Why are elephant and snake both Naga in pali?
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The sense seem to be of a large and imposing animal.
Arahants are also referred to by this term as well.
Have a look at the PED entry.
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na gacchati (doesn’t move) = nagaḥ (mountain)
nage bhavati (lives on mountain terrain) = nāgaḥ (cobra/elephant)
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In one of the retreats, I wrote down in my note these meanings:
- Cobra
- Bull Elephant
- Powerful being related to deva
- Arahant
- A class of king
I am unsure, but I think it also means dragon and mountain.
In Wat Metta monastery, I learned that the anagarika (trainee) is also called “naga” for short, which I find inspiring.
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The Ordination Ceremony of a Monk - Ajahn Brahmavamso
Once a Naga, a powerful serpent who can take the form of a human being, was mistakenly ordained as a monk. Shortly after, when asleep in his hut, the naga returned to the shape of a huge snake. The monk who shared the hut was somewhat alarmed when he woke up to see a great snake sleeping next to him! The Lord Buddha summoned the naga and told him he may not remain as a monk, at which the utterly disconsolate snake began to weep. The snake was given the Five Precepts as the means to attaining a human existence in his next life when he can then be a monk. Then out of compassion for the sad snake, the Lord Buddha said that from then on all candidates for the monkhood be called ‘Naga’ as a consolation. They are still called ‘Naga’ to this day.
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Indo-Europeanists are divided on the question depending on which reconstructed PIE root they believe nāga derives from.
The two proposals are *nogʷós (naked) and *(s)neg- (to creep or crawl; to move slowly).
If we go with the former, then snakes and elephants are called nāgas on account of their shared hairlessness. If we go with the latter, then snakes are so called on account of their creeping movement and elephants on account of their lumbering gait.
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Both of them are likely, because there are even now nāga sādhus (ascetics who wander around naked which is why they are called so), besides nāga (for snakes) appears to make it cognate to *sneg. But nāga in the Indian context is only used for the Indian Cobra, not any kind of snake.
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What about “the trunk looks and moves like a snake”?
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I have always assumed this was the reason! Thanks, @Aahan, for bringing up this topic.
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As I understand it, in some contexts, “nāga” is an honorific also used to respectfully refer to the Buddha and other revered arahants, particularly Moggallāna and Sāriputta.
As mentioned, while it refers to ordinary snakes, it seems to especially be used to refer to snakes when they are cobras.
On a side note, there’s a less common usage of nāga: it also refers to a species of tree, the Ironwood tree.
“Nāga” seems to be quite a versatile word! 
Nāga means different things in Indic languages, has many meanings. One of the factors that led to that is a language change, and in particular sound change (human languages are constantly changing phonologically, alter the way they sound). In Proto-Indo-European these words all sounded differently. As a result of the sound change (for instance, the complex diphthongs, combinations of vowels, which involved the sound “a”, of Proto-Indo-European all were dropped and simplified in Proto-Indo-Aryan into the simple vowels a/ā) different words started to sound (and eventually be written) the same. I am pretty sure multiple meanings of nāga can be explained, at least in part, by the historical sound change.
Maybe.
In some tellings of the Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant the man who is made to feel the elephant’s trunk does in fact suppose it to be a snake. But not in the Titthasutta’s version (Ud6.4), in which those who feel the trunk conclude, quite bizarrely, that an “elephant” is actually the pole of a plough.
Here’s an 1872 retelling, by John Godfrey Saxe, wherein the trunk-touching blind man makes the more understandable mistake:
THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT
A HINDOO FABLE
IT was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me!—but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried: “Ho!—what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ‘t is mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“’T is clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
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Interesting.
A submission for Fake Buddha Legends here somewhere?
They could denote different types of withdrawals. Hermits and ascetics who withdraw in a cave are more likely to encounter a snake, whereas forest dwellers are more likely to encounter an elephant.
I dunno, we have Pali nagga = “naked”. Nāga = “naked” sounds implausible to me. There are lots of “naked” animals. Why aren’t lizards nāgas? Or fish?
“Snake” is more plausible. And then surely the obvious path is snake is death-dealing therefore powerful, elephants are also death-dealing and powerful (and have trunks), therefore elephants are nāgas, and any similarly powerful creatures too.
But I’m wondering about when nāga appears in Indic texts. Is it Vedic? Because I’m not seeing it in any pre-Buddhist texts.
If it’s not Vedic, and if the primary meaning is for a snake found in India, and for the elephant also found in India, then surely it’s more likely to be a non-PIE word? Snake worship seems like an ancient local custom, understandably so given the number of people killed by snakes in India. Check this out:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/snake-bite-deaths-by-country
50,000+ deaths by snakebite in India, and almost none in any of the countries of the PIE heartland or migration path.
I’ll pay closer attention to this, but it has always seemed to me that the nāga cult, and the word nāga, were pre-Aryan. Of course it’s also possible that the PIE word nāga was adapted for a pre-existing cult.
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The word nāga is found in a R̥gvedic khila mantra about paying homage to snakes.
svapnas svapnādhikaraṇe sarvam niṣvāpayā janam .
ā sūryam anyān svāpayāvyuṣam jāgṛyām aham .
kem vyaktā naras sanīḍhāḥ .
ajagaro nāma sarpaḥ sarpiraviṣo mahān .
tasmin hi sarpaḥ sudhitas tena tvā svāpayāmasi .
sarpaḥ sarpo ajagaraḥ sarpiraviṣo mahān .
tasya sarpāt sindhavas tasya gādham asīmahi .
kāliko nāma sarpo nava nāga sahasra balaḥ . ( kāl̥ika, bal̥a )
yamuna hrade ha so jāto yo nārāyaṇa vāhanaḥ .
yadi kālika dūtasya yadi kāhkālikād bhayam . ( kāl̥ika )
janma bhūmim atikrānto nirviṣo yāti kālikaḥ . ( kāl̥ika )
āyāhīndra pathibhir iḍitebhir yajñam imam no bhāga dheyam juṣasva .
tṛptām juhur mātulasyeva yoṣā bhāgas te paitṛsvaseyī vapām iva . ( mātul̥a )
yaśaskaram balavantam prabhutvam tam eva rājādhipatir babhūva .
saṅkīrṇa nāgāśva patir narāṇām sumaṅgalyam satatam dīrgham āyuḥ .
karkoṭako nāma sarpo yo dṛṣṭī viṣocyate .
tasya sarpasya sarpatvam tasmai sarpa namo astu te .
ati kālika raudrasya viṣṇuḥ saumyena bhāminā . ( kāl̥ika )
yamuna nadī kālikam te viṣṇu stotram anusmaram . ( kāl̥ika )
ye’do rocane divo ye vā sūryasya raśmiṣu .
teṣām apsu sadas kṛtam tebhyaḥ sarpebhyo namaḥ .
namo astu sarpebhyo ye ke ca pṛthivīm anu .
ye’ntarikṣe ye div tebhyaḥ sarpebhyo namaḥ .
ugrāyudhāḥ pramathinaḥ pravīrā māyāvino balino micchamānāḥ .
ye devāsurān parābhavan tāṃs tvam vajreṇa maghavan nivāraya
Thanks. So this would confirm that the nāga appears at the end of the Vedic period, hence more likely to be non-IE.
Could you give a translation of the relevant lines?
I don’t understand how you’d conclude that.
Most of the known Vedic texts are lost beyond recovery.
The Vedic corpus is not the only IE lexical base in Sanskrit. There are tens of thousands of IE-origin words in Classical Sanskrit that are not attested in the Vedic texts.
Besides, nāga is not dravidian, it is a sanskrit loanword in the dravidian languages.
This word apart, Sanskrit has the biggest IE lexicon, so non existence of IE cognates alone is not a conclusive evidence that a Sanskrit word is non-IE.
Do you know if there’s a study of this phenomenon?