Krishna and the Serpent Kaliya

People in India tell of a serpent king with a hundred and one heads. On those heads are the prints of a small boy's feet. The serpent lives far away, out in the open sea.

No one hunts that serpent. Even Garuda, the divine king of birds and the age-old enemy of snakes, only tilts a wing as he glides past. He looks at those footprints, then flies quietly away.

It seems strange that a child's footprints should rest on the head of a serpent king. It is stranger still that they are no wound at all, but a charm that keeps him safe.

The answer lies in a village beside the Yamuna River, in India. Indian families have told this story to their children for many generations, and it is written down in an old sacred text, the Bhagavata Purana.

The village was called Vrindavan, and its people were cowherds. There lived a blue-skinned boy named Krishna. His mother was Yashoda and his father was Nanda. Hindus believe that this boy was the eighth incarnation of the god Vishnu, come down to earth among the herds and the fields. Every morning Krishna and his friends drove the cows out to the grass along the river. The gentle Yamuna gave the whole village water to drink, water to bathe in, and water for the herds.

But at one bend of the river there was a deep pool that no one dared go near.

The water there was dark, and it bubbled and churned all the time as if it were boiling, though no fire burned beneath it. The grass on the bank turned yellow. The trees slowly shed their leaves. Not a single bird could fly across that pool.

At the bottom of the pool lived Kaliya.

Kaliya was a serpent king, with a body as long as a stretch of river and a hundred and one heads. He was not born there. His home was the island of Ramanaka, far out at sea. But he feared the divine bird Garuda, so he had left the island and hidden in this deep pool. His venom was as hot as fire, and the water around him grew more poisoned day after day.

One blazing noon, some of Krishna's cowherd friends grew terribly thirsty. They scooped up water in their hands and drank right at that bend of the river. The cows bent down to drink too. A moment later, friends and cows alike sank down on the bank. They lay still as if asleep, and no amount of calling could wake them.

Krishna ran to them. The boy did not cry, and he did not panic. He looked at each friend and each cow with eyes as gentle as the first rain of the season falling on a parched field. And wonderfully, under that gaze, his friends slowly opened their eyes. The cows scrambled to their feet, dazed, as if waking from a long sleep.

His friends were awake again. But Krishna understood that as long as the poison stayed in the pool, the whole village was in danger. The grown-ups still had to carry water from the river. The herds still had to drink from it. The village's gentle Yamuna could not go on forever holding a pool that no one dared to touch.

Beside the pool stood a tall Kadamba tree with a straight, soaring trunk. Krishna climbed to its highest branch. He tied his sash tight around his waist and slapped his arms hard, like a small wrestler before a match. Then he bent his knees and leaped straight down into the poisoned water.

Water shot up to the sky. Waves rolled out as far as a hundred bow-lengths and spilled over the grassy banks.

Deep in the pool, Kaliya woke with a start. Someone had dared to stir the serpent king's waters. In the blink of an eye, his long body swept toward the boy and wrapped around him, loop after loop. It squeezed him tight among a hundred and one heads, all hissing.

On the bank, the cowherd boys clung to one another. The cows lowed, long and loud. The surface of the pool foamed, then fell silent.

Suddenly the water stirred. Krishna slipped gently out of the coils, as smoothly as a drop of water slipping between fingers. He rose up high and set his feet on the serpent's largest head.

Then, while everyone held their breath, the boy did something no one expected. He did not hit, and he did not punch. He began to dance.

His two small feet beat out a rhythm on the serpent's head, now slow, now quick, as if he were dancing at a village festival. Whenever a head reared up, his foot was already there to stamp the beat on it, light but firm, right on time. The old tale says that in this dance the boy carried the weight of the whole universe. With every step he took, Kaliya felt as if the sky and the earth were stepping down with him.

Kaliya struggled to rise. One head, then ten heads, then a hundred heads took turns rearing up. But every head that rose met the boy's dancing feet. Little by little, the fiery poison inside the serpent died down. The hundred and one heads drooped lower and lower, like flowers wilting after a day of hard sun.

Just then, serpent women rose from the water. They were Kaliya's wives, holding tiny baby snakes in their arms. They pressed their palms together before their chests, bowed very low, and pleaded with the boy. "Please spare our husband. These little ones need their father."

The dance slowed. Then it stopped altogether.

Krishna looked down. Worn out, Kaliya lowered all his heads very low, as if admitting defeat and pleading at the same time. The serpent king whispered, "We serpents are born with a fiery temper. Show me mercy or punish me, as you think right, and I will obey."

The boy smiled. He told Kaliya to take his whole family away from this river and go back home to the island of Ramanaka, out at sea. And he told the serpent not to fear Garuda anymore. "My footprints are on your heads now. When Garuda sees them, he will never touch you."

So the whole serpent family bowed and swam away through the water. The small footprints on those heads would stay with Kaliya for the rest of his life. They were not the marks of a defeat, but a charm that kept him safe.

As for the Yamuna, people in India say that the moment Kaliya was gone, the water turned clear again. It was as sweet as if someone had stirred nectar into every drop. The grass on the banks sprouted green. Birds came back to chatter at the top of the Kadamba tree. The people of Vrindavan went down to the landing to fetch water again. The cows bent to drink their fill. And the children splashed one another and laughed at the very bend of the river that, the day before, no one had dared go near.

That is the answer to the riddle. Those footprints on the serpent king's heads were not left by anyone hunting him. They are the marks of a dance.

And the Yamuna still flows, calm and gentle, past the village of Vrindavan, as clear as if it had never known fear.