Hello Bhante,

You wrote:

Three Pali tetrads of snakes come to mind, but I'm not sure if
any are quite what you're looking for. Perhaps you could state
which bad things they represent. Otherwise it's hard to know what
to look for, since Pali has at least thirty words for 'snake'.
Anyhow, these are the tetrads I can recall now:
*****
Thank you for your reply. I'm not interested in the symbolism attributed to
snakes nor the legendary anthropomorphic nagas, but I am trying to ascertain
i) what names are given to the individual snakes in the fairly common set of
four, and ii) what actual snakes they correspond to. All too often with
flora and faunna, one encounters unhelpful glosses in dictionaries etc "a
kind of snake" etc. I'm translating some material from Tibetan and can
reconstruct the Sanskrit for three of the four: aa`sii-vi.saa,
d.r.s.ti-vi.saa and naaga -- there is a fourth which is puzzling. In the
Lanakavatara-sutra, mention is made of the first two above with bhujaga and
ghora as the other two, although some people have incorrectly understood
these as epithets.

*******

> Then in the Aasiivisasutta (S iv 172-5) the four mahaabhuuta are

compared to four (unspecified) kinds of viper. The Atthakathaa
gives these names based on the effects of their venom, but these
are not normal Pali words for snakes: ka.t.thamukha, puutimukha,
aggimukha, and satthamukha.

Yes, it is this group of four -- but I do not believe that they are all
vipers. Regarding the names, as one can see from above, the Skt names also
seem to be derived from the effects of the venom -- for example, there is
another called `svaasa-vi.saa. In my sources, mention of the four most
feared venomous snakes clearly refers to actual snakes. Since modern Indian
sources state that there are four extremely deadly snakes (saw-scaled
vipers, Russell's vipers, spectacled cobras and the common krait, which
between them kill over 25,000 people per annum in India), I think it is
reasonable to assume the the four classical venomous snakes and the four
"modern" ones. I would just like to know which is which -- but
surprisingly, nobody seems to know.

>The ka.t.thamukha's venom (representing pa.thavii) makes the

victim's body and limbs become as stiff as a board. The
puutimukha's venom (representing aapo) makes the body ooze with
pus like an over-ripe jakfruit. The aggimukha's venom
(representing tejo) makes the victim feel as if the body were on
fire. The venom of the satthamukha (representing vayo) makes him
feel he is being drilled full of holes.
[snip]
However, I wouldn't expect much material from Pali
sub-commentaries to be present in non-Theravaadin texts.

***
This is, of course, interesting but still not helpful. Regarding Pali
commentorial sources, one thing that did occur to me is that these highly
venomous snakes don't actually live in Sri Lanka -- could that be the case ?


Thank you for the obvious trouble you have gone to over your reply -- I'll
let you know if I ever resolve the problem.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge

*********

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