But the naga is plainly another nature of being from the hydra, whatever their superficial resemblances. Such accounts as I have received indicate that the folk of India and the lands beyond generally revere this creature, indeed consider it almost as a god, yet at the same time somehow lower than the human. The contradictions do not end here, for though the bite of the naga is reputedly poisonous to all that lives, only certain individuals are regarded as physically dangerous to man. (Indeed, there appears to be no agreement among my sources as to the usual prey of the naga: several authorities even suggest that the beast does not eat at all, but lives on the milk of the wild elephant, which it herds and protects as we do cattle.) Water is the nagas’ element: they are believed to have the power to bring rain, or to withhold it, and consequently must be propitiated with sacrifices and other offerings, and treated with constant respect. As do dragons here, they guard great hoards of treasure in deep lairs; but much unlike the dragons we know, the nagas reportedly construct underground palaces of immense richness and beauty, dwelling there in the manner of kings and queens in this world. Yet it is said that they are often restless, pining for something they cannot have, and then they leave their mansions and stir forth into the rivers and brooks of India. The philosophers of that region say that they are seeking enlightenment—there are sects in Rome who would assure us that they hunger for a human soul. I have no opinion in this matter.
It may be of some interest to those who have served the Emperor in Britain to know that a creature similar to the naga is rumored to exist in the far northern marches of that island, where it is worshipped as a bringer of fertility, perhaps because it sleeps out the winter months underground, emerging on the first day of spring. But whether or not these serpents amass treasure in the same manner as the nagas, and as to how many heads they have, I know not.
All nagas are said to possess a priceless jewel, located either in the forehead or the throat, which is the source of their great power. They are, like the elephant, of a religious and even reverential nature, frequently keeping up shrines to the gods of India and making rich offerings of the same sort as they themselves receive. In addition, there are accounts of naga kings presenting their bodies as couches for the gods, spreading their hoods to keep off the rain and sun. Whether or not these tales are true, that they should be credited at all certainly indicates the regard in which the nagas are held in these lands.
A further puzzling contradiction concerning the naga is the general understanding that the female serpent—referred to as a nagini—is capable of assuming the human shape, while this is not so for the male of the species. In this counterfeit form, the nagini is frequently of remarkable beauty, and it is said that there are royal families who trace their descent from the marriage of a mortal prince with a nagini. Regarding this matter, the following tale was related directly to me by a trader in silks and dyestuffs who has traveled widely both in India and in the neighboring realm to the east called by its folk Kambuja. I will repeat it in the manner of his telling, as well as I am able.
In Kambuja, a little way from the palace of the kings, there stands to this day a tower sheathed completely in gold, as is often the style of royalty in those parts. This tower was built very long ago by a young king, as soon as he rose to power, to serve as apartments for himself and his queen when he should marry. But in the arrogance of his youth, he was impatient and impossible to please: this maiden was too plain, that one too dull; this one pretty enough but too quick-tongued, and this other was an unsuitable match for family reasons, and smelled of dried fish to boot. Consequently, his first youth passed in the solitude of majesty, which—as I am often advised—can surely be no substitute for the companionship and loving wisdom of a true wife, whether queen or bondservant. And the king was ever more lonely, though he would not say so, and ill-tempered because of this; and while he was not cruel or capricious in his ways, still he ruled in a listless fashion, doing little of evil and no good, having no heart for either. And the golden tower went untenanted, year on year, save for spiders and small owls raising their own families in the topmost spire.
Now (said the trader), this king was much in the habit of walking disguised among his people in the warm twilight of the streets and the marketplace. He fancied that he gained some knowledge of their true daily lives thereby, which was not at all so: first, because there was no least urchin but recognized him on sight, however wearily cunning his incognito; and secondly, because he had no real desire for such understanding. Nevertheless, he kept his custom faithfully enough, and one evening a beggar-woman with a dirty and ignorant face approached him on his meanderings and inquired in a vulgar dialect, “Your pardon, master potter”—for so he was dressed—“but what is the nature of that shiny thing there?” And she pointed toward the golden tower that the king had designed for his happiness so long ago.
Now the king was apparently not without humor, albeit of a bleak and comfortless sort. He replied courteously to the beggar-woman, saying, “That is a museum consecrated to the memory of one who never lived, and I am no potter but its very guardian. Would you care to satisfy your curiosity? for we welcome visitors, the tower and I.” The beggar-woman assented readily, and the king took her by the hand and led her, first through the gardens that he had planted with his own hands, and then through the great shining door to which he always carried the key, though it had never turned in the lock until that day.
From room to room and spire to spire the king led the beggar-woman, conversing with her all the time in grave mockery of his own past dreams. “Here is where he would have dined, this man who never was, and in this room he would have sat with his wife and his friends to hear musicians play. And this place was to have been for his wife’s women, and this for children to sleep—as though the unborn could father children.” But when they came to the royal bedchamber, the king drew back from the door and would not go in, but said harshly, “There are serpents here, and plague, come away.”
But the beggar-woman stepped boldly past him and into the bedchamber with the air of one who has been long away from a place, yet remembers it well. The king called to her in anger, and when she turned he saw (said the trader) that she was no creeping beggar, but a great queen, clad in robes and jewels far richer than any he possessed himself. And she said to him, “I am a nagini, come from my palace and my estates far under the earth, for love and pity of you. From this evening forward, neither you nor I shall sleep elsewhere but in this tower ever again.” And the king embraced her, for she was of such royal loveliness that he could do no other; and besides, he had been much alone.
Presently, some degree of order having returned to their joy, the king began to speak of their wedding, of festivals to last for months, and of how they would rule and keep their court together. But the nagini said, “Beloved, we are twice wed already: once when I first saw your face, and again when we first held one another in our arms. As for counselors and armies and decrees, that is all your daytime world and none of mine. My own realm, my own folk, need my care and governance as much as yours need you. But in our night world we will care for each other here, and how can our dutiful days but be happy, with night always to come?”
The king was not content with this, for he wished to present his people with their long-awaited queen, and to have her by his side at every moment of every day. He said to her, “I can see that we shall come to no good end. You will tire of journeying constantly between two worlds and forget me for some naga lord, compared to whom I will seem as a sweeper, a date-seller. And I, in my sorrow, will turn to a street-singer, a common courtesan, or—worse—a woman of the court, and be more lonely and more strange than ever for having loved you. Is this the gift that you have come all this long way to bring me?”