Vasuki- Hindu CreatureCreature · Beast"King of Serpents"

The Churning Rope

Vasuki is a son of the sage Kashyapa and Kadru, the mother of all serpents. He rules the Naga kingdom beneath the earth, and in his hood sits the Nagamani, a jewel that lights the darkness of Patala.

When the gods and demons agreed to churn the ocean of milk for the nectar of immortality, they needed a rope strong enough to spin Mount Mandara. They chose Vasuki. His body was wrapped around the mountain, the gods gripping his tail and the demons his head. As the churning ground on, the motion tore at him. He exhaled clouds of venom. Then he vomited the Halahala, a poison that could kill everything in creation. The churning stopped. The gods and demons fled.

Shiva stepped forward and drank the poison. It lodged in his throat and turned it blue. Vasuki, half-dead from the ordeal, had produced both the catastrophe and the occasion for Shiva's sacrifice.

Shiva's Ornament

Vasuki coils around Shiva's neck. In every temple where Shiva is carved or cast, the serpent is there, draped across the god's throat. The snake who vomited the world-killing poison rests against the throat that swallowed it.

The Snake Sacrifice

In the Mahabharata's Astika Parva, King Janamejaya performed a great sacrifice to exterminate all serpents, avenging his father Parikshit's death by snakebite from Takshaka, Vasuki's brother. Serpents were drawn from across the world into the sacrificial fire. Vasuki watched his people burn.

He sent his nephew Astika, a young brahmin sage born of a Naga mother, to stop the sacrifice. Astika arrived at the ceremony and praised Janamejaya so eloquently that the king offered him a boon. Astika asked for the sacrifice to end. Janamejaya, bound by his word, stopped the fire. The surviving serpents lived because Vasuki found the right person to send.