One version of the story was collected by British reverend James Hinton Knowles and published in his book Folk-Tales of Kashmir.
Knowles attributed the source of his version to a man named Pandit Shiva Rám of Banáh Mahal Srínagar.
[6] In Knowles's version, titled Nágray and Himál, a poor brahmin named Soda Ram, who has an "ill-tempered" wife, laments his luck.
One day, he asks his father where he can find "a pure spring" that he can bathe in, and Soda Rám points to a pool at princess Himal's garden, heavily guarded by the king's troops.
Himal sends a maid to follow the snake and sees it enter Soda Ram's house.
Nágray instructs his adoptive father to toss a paper in a certain spring, one hour before the wedding, and the procession will come.
However, Nágray's other wives, which live in the realm of snakes, decide to pay a visit to the human princess, under a magical disguise, due to their lordship's extended absence.
One day, a holy man climbs up the tree and sees the corpse of Himal, still beautiful as she was in life.
[8][9] Indian scholarship states that the tale has existed in the oral repertoire of the Kashmir region,[10] with multiple renditions appearing in both Persian and Kashmiri in the 18th and 19th centuries.
[11][12][13][14][9] According to S. L. Sadhu, the earliest recorded version of the story was by Maulvi Sadr-ud-Din in Persian with the title Qasai Heemal va Arzun.
His disappearance is caused when Himal forces him to take a dip in a bowl of milk, which transports him back to Talpatal.
[18] Knowles also informed that another version existed with the title Hímál Nágárajan, obtained from Pandit Hargopal Kol.
He also noted that, in another version, Himal is a Hindu devotee, and falls in love with Nágray, an Islamic man.
[20] According to professor Ruth Laila Schmidt, the hero's name, Nágráy (Nāgarājā 'snake king'), indicates remnants of snake worship in the Western Himalayas (including the Kashmir region),[21] that is, worship of the nagas, snake-like beings of Hindu mythology associated with water.
[23][24] Suniti Kumar Chatterji also noticed some resemblance between the Kashmiri tale and the Lithuanian folktale Eglė the Queen of Serpents, wherein a human maiden named Egle marries Zilvinas, a snake-like prince that lives in an underwater palace.