The Mahāyāna Buddhist Garuda–Nāga conflict in Himalayan sources

Record summary

Himalayan Buddhist literature and art preserve conflicts between Garudas and Nāgas, often expressing an opposition between sky and water, predator and serpent or protective and dangerous forces. Early twentieth-century Tibetan, Nepalese and Himalayan studies documented these motifs in manuscripts, murals and ritual contexts. The material offers a strong cross-cultural comparison for aerial-serpent narratives while remaining explicitly religious. Uncertainty arises from translation choices and from whether a fieldworker recorded contemporary ritual belief, an iconographic convention or a scholastic explanation of inherited texts.