NAGA, a Scythic race who appear to have occupied part of India prior to the appearance of the Aryans. In the mythology of India they are described as true snakes. In the Persepolitan inscription, Xerxes calls himself Nagua or .Nuka, the Greek Auax, and some writers have surmised that this may be the true meaning of the Naga dynasties of Kashmir and Magadha. A Naga race 'seem to have ruled in Magadha until dispossessed by the Aryan Pandava. Whether they came from the N.E., whilst the Aryan race advanced from the N.W., is not known. But the races seem to have come in contact in the lands where the Jumna joins the Ganges, at a time when the Aryans were divided as to the object of their worship between Indra, Siva, and Vishnu. Oue of the opening scenes of the Mahabharata de scribes the destruction of the forest of Khanduva, and a great sacrifice of serpents ; and though the application of the term Nag or Naga has come to be taken literally, there can be no doubt that the descriptions in the Mahabharata, and as to Krishna's exploits against snakes, relate to the opposing Naga race. In India the term Nag or Naga is applied to the cobra serpent, and the race who were so designated are believed to have paid their devotions to that reptile, or took it as their emblem. They are mentioned in the Mahabharata (n.c. 1200) as causing the death of Parikshit, which led to their great slaughter by Janemajaya. But a Naga dynasty' ynasty was still dominant n.c. 691, like wise when (s.c. 623) Sakya, a prince of the Solar race, was born, and it was this race who placed Buddhism on a secure basis in India, and led to its adoption by Asoka as the state religion.
A Naga dynasty ruled over Magadha at the date of Alexander's invasion; and the reigning prince bore the name of Nanda. His minister Chandragupta, the Sandracottus of the Greeks, assassinated the Naga prince, and seized upon the throne for himself ; and a Naga dynasty, tributary to the Gupta, were ruling to the south of the Jumna during the first three centuries of the Christian era. A Naga race are said also to have 'occupied Ceylon, on the northern and western coasts, before the Christian era: Colonel Tod shows, in the annals of Marwar, that the Rahtor race conquered Nagore, or Naga drug (the Serpent's Castle), from the Mohil, who held 1440 villages so late as the fifteenth century.
So many of the colonies of Agnicula bestowed the name of serpent on their settlements, that he was convinced all were of the Tak, Takshak, or Nagvansa race from Sakadwipa, who, six cen turies anterior to Vikramaditya, under their leader Sehesnaga, conquered India, and whose era must, he thinks, be the limit of Agnicula antiquity.
The Nagbansi chieftains of Ramgarh Sirguja have the lunettes of their serpent ancestor en graved on their signets in token of their lineage. The Manipur rulers were also Scythic, and most of the Manipur people continued to worship snakes till the beginning of the 19th century, as indeed is still the custom amongst all Aryan and non Aryan tribes throughout the Peninsula of India.
Naga and Takshak are Sanskrit names for a snake or serpent, the emblem of Budha or Mer cury. The races who dwelt in India prior to the advent of the Aryans are alluded to in ancient books as Naga, Rakshasa, Dasya, Asura. The whole of the Scythian race' are mythically de scended from a being half snake and half-woman, who bore three sons to Hetacles (Herod. iv. 9, 10), the meaning of which probably is that the ancestral pair were of two races, and the offspring took the snake as their emblem, similarly to the Numri or Lumri Baluch of the present day, who are foxes, and the Cuch'hwaha Rajputs, who are tortoises. The snake race seem to have spread into North America. Abbe Domenech mentions an Indian race there who traced their origin from the snakes of Scythia. The serpents who invaded the kingdom of the Lydians just before the down fall of Creesus, were probably the Scythian Naga (Herod.) race.
The Naga race were so numerous in Ceylon that it was called Nagadwipo, as Rhodes and Cyprus received the designation of Ophiusa, from their being the residence of the Ophites, who in troduced snake-worship into Greece. According to Byrant, Eubeea is from Oubaia, and means serpent island. Strabo calls the people of Phrygia and the Hellespont the Ophio or serpent races.—Tod's Rajasthan.