Matali, Indra's charioteer, can find no husband good enough for his daughter Gunakesi in heaven or on earth, and goes below with Narada through the worlds of the nagas. In Bhogavati he chooses Sumukha, grandson of Aryaka; but Garuda has eaten Sumukha's father and said he will eat Sumukha within a month. They go to Indra, Vishnu sitting with him, and Indra grants Sumukha long life; the wedding is held. Garuda comes raging that his food has been taken, and boasts that he carries Vishnu himself on a single feather. Vishnu says, then bear this one right arm of mine, and rests it on him. Garuda falls senseless, sheds his feathers, and begs to be forgiven; Vishnu sets Sumukha on his breast with his toe, and from then on Garuda and that snake live as friends.
Mahabharata, Udyoga Parva 97 to 105, tr. K. M. Ganguli (Project Gutenberg 15475)
Sources: Mahabharata, Udyoga Parva 97 to 105, tr. K. M. Ganguli (Project Gutenberg 15475)
The boy Krishna leaps into the Yamuna pool poisoned by the serpent Kaliya, is bound in his coils while Vrindavan weeps on the bank, then dances on his hoods until the serpent's wives beg for his life, and sends him back to the sea.
To free his mother Vinata, Garuda flies to steal the amrita; on the way he eats an elephant and a tortoise on a branch so heavy it breaks, carries the branch with its hanging sages until they bless him, fights through the gods' defences, and wins from Vishnu a place above him and from Indra a friendship.
In the Garuda Purana the bird asks Vishnu what happens to a person after death, and Vishnu describes the road of Yama, the thirteen days of rites, the sixteen cities and the river Vaitarani; that dialogue is what families in north India have read aloud in the days after a death.
After the head's verdict that one god did all the fighting, Bhima is ashamed of his boast, and Krishna carries him on Garuda to a vast lake in Lanka whose bottom he cannot reach, the place, Krishna says, where Kumbhakarna's tongue fell.
Vishnu and Shiva merge into a single form — to end a dispute among devotees, to kill Guhasura whom neither could kill alone, or at Parvati's prayer to reconcile two serpent kings. Shiva is the right half, Vishnu the left, in every telling.
Genuine three-god scenes carved on Ellora's Kailasa: Lingodbhava with Brahma and Vishnu searching the pillar, Tripurantaka with Brahma as charioteer and Vishnu as arrow, and Harihara with Nandi and Garuda.
An elephant seized by a crocodile lifts a lotus and calls on Vishnu, who arrives on Garuda and frees both animal and captor with the discus.
Naraka of Pragjyotisha steals Aditi's earrings; Krishna kills him and returns them, and Aditi blesses Krishna and Satyabhama.