Kashyapa wed Kadru, one of Daksha's daughters, and from their union sprang a thousand serpents — the Nagas who inhabit Patala, with Shesha the eldest, Vasuki the king, and Takshaka the most wrathful among them.
Astika, son of a Naga mother, saved the serpent race by persuading King Janamejaya to halt the Sarpa Satra. The Nagas revere him as their deliverer from annihilation.
Garuda is the eternal enemy of the Nagas, a primordial hostility born from the rivalry between their mothers Vinata and Kadru. He preys upon serpents without mercy, and the Nagas scatter at his shadow.
Janamejaya performed the Sarpa Satra to exterminate the Nagas in revenge for Takshaka killing his father Parikshit. The sacrifice consumed countless serpents before the sage Astika persuaded him to stop.
The Nagas dwell in Patala, ruling the glittering serpent realm of jeweled palaces beneath the earth.
Vasuki reigns as king of the Nagas in the jeweled halls of Nagaloka beneath the earth, ruling over all serpent-kind with the authority granted by Brahma.
The Nagas are a race of divine serpent beings. Shesha (Ananta) and Vasuki are the greatest among them — Shesha serves as Vishnu's cosmic couch, Vasuki as the churning rope at the Ocean of Milk and the serpent adorning Shiva's neck.
Kaliya is a venomous Naga who poisoned the Yamuna River until Krishna subdued him by dancing on his hoods and banished him to the ocean.
Manasa is a Naga goddess worshipped for protection from snakebite. As a daughter of Kashyapa and sister of the serpents, she bridges the Naga race and the divine pantheon.
Takshaka is one of the foremost Naga kings, known for killing King Parikshit. His act of vengeance provoked Janamejaya's snake sacrifice that nearly destroyed the entire Naga race.
Ulupi, a Naga princess dwelling beneath the Ganga, fell in love with Arjuna during his exile pilgrimage. She drew him into her underwater realm and married him, bearing his son Iravan.
The Nagas appear across Hindu, Buddhist, and Tibetan traditions as semi-divine serpent beings. In Tibet they are known as Lu, derived from the Hindu and Buddhist originals through cultural transmission.
The Nagas covet the Amrita, the nectar of immortality produced during the Samudra Manthan. Garuda stole the Amrita from the gods and briefly offered it to the Nagas to free his mother Vinata from Kadru's servitude.
The young Bhima was poisoned and thrown into a river by Duryodhana. He sank to Nagaloka where Vasuki's Nagas recognized him as kin through Kunti's lineage and gave him a potion that granted him the strength of a thousand elephants.
When many of the Nagas refused to blacken the tail of Uchchaihshravas to fix her wager, Kadru cursed the Nagas to perish in Janamejaya's serpent sacrifice — a mother's curse that would drive the central narrative of the Mahabharata's frame story.
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