The Legend of Nagarjuna's Encounter with the Nagas

Click here for a Sampling of Nagarjuna's Seventy Stanzas

According to legend, Nagarjuna was an abbot at the great Buddhist monasitc university of Nalanda. He was a great debater and vigorous supporter of the Mahayana doctrine, teaching to large audiences in the monastery. At one time he noticed that whenever two particular young men attended his teachings, the entire area became filled with the fragrance of sandalwood, and when they departed the frangrance disappeared.When Nagarjuna quesitoned them about this they replied that they actually were not human beings but sons of the naga king,and that they had anointed themselves

with sandalwood paste as a protection against human impurities. (Nagas are water serpents or dragons.) They told Nagarjuna that in the time of the Buddha the nagas had attended the Buddha's discourses on the Perfection of Wisdom and that because few human beings had understood the discourses, they had written them down to save them for a time when a human being would be born who could understand them. They invited Nagarjuna to their kingdom to read those Perfection of Wisdom sutras, and he accompanied them to their undersea world. After spending some time in the kingdom of the nagas, Nagarjuna returned to the human world to teach what he had learned, bringing the 100,000 Stanza Perfection of Wisdom Sutra with him. Nagarjuna took his name from his encounter with the nagas, and the 'Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness' is one of his expositions on the Madhyamika system which he learned from the sutras in the keeping of the nagas.