India is the country of the festivals , we never leave a chance to celebrate any occassion. This is something that makes India a bit different. If we pay attention every festival has a story attached to it let it be Diwali , Holi or even Nag Panchmi.
Reptiles are part of this planet from a very long time , they have came into existence even before the humans. Frogs , snakes , lizards all belongs to the reptile family and there behaviour are quite different from the mamals.
Mamals can become good friend to the humans but this is not the tendency with the reptiles. Because of this incident there is one famous story about the Nag (snake) as per which there behaviour made someone so angry that he took oath to kill all the snakes from this world.
What is the story behind Nag Panchmi
The king Parikshita was killed by an snake bite by the king snake (Takshaka) and that made his son so angry that he decided to perform a Yag to kill all the snakes in the world.
The yag is performed by chanting the mantras( Sanskrit words of some frequencies).
All the snakes started getting dragged to the yag pit and were getting killed by the high flames of fire. Looking this the king snake ran to the God Indra ( Leader of all the Gods) to seek his protection. But the yag was so powerful that it started dragging the king snake and the god indra to the yag pit and this made the other gods scared and they decided to take the help from the Mansadevi who further sent her son to look upon the matter.
Her son Astika was very knowledgeble person and had all the knowledge of the sastra(scriptures) he requested the king to stop the yag and the king was not able to refuse his request getting impresed with his wisdom. As soon as the yag was stopped the king snake and the god Indra were safe.
This incident happened oon the fifth fay of the monsoon season(Savan) and the word panchami is fifth in english.
Hence from this day it is celebrated as the Nag Panchami where all the snakes were saved by the MansaDevi.
It is belived that praying the snakes and feeding them with milk bring the good things in one's life.
How is Nag Panchami celebrated across the India
People celebrate this in many different ways accross the India, people have the fast and they feed the brahmins.
Snakes are offered milk , rice puddings , lotus flower.
Pictures of snakes are created in the home .
People prays to snake to request them to not ever bite any of their family members.
Where is this festival popular
This is very much famous in India as well as in Nepal. Nepal is very much connected to the nature and the people celebrate the festival of the Nag Panchami by following all the rituals.
This way the blessings of the snakes are taken by us mamals to not bite us. But again so many people gets killed by the snake bite each year, one should be very careful with all the reptiles.
Hope you enjoyed reading this article, for more articles stay tuned.
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