Nâga

See also: Naga

The nâga (नाग or Snake in Sanskrit) is a fabulous animal of the Hindouisme, with body of snake and often represented with several heads, often chimerical and alarming: cap of cobra, mouth of dog, eyes exorbities and sometimes human.

In the legends of India and all the South-East Asia, the nâgas are inhabitants of the underground world where they keep the treasures of the ground jealously.
Ils has as a natural enemy the mythical vulture called Garuda, but nâgas and Garuda are in fact only two incarnations of Vishnou, the two aspects of the divine substance, in which they are reconciled.

The nâga represents the cycle of time, just like the Ouroboros of the Greeks.
Le nâga is protective guard and, mediator between sky and ground, and intercessor between this world and beyond, sometimes associated with the Arc-en-ciel (Buddha goes down from the sky on a staircase which is an arc in sky, whose slopes are two nâgas). With Angkor (Angkor-Thom, Prah Khan, Banteai Chmar), roadways with balustrades in form of nâga would symbolize this rainbow, with Indra with their extremity (God of the lightning and the rain). In the iconography Khmer, the nâga with odd number of heads is male, while the females have an even number of it.
Sur certain lintels of Angkor, being able to symbolize the door of the sky are illustrated Indra and the Makara spitting two nâgas.

This nâga would be perhaps to bring closer to the Uraeus, or Cobra in anger, which decorates the face of Pharaon, concentrating in him the properties of the sun, vivifying and fertilizing, but able also to kill, while desiccating or extreme.

It should be noted that many myths evokes a mythical snake, underground world (the Vouivre, powerful underground snake of the Celte S or the god frequent snake-bird in South America), which can also evoke interpretations freudienne snake.

C' is as with the nâga as one owes the Fertilité of the ground and the Fécondité of the women.

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