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Paper short abstract

This paper explores The Legend of Himal and Nagrai, a Kashmiri folktale that entwines aquatic cosmology, ecological ethics, and cultural identity. Through this serpent-lore, the paper examines memory, loss, and environmental attunement in the oral traditions of Kashmir.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines The Legend of Himal and Nagrai, a Kashmiri folktale retold by anthropologist Onaiza Drabu, as an emblematic narrative of ecological entanglement, cultural continuity, and emotional geography. Rooted in oral tradition, the tale follows the love between a mortal woman, Himal, and the serpent-king Nagrai, whose watery form encodes both danger and devotion. Serpent lore, long associated with rivers and fertility across South Asia, acquires here a distinct Kashmiri inflection—one shaped by aquatic cosmology, loss, and exile.

Drawing on Veronica Strang’s theory of water cognition and Indigenous approaches to eco-narratives, the paper considers how the story reflects a cosmology in which water bodies are animate, sacred, and sovereign. The rupturing of trust between Himal and Nagrai becomes an allegory for broken ecological bonds and the loss of kinship with the nonhuman world. At the same time, the tale preserves environmental knowledge through metaphor and memory, framing rivers not just as resources but as relational beings.

The paper situates the tale within a larger tradition of Kashmiri oral storytelling, a cultural form under threat due to political silencing and ecological disruption. It argues that stories like these encode a moral ecology, where love, doubt, exile, and return are mediated by the land and water itself. Ultimately, this folktale acts as both cultural archive and ecological compass, reminding us that environmental attunement in the Himalayas is deeply entwined with Indigenous memory, myth, and imagination.