Nag Panchami

1 When the rain empties the burrows

Nag Panchami isn't scheduled into Shravan by accident. Panchami — the fifth day of the bright fortnight — lands squarely in the weeks when the monsoon peaks, burrows flood, and snakes surface in fields and courtyards. The festival simply inverts the response: worship instead of fear. There's a mythological layer too — it's said to mark Krishna's defeat of the serpent Kalia, ending a river's terror, and Shiva is pictured with the serpent Vasuki at his neck as a symbol of mastery over time. But the day's real anchor is the monsoon calendar, not the legend.

2 Devotion, and a debt to the rodent-killer

The worship itself is offered directly to the serpents — protection, prosperity and fertility, with no intermediary.

But underneath sits a practical acknowledgment: snakes keep rodents and pests out of the fields, and Nag Panchami is one way of settling that quiet debt. The monsoon brings them into the open exactly when the festival arrives — so the ritual reads as much as an admission of coexistence as an act of devotion.

3 Images, charmers and anthills

Around Mukhed's fields and older neighbourhoods, Nag Panchami keeps to its rural roots — offerings go to a snake image or the nearest anthill, not a temple crowd. It's one thread in the town's wider festival calendar, arriving each year just as Shravan's rains settle in.

4 Live snakes, worship and the law

Traditionally, snake charmers would carry live cobras from village to village on Nag Panchami so people could worship them directly and offer milk. But feeding milk to a snake runs against its basic physiology — snakes cannot digest mammalian milk, and forcing it on them often causes severe indigestion and premature death.

Every snake species in India, on top of that, is legally protected under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 — capturing, holding or defanging a wild snake is a punishable offence. That makes the old practice of catching and displaying snakes for the festival unlawful today, and wildlife activists and forest departments campaign each year urging people to worship clay or metal images instead of live ones.

• Never handle or attempt to capture a wild snake yourself.
• If you encounter a snake, contact a trained wildlife rescue team or the forest department.
• Do not feed milk to snakes — it harms their digestion and can be fatal.
• Use a clay, silver or metal image of a snake for worship instead of a live one.

5 A worship tradition older than recorded scripture

Long before anyone called it Nag Panchami, snakes were already being worshipped on this subcontinent — archaeological evidence for the practice reaches back to the Indus Valley Civilisation (roughly 3300 to 1300 BCE), and references to Nagas turn up in ancient texts including the Rigveda, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

One story tied to the festival's origin involves King Janamejaya, a ruler of the Kuru dynasty and son of Abhimanyu, who launched a sarpa yajna — a great snake sacrifice — intending to wipe out all serpents in revenge for his father's death. It was the sage Astika who intervened to halt the sacrifice and save the Naga race, an event traditionally commemorated on this day. That story gives the festival an added dimension: a celebration of life spared from destruction, not merely a request for protection.

6 Worship that shifts from state to state

Maharashtra celebrates the day with particular enthusiasm in its rural areas, where women traditionally avoid using a sickle or any sharp farming tool — an old belief meant to avoid harming a snake by accident. Karnataka knows the festival as "Nagara Panchami," where sisters fast for their brothers' long life, a custom with echoes of Raksha Bandhan. Further north, in parts of Rajasthan, images of snakes are drawn in ochre on the main door or wall of the house.

In Kerala and parts of south India, sacred groves called "sarpa kavu" are maintained specifically for serpent worship, tended year-round — these groves often survive today as small pockets of biodiversity. Whatever the regional dress, the thread underneath stays the same: the snake belongs to the home and the field, not against them.

7 Frequently asked questions