The Garuda tradition in early twentieth-century South Asian ethnography

Record summary

Garuda is the prominent bird-like divine being of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions, commonly represented as an enormous eagle or human-bird figure and associated with flight, serpents and celestial travel. Early twentieth-century surveys of Indian religion, art and folklore repeatedly discussed the tradition, making it useful for comparing how a supernatural aerial being can become classified as mythology, iconography or folklore. The uncertainty concerns regional variation and whether any particular ethnographic account records living belief rather than summarizing Sanskrit or classical sources.