Nag Panchami -- The Festival of the Serpents

In the month of Shravan, the heart of the monsoon, rain floods the burrows of snakes and drives them out into fields, paths and houses. It is the season when people are most likely to meet a snake -- and on the fifth day of the bright fortnight of Shravan, many Hindus set fear aside and honour them. The day is Nag Panchami, the serpents' fifth.

Across India the festival takes many forms. Images of snakes are drawn with sandalwood paste, turmeric or cow dung on the walls and doorways of houses, or made of clay and worshipped with flowers, rice and milk. Women pray for the protection of their brothers and children. In some regions people do not dig, plough or cut vegetables on this day, so as not to harm a snake underground. Temples dedicated to nagas, and stone snake images under sacred trees, receive offerings throughout the day.

Serpents are everywhere in Hindu sacred story, and almost always in honoured places. Shesha or Ananta, the endless serpent, is the bed on which Vishnu rests between creations and the support of the worlds; Balarama and Lakshmana are held to be his incarnations. Vasuki, king of the nagas, served as the churning rope when gods and demons churned the ocean of milk, and coils around Shiva's neck. Krishna danced on the hoods of Kaliya to drive him from the Yamuna but spared his life. In the Gita, Krishna names himself among the greatest of beings: of serpents, he says, he is Vasuki; of the nagas, Ananta.

One story often told for the day comes from the opening of the Mahabharata. King Janamejaya, great-grandson of Arjuna, learnt that his father Parikshit had died from the bite of the serpent Takshaka. In grief and rage he began a great sacrifice to burn every serpent in the world, and snakes by the thousand were drawn helplessly into the fire. The young sage Astika -- son of a naga mother and a brahmin father -- came to the sacrifice, pleased the king with his wisdom, and asked as his reward that the sacrifice be stopped. Janamejaya agreed, and the serpents were saved. Tradition associates the day of their deliverance with Nag Panchami, and the Mahabharata itself was first recited during that sacrifice.

A word about milk. The custom of offering milk to snakes is old, and in its proper form the milk is offered to images of serpents and to the anthills where they live. Feeding milk to live snakes, as sometimes happens with captured snakes displayed by handlers, harms them: snakes do not drink milk naturally and can sicken from it, and they are often caught and kept cruelly for the festival. Indian wildlife law protects native snakes, and many temples and naturalists now urge devotees to worship images, not live animals. That is truer to the festival's spirit anyway. Nag Panchami was always about living at peace with the creatures of the rains -- honouring them, and leaving them unharmed.