Why the two names are always spoken together
Ask about either rite anywhere in India and you will usually hear the same four words back: Nag Bali Narayan Bali. They are printed together on boards, spoken together by purohits, searched together online. A family hearing the phrase for the first time naturally takes it for the name of one long ceremony, the way Pind Daan and Shraddha are taken for the same thing.
But here the two words are not two names for one thing. They are two separate rites, prescribed for two entirely different situations, that custom has placed side by side. One concerns a departed person of your own family. The other concerns an act — the killing of a serpent — and has nothing to do with any particular ancestor at all.
This confusion matters in a practical way. Families arrive ready to perform both because they assume there is no choice, and nobody has ever separated the two for them. A few minutes of clarity is usually enough to know which one belongs to your situation, and whether the other applies at all.
Narayan Bali in short
Narayan Bali is the rite in which Lord Narayan is invoked for a departed soul whose death did not come naturally at its full time — in an accident, by drowning, by fire, by snakebite, by a sudden injury, or where a life was ended by one's own hand. It is prescribed equally where the body was never recovered, and where the cremation and the observances that follow it could not be performed at all.
The purpose is to complete an order that time did not allow to be completed, so that the departed may take the standing of an ordinary ancestor and the family's yearly shraddha can continue for them in its own rhythm, as it does for everyone else in the line. The tradition does not read any of these circumstances as fault or blame. How death came was not the departed's choosing, and the feeling of the family towards them stays what it always was.
That is as much as is needed here to tell the two rites apart. We have written about Narayan Bali at length in its own article — the symbolic body of wheat flour and kush, who may be the karta, what the Garuda Purana says about the state in between, and how the rite differs from Tripindi Shraddha. If it is Narayan Bali your family is considering, read that one next.
Nag Bali: what it addresses
Nag Bali rests on a belief held across our tradition for a very long time: that the serpent, and the nag in particular, is not an ordinary creature. It is treated as sacred, worshipped in its own right, given a day of its own in the year. From that reverence follows the other half of the belief — that the killing of a serpent, by a person or by someone in the family's past, is an act that calls for expiation.
The tradition does not distinguish much between knowing and unknowing here. A serpent killed deliberately and one killed without intent — under a wheel, while clearing a field, in a house at night — are both understood to call for the same rite. And because families remember such things across generations, or hear of them from elders, Nag Bali is often undertaken for something that happened long before the person performing it was born.
It should be said plainly that this is a belief, held and observed as such. Families undertake Nag Bali so that what is believed to remain from that act is set right, in the same spirit in which any prayaschitta is performed: an acknowledgement, offered with respect, and then set down. It is not a rite performed out of dread, and it should never be sold to a family that way.
The rite itself is addressed to the nag. Where Narayan Bali names a person of your family and takes their gotra and their circumstances into the sankalp, Nag Bali names no ancestor at all. That single difference is the clearest way to keep the two apart in your mind.
Why they are usually performed together
There is a real reason behind the pairing, and it is worth knowing. Snakebite is one of the deaths for which Narayan Bali is prescribed, and in a household where a death by snakebite is remembered, a serpent killed afterwards is very often remembered alongside it. The two circumstances tend to arrive in the same family story, so the two rites came to be arranged in the same sequence.
Beyond that, purohits customarily arrange them as a pair for practical reasons. Both need a sankalp, both need the family to sit through a vidhi longer than an ordinary shraddh, both are usually done during a single stay away from home. A family that has already travelled for one finds it simpler to complete the other in the same days rather than return months later.
But it is honest to say what this is: it is custom and convenience, not a requirement. Nothing binds one rite to the other. A family with no reason to perform Nag Bali is not performing an incomplete Narayan Bali by leaving it out, and the reverse holds equally.
When only one of the two is needed
Here is the simplest way to tell. Ask two separate questions, and do not let the answer to one decide the other.
First: is there someone in our family whose death came before its time or in an unnatural way, or for whom the last rites were never performed? If yes, Narayan Bali is the rite that answers that. Second, and quite separately: is there a serpent killed by someone in this family that we know of or have been told about? If yes, Nag Bali is the rite that answers that.
A family that lost someone in an accident, and has no memory of any serpent killed, needs Narayan Bali alone. A family with no untimely death but with a serpent killed in the fields a generation ago is looking at Nag Bali alone. A family where a death came by snakebite is the case in which both usually apply, and that is exactly the case from which the customary pairing grew.
If the honest answer to both questions is no, then neither rite is yours, and no purohit should tell you otherwise. What such a family may be looking for is an ordinary Gaya Shraddha, or Tripindi Shraddha where the yearly shraddha has been missed for many years. Those are different rites with different reasons.
What is involved, in general terms
Both rites begin the same way any rite begins, with the sankalp. The karta holds water, akshat, a flower and a little dravya in the palm and declares aloud who is performing this act, for whom and where. Nothing is offered before that is spoken. In Narayan Bali the sankalp carries the name and gotra of the departed; in Nag Bali it carries the karta's own name and the purpose for which the rite is being performed.
Both rites also use a symbolic form rather than an image or idol. In Narayan Bali a small human form is shaped from wheat flour and darbha, and the departed is invoked into it for the duration of the rite. In Nag Bali the symbolic form is that of the serpent, and the offerings and the rites are made to it. In neither case is anything costly involved; what is used is grain, kush, water, til, ghee, flowers and cloth.
Both are longer than an ordinary shraddh. Where a single-day Gaya Shraddha runs roughly three to four hours of actual vidhi, these rites run through a full day, and where both are performed in sequence the family should expect to give two to three days to it. The karta usually observes a fast and restraint on those days, and the rest of the family may sit alongside throughout.
Beyond this it is not right to write out a step-by-step account. The order of the acts changes with the tradition the family follows, with the place, and with what the purohit finds on hearing the family's circumstances. He will tell you at every step what to say, how to hold the hands and when to release the offering, and for a family doing this for the first time that guidance on the day matters more than anything read in advance.
Where these rites are performed
What is worth knowing is only this: these are shastra-prescribed rites, not the property of one place. They are performed at several tirthas, and they are performed at Gaya as well, where all rites for the ancestors have been conducted since ancient times and which the shastras call moksha bhoomi. Families therefore have a choice, and the choice is usually settled by what is practical — where the family can travel, how many days it can give, which purohit it already has a relationship with.
This site arranges these rites at Gaya, with the Gayawal Pandaji who are the hereditary tirth purohit of this land. Families in eastern India, or those already coming to Gaya for Pind Daan for their other ancestors, often find it simplest to complete everything here in one journey.
What only a purohit can settle, and the guidance call
An article can take you as far as knowing which rite belongs to your situation. It cannot go further, and it should not pretend to. Whether both rites apply or only one, whether a particular death falls within what Narayan Bali is prescribed for, which day is suitable in the panchang, who in the family should sit as karta, how many days to keep free, what the family should bring — these are settled by a purohit after hearing your circumstances in your own words.
For that we keep a guidance call, free and with nothing to be booked at the end of it. You describe the situation in your family, and the Pandaji tells you what the tradition prescribes for it. Sometimes the answer is Narayan Bali alone, sometimes both rites, and sometimes it is neither of these two but an ordinary Gaya Shraddha or Tripindi Shraddha. A family that comes away knowing it does not need a rite has been served just as well as one that books it.
One last thing to carry into the call. These rites are performed out of duty and out of respect, in the same spirit as Pind Daan itself, which is the settling of what a family owes its ancestors. If anyone tells you that not performing them will bring ruin upon your house, that is not how our tradition speaks, and it is not how we will speak to you.