Hindu Medicine c7.127

c7.127

One time, we are told, when Dhanvantari with a thousand pupils was wandering to Mount Kailāsa in the Himālayas, an abode of Śiva, he encountered a giant serpent. The venomous monster, of colossal proportions, showed its tongue and assailed him as if to devour him. But Dhanvantari simply laughed at it. As a pupil of the sun-bird Garuḍa, the arch-enemy of snakes, who absorbs the serpent-genii or life-spirits of the terrestrial waters by means of his celestial solar heat, Dhanvantari knew himself to be possessed of the magic power to conquer snakes.