Note 2 — Chapter VII · Paradise and the Serpent.

When the Asuras saw the Amrita, they claimed it; but one of the Devas, Narya, assumed the form of a beautiful woman, and so fascinated them that they forgot the Amrita for the moment, which the gods drank. One of the Asuras, however, Ráhu, assumed the form of a god or Deva, and began to drink. The immortalising nectar had not gone farther than his throat when the sun and moon saw the deceit and discovered it to Naraya, who cut off Ráhu’s head. The head of Ráhu, being immortal, bounded to the sky, where its efforts to devour the sun and moon, which betrayed him, causes their eclipses. The tail (Ketu) also enjoys immortality in a lower plane, and is the fatal planet which sends diseases on mankind. A furious war between the gods and the Asuras has been waged ever since. And since the Devas are the strongest, it is not wonderful that it should have passed into the folklore of the whole Aryan world that the evil host are for ever seeking to recover by cunning the Amrita. The Serpents guarding the paradise of the Devas have more than once, in a mythologic sense, been induced to betray their trust and glide into the divine precincts to steal the coveted draught. This is the Kvásir2 of the Scandinavian Mythology, which is the source of that poetic inspiration whose songs have magical potency. The sacramental symbol of the Amrita in Hindu Theology is the Soma juice, and this plant Indra is declared in the Rig-Veda (i. 130) to have discovered “hidden, like the nestlings of a bird, amidst a pile of rocks enclosed by bushes,” where the dragon Drought had concealed it. Indra, in the shape of a hawk, flew away with it. In the Prose Edda the Frost Giant Suttung has concealed the sacred juice, and it is kept by the maid Gunlauth in a cavern overgrown with bushes. Bragi bored a hole through the rock. Odin in the shape of a worm crept through the crevice; then resuming his godlike shape, charmed the maid into permitting him to drink one draught out of the three jars; and, having left no drop, in form of an eagle flew to Asgard, and discharged in the jars the wonder-working liquid. Hence poetry is called Odin’s booty, and Odin’s gift.