Bentala Naga and the Glass Hut

What Is a Naga?

In the ancient imagination of Southeast Asia, a Naga is not merely a serpent. It is a guardian spirit, a water deity, a remnant of something older than kings and borders.

Coiled into our stories, slipped between rituals, the Naga moves through our myths like breath through bamboo—unseen but vital. In Hindu-Buddhist traditions, they rule rivers and underworlds. In Malay hikayat (romance epic), they are monsters, lovers, protectors, or warnings—and always worthy of respect.

They are not Western dragons, hoarders of gold and fire. They are fluid. Elemental. Mythic. And perhaps... ancestral.

The Naga Whispered First

I’ve always been drawn to the ancient romance epics of Southeast Asia—the stories told not by textbook, but by tongue. The hikayat of the Malay world stood out to me like constellations... half-remembered, half-divine.

As I researched, I learned that what we now call Southeast Asia—divided by sea and borders—was once a vast, green world stretching from Thailand, Cambodia, to the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and beyond.

And what stirred me most wasn’t what was lost... It was what survived.

🗣 Oral stories.

🐍 Ghosted memories.

🌊 Legends of the Naga.

I kept hearing them across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines.

About ...

Bentala Naga, a realm of sea serpents, is said to have emerged after the Great Flood.

Tasik Chini, where a great Naga sleeps beneath the lake, guarding a submerged kingdom.

And most haunting of all, the Tale of Raja Chulan, a king who descended to the ocean floor in a glass box shaped like a hut—and met a civilization who breathed underwater, who possessed deep knowledge, who some say were not human… but Naga.

These stories weren’t just folklore. They were myth-coded memories.

I began to ask:

What if the Naga weren’t monsters, but keepers of memory?

What if they were once human—or something close—before the world changed?

What if love, grief, and sacred duty carried them into the sea?

My Naga Are Memory Made Flesh

In my Book 2, White Tiger and the Full Moon, the Naga don’t roar onto the stage.

They whisper.

They are subtle.

Half-seen.

But they are there.

In dreams.

In water.

In the blood and breath of psychic memory.

They appear fully in Chapter 20, When Spirits Answered, when Dara Juita invokes them:

“Sri Naga Merah — Crimson Dragon. South. Flame and fury. The protector of memory and bloodline.”

“Sri Naga Perak — Silver Dragon. North. Sacrifice and silence. The cold judge of ancestral will.”

“Sri Naga Kembar — Twin Golden Dragons. West. Reflection and duality. The heart is divided between love and rage.”

“Sri Naga Mas Putih — Pale Gold Dragon. East. Vision and renewal. The eye that never sleeps.”

“Sri Naga Sayap — Winged Dragon of Storm and Sky. Center. Balance itself. The breath between thunder and calm.”

Five dragons. Five echoes of a vast green land. The pillars of a forgotten empire that refuses to die.

I didn’t invent them. I listened.

To the floodwaters. To the whispers of forgotten lands. To the sacred stories that survived colonization, conversion, and time.

My Naga are not beasts.

They are ancestral echoes.

Shape-shifters of grief, power, and prophecy.

You may not see them at first. But they see you.

I do believe that Southeast Asia remembers something the world forgot. Our lakes, our rivers, our sea-hymns… still speak.

And they speak Naga.

So when you read White Tiger and the Full Moon: A Tale of Twin Flames, know this:

You're not just reading a Twin Flame fantasy. You're reading the sea’s memory.

Book Two of A Tale of Twin Flames. Available now in Paperback, Hardcover, and Kindle.

🐉 Dive deep. The Naga are waiting.

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Let this gamelan carry you back to the drowned kingdoms, the breath of the Naga, and the stories still whispered beneath the waves of old Sunda.