Naga'
Senoi · numen · Senoi traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Naga' is the cosmic serpent on whose body the earth is thought to rest. When it stirs the ground trembles, and Senoi tradition explains earthquakes as its movement; its curving form is at times identified with the rainbow arching over the forest. The name is a loan, ultimately from Sanskrit by way of Malay, and the being it labels overlaps heavily with the underworld water-dragon: many Semai and Temiar treat the world-bearing snake and the flood-sending dragon of the underworld as one and the same power, while other accounts keep the earth-bearer and the flood-bringer apart. It belongs to the subterranean, watery pole of the cosmos that stands opposite the thunder of the sky.
Domains
- earth support
Powers
- shakes the earth when it stirs
Relations
- companion: 'Engku'Often merged with the underworld water-dragon into a single subterranean being.Skeat, W. W. & Blagden, C. O. (1906), Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. 2. (primary)
Sources
- The Senoi imagine the earth as resting upon a great serpent whose movements cause earthquakes and whose form may appear as the rainbow.: Skeat, W. W. & Blagden, C. O. (1906), Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. 2, pp. 175-230. (primary); Dentan, Robert Knox (1968), The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya. (secondary)