birds. The Kashyapa page tells it in full; the Garuda and Shesha pages give the other ends.

Janamejaya's sacrifice. The Mahabharata's frame story is a snake holocaust. King Janamejaya, whose father Parikshit was killed by the naga Takshaka, performs a sarpa satra — a sacrifice designed to draw every serpent in the world into the fire. Vasuki, as king, is the one who has to do something about it, and the boy Astika, his own nephew, stops it. That story is the reason for Naga Panchami.

Around Shiva's neck. The Shaiva material makes him Shiva's ornament, and the relationship is one of the few in Hindu iconography where a great king is content to be worn.

And the mountain. Vasuki is also the name attached to sites across the Himalaya — Vasuki Tal below Kedarnath, and shrines on the Kailash and Manimahesh routes. Whether the lake is named for the serpent or the serpent for something in that landscape is not recoverable.

He is nearly always around somebody else's neck.

On Shiva. Coiled three times around the throat, head raised at the shoulder, hood spread. In almost every image of Shiva in India — Nataraja, Dakshinamurti, Bhikshatana, the linga's nagabandha — there is a serpent, and it is conventionally Vasuki. Note the position: on the throat, over the place where the Halahala is held.

As the churning rope. Wound round Mandara, gods at one end, asuras at the other, Kurma beneath. One of the most-depicted scenes in Indian and Southeast Asian art — and the greatest version of it is not in India at all but at Angkor Wat, where a fifty-metre bas-relief shows ninety-two asuras and eighty-eight devas pulling him.

As a naga king. A human torso above, serpent coils below, with a multi-headed hood — usually five, seven or nine — fanned behind the head. Nagaraja images of this type are found across India, and a crowned naga king with folded hands beside a deity is the standard form.

As a naga stone. The commonest form by an enormous margin, and the least remarked: an upright slab with one or two entwined serpents, set under a tree, at a field edge or in a temple compound, often with turmeric and vermilion on it. There are hundreds of thousands of these.

Distinguishing him.

— A serpent round Shiva's neck is Vasuki. — A serpent canopying a reclining Vishnu is Shesha. — A serpent under Krishna's dancing feet is Kaliya. — A serpent coiled round a mountain with the waters inside is Vritra, whose page is in this tranche. — A serpent canopying a seated meditating figure may well be Buddhist or Jain, not Hindu at all.

Vasuki. Also Vasuki Naga, Nagaraja.

The three great nagas. Shesha or Ananta, who holds the earth and on whom Vishnu sleeps; Vasuki, who is worn by Shiva and was used as the rope; and Takshaka, who killed Parikshit and started the snake sacrifice. Each belongs to a different god's orbit, and the tradition distributes them neatly.

Basuki. The Indonesian form — and Mount Agung's principal temple in Bali is Pura Besakih, whose name is connected with him. Balinese Hinduism holds the naga Besakih within the mountain.

Manasa. His sister in the Bengali tradition, with her own page — a goddess who had to force her worship on people who did not want to give it, which is one of the more unusual cults in this encyclopedia.

Astika. His nephew, son of Vasuki's sister Jaratkaru and the sage of the same name, who stopped Janamejaya's sacrifice.

Mucalinda (Buddhist) and Dharanendra (Jain) — the serpent kings of the other two traditions, structurally identical and doctrinally separate.

Not Vasuki the Kerala Ayurvedic or place names, and not the several modern uses of the name.

The churning, from his side. Every retelling of the Samudra Manthana is about what came out of the ocean — Lakshmi, the Kaustubha, Kamadhenu, Airavata, Uchchaihshravas, Dhanvantari with the amrita, and Alakshmi before her sister. Almost none is about the rope.

Vasuki was tied to a mountain and pulled in opposite directions by two armies for an age; his body was crushed; his mouth burned those holding it; and what he produced under that treatment was poison strong enough to end the world. The Halahala is usually described as a hazard that arose. It is more accurately described as what happened to somebody.

And Shiva drank it. He held it in his throat and did not swallow, and it stained him blue — Nilakantha. The Shiva page carries that, and it is one of the tradition's central images of what a protector does.

The pairing of the two is the best thing about this page. The being whose agony produced the poison is worn, ever afterwards, around the throat that holds it. Nobody in the texts comments on the arrangement. It is simply how the two of them end up.

Janamejaya's snake sacrifice. After Takshaka kills Parikshit, the king's son builds a fire designed to pull every serpent in creation into it, and they begin to fall — a genuinely horrifying passage, with the snakes named as they burn. Vasuki, terrified for his people, appeals to his sister Jaratkaru, whose son Astika is half-brahmin and can enter the sacrificial ground. Astika arrives, praises the rite so beautifully that the king offers him a boon, and asks for it to stop. It stops.

That is the origin story of Naga Panchami, and its shape is worth noting: a massacre halted by a child asking politely, and the festival is the anniversary of the stopping rather than of any victory.

The bow of Tripura. When Shiva destroyed the three cities, Mount Meru was his bow and Vasuki was his bowstring. He is used as equipment twice in the tradition's two greatest cosmic operations, and does not object either time.

Vasuki Tal. The lake at about 4,100 m above Kedarnath, on the way to Khatling glacier, where he is said to have bathed. It is a serious high-altitude trek.

Naga Panchami, Shravana Shukla Panchami (July–August), is the day. Serpent images, live snakes where snake-charmers are present, naga stones, anthills and temple images receive milk, turmeric, vermilion and flowers; in Maharashtra, Bengal, Rajasthan and the south it is widely kept, and Vasuki is among the serpents named in the stotra recited.

A necessary animal-welfare note. Offering milk to live snakes is a persistent part of this observance and it is harmful. Snakes are not physiologically able to digest milk; the animals used are frequently defanged, their venom glands damaged, kept dehydrated and fed nothing else, and many die within weeks. Capturing, keeping and displaying Indian snakes is an offence under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. Forest departments and wildlife organisations campaign against the practice every year. Offering milk to a stone, an image or an anthill harms nothing, is traditional, and is what most observant families now do.

Naga stones and sarpa kavus. Across India, and especially in Kerala and coastal Karnataka, serpent shrines are maintained — the Kerala sarpa kavu being a grove left uncut, which the Bhadrakali page notes are among the last fragments of the state's original forest. Ashlesha bali, Sarpa Samskara and Nagaprathishta are performed at temples such as Kukke Subramanya and Mannarasala.

These rites are commonly undertaken in connection with the astrological condition called sarpa dosha or kala sarpa yoga. DharmSetu records them as observed religious practice and makes no claim about outcomes of any kind. A reader should know that these are paid rituals, that the sums involved can be substantial, and that where a practitioner escalates from one rite to a series at rising cost, that is a commercial pattern regardless of the setting. Matters of health, marriage and money are for doctors, families and professionals.

On Shiva's linga, where the nagabandha coils, and in every Shiva temple in India.

Snakebite, plainly. India records a very large number of snakebite deaths annually — tens of thousands — overwhelmingly rural and overwhelmingly preventable. Snakebite is a medical emergency. The treatment is antivenom in a hospital, as fast as possible. No shrine, mantra, stone or traditional practitioner is a substitute, and delay is what kills. This is the single most useful sentence on this page.

Mannarasala Sree Nagaraja Temple (Alappuzha district, Kerala) — the great serpent temple, with tens of thousands of naga images through its forest grove, and a priestess, the Valiyamma, which is unusual in Kerala.

Kukke Subramanya (Dakshina Kannada district, Karnataka) — where Vasuki is held to have taken refuge from Garuda under Subramanya's protection, and which is the principal destination for sarpa dosha rites.

Nagaraja Temple, Nagercoil (Kanyakumari district, Tamil Nadu) — the town is named for it.

Vasuki Tal (Rudraprayag district, Uttarakhand) — the lake above Kedarnath, about 4,100 m. A serious trek; altitude sickness is a real risk and the Bhrigu page's caution applies here too.

Bhujang Naag Temple, Bhuj (Kutch district, Gujarat) — the city is named from the serpent.

Angkor Wat (Siem Reap, Cambodia) — the Churning of the Ocean of Milk gallery, roughly fifty metres of it, with Vasuki stretched the whole length. A UNESCO World Heritage Site and the finest depiction of this page's subject anywhere on earth.

Pura Besakih, Mount Agung (Bali, Indonesia) — the mother temple, whose name is connected with Basuki.

Patan and the Kathmandu valley (Nepal) — naga shrines and the Nag Pokhari.

And an anthill under a tree at the edge of a field, anywhere in India, which is where most of this religion actually is.

The rope is a person. Every account of the churning of the ocean lists what came out of it. Almost none mentions that the churning rope was a living being, a king, who was tied to a mountain and pulled in two directions by two armies until he brought up poison. The Halahala is not a hazard that arose during a technical operation. It is what a body produces under that treatment, and the tradition tells you so and then never returns to it.

And he is worn on the throat that holds it. Shiva drank what Vasuki vomited, held it in his neck, went blue — and then wound Vasuki around that same neck and has worn him ever since. Nobody in the corpus remarks on it. It is one of the most quietly extraordinary arrangements in Hindu iconography, and it is visible in every Shiva image in the world.

Equipment, twice, without complaint. The rope for the churning; the bowstring for the burning of Tripura. In the two largest operations the gods ever undertook, the serpent king was the tool, and the texts record no objection from him. Whether that is devotion or something less comfortable is left open.

A religion older than the one it is inside. Serpent worship in the subcontinent is very old, largely aniconic, mostly outdoors, conducted without priests at stones and anthills and groves, and shared with Buddhism and Jainism — Mucalinda over the Buddha, Dharanendra over Parshvanatha. The Puranic Vasuki is a king in a narrative; the thing people actually do is put milk and turmeric on a stone under a tree. The second is older and larger than the first, and the Ayyanar and Bhadrakali pages describe the same relationship elsewhere.

A festival about stopping. Naga Panchami commemorates the day a mass burning of serpents was halted — by a boy who talked his way into the sacrificial ground and asked for it to end. Most religious festivals mark a victory, a birth or a death. This one marks a cessation of killing, requested by a child, and granted. That is an unusual thing to build an annual observance on, and it is worth knowing while putting milk on a stone.