Some legends make Garuda the offspring of Kasyapa and Diti. This all-prolific dame laid an egg, which, it was predicted, would preserve her deliverer from some great affliction. After a lapse of five hundred years Garuda sprung from the egg, flew to the abode of Indra, extinguished the fire that surrounded it, conquered its guards, the _devatas_, and bore off the _amrita_ (ambrosia), which enabled him to liberate his captive mother. A few drops of this immortal beverage falling on the species of grass called "Kusa," it became eternally consecrated; and the serpents greedily licking it up so lacerated their tongues with the sharp grass that they have ever since remained forked; but the boon of eternity was ensured to them by their thus partaking of the immortal fluid. This cause of snakes having forked tongues is still popularly in the tales of India attributed to the above greediness; and their supposed immortality may have originated in some such stories as these; a small portion of _amrita_, as in the case of Rahu, would ensure them this boon. In all mythological language the snake is an emblem of immortality: its endless figure when its tail is inserted in its mouth, and the annual renewal of its skin and vigour, afford symbols of continued youth and eternity; and its supposed medicinal or life-preserving qualities may also have contributed to the fabled honours of the serpent tribe. In Hindu mythology serpents are of universal occurence and importance; in some shape or other they abound in all directions; a similar state of things prevails in Greece and Egypt. Ingenious and learned authors attribute this universality of serpent forms to the early and all pervading prevalence of sin, which, in this identical shape, they tell us, and as indeed we all know, is as old as the days of our greatest grandmother: thus much as to its age, when there was but one woman; its prevalence, now there are so many, this is no place to discuss. If such writers were to trace the allegories of Sin and Death, and the end of their empire, they might discover further allusions to the Christian dispensation in the traditions of the Hindus than have hitherto been published--Krishna crushing, but not destroying, the type of Sive, has often been largely discussed. Garuda is also the proverbial, but not the utter destroyer of serpents, for he spared one, they and their archetype being, in reference to created beings, eternal. His continual and destined state of warfare with serpent, a shape mostly assumed by the enemies of the virtuous incarnations or deified heroes of the Hindus, is a continued allegory of the conflicts between Vice and Virtue so infinitely personified. Garuda, at length, appears the coadjutor of all virtuous sin-subduing efforts, as the vehicle of the chastening and triumphant party, and conveys him on the wings of the winds to the regions of eternal day. CHAPTER XI. _Mr. Bullock's Exhibition of Objects illustrating Serpent Worship._