Ananta

(South and Central Asian mythology)

The World Serpent of Hindu mythology. During the quiescent period of the cosmos, the night of Brahma, Vishnu sleeps on coils of a prodigious snake, Sesha, known as Ananta, ‘the endless’, whose thousand heads rise as a canopy over the recumbent deity. The anthropomorphic god, the serpentine rings that form his couch, and the waters on which the infinite snake floats are, of course, all manifestations of the primeval essence.

As Balarama, the half-brother of Krishna, Ananta takes on human form, though towards the end of the legend, when he is sitting beneath a tree on the shore of the ocean, lost in thought, a serpent crawls out of his mouth, leaving the hero disincarnate. Back in the watery deep, Ananta spews forth venomous fire that destroys creation at the end of each kalpa. The gods and the demons, once temporarily at peace, used the World Serpent as a rope, which they twisted round Mount Mandara, and so churned the ocean for the elixir of immortality, amrita.