Apalala is a naga — a serpent-dragon of the waters — famous in Buddhist legend as a fierce water-dragon who was tamed and converted by the Buddha himself: a once-destructive being who, won over by the dharma, became a protector and a devotee. His story is one of the great Buddhist tales of the conversion of a dangerous power into a guardian of the teaching.
The Dragon of the River
Apalala was a powerful naga — a great serpent or dragon-being of the waters — who dwelt at the source of a river in the region of Gandhara, in the far northwest of the Buddhist world (in what is now the Swat valley). In his origin he was, by tradition, a man who had used spells to protect the crops from destructive dragons and was poorly rewarded by the people he helped; reborn in his anger as a naga, he became a malevolent water-dragon who sent destructive floods and storms upon the land each year, ravaging the crops and bringing ruin to the people in revenge for their ingratitude.
The Taming by the Buddha
The suffering of the people drew the Buddha to the river. He came to the naga’s dwelling and, through his teaching and his serene power (in some accounts with the aid of [vajrapani], who shattered the mountain to frighten the dragon), subdued and converted Apalala. The Buddha taught the dragon the dharma, calming his rage and his thirst for vengeance; Apalala, won over, vowed to cease his destructive flooding. But, the legend tells, the naga pleaded that he needed some sustenance — and so it was agreed that he might cause a flood once every twelve years, a measured release that the people could prepare for, rather than the annual devastation of before.
The Converted Guardian
Apalala thus became one of the many beings — demons, dragons, ogres, and spirits — whom the Buddha tamed and turned from destruction to devotion, a recurring theme in Buddhist legend that expresses the dharma’s power to convert even the most dangerous of forces into protectors of the teaching. His conversion was a famous episode, depicted in Buddhist art along the routes where his legend was told, a landmark of the spread of the dharma into the northwest. In Apalala, Buddhism gave form to the taming of the destructive waters — the fierce river-dragon whose vengeful floods ravaged the land, converted by the Buddha into a devotee who curbed his destruction, the dangerous naga turned guardian of the dharma.