Rahu
Hindu · deity · vedic · Recorded classification
Svarbhanu is recorded as an alt-name and not as a third record, because he is these two before the cut and neither after it. The corpus held Surya, Soma and the Sudarshana story's principals and did not hold the thing that eats the sun — an absence that is, among other things, the whole of pre-modern Indian eclipse theory.
Domains
- eclipse
- material ambition
Relations
- severed half of: KetuReciprocated in-batch. The registry has no vocabulary for this relation because nothing else in the corpus is two records that were one body; the kind is invented for it and says exactly what it is.Reference treatment: the head of the demon came to be known as Rahu and the body was called Ketu. (secondary)
- beheaded by: VishnuNon-symmetric, so nothing is written onto the pre-existing Vishnu record.Reference treatment: Vishnu used his Sudarshan Chakra to sever Svarbhanu's head from his body. (secondary)
Sources
- Rahu is the severed, immortal head of the asura Svarbhanu, who drank the nectar in disguise before Vishnu beheaded him with the discus, and is the north lunar node and cause of eclipses.: Reference treatments of Rahu and Ketu, of Svarbhanu and of the Samudra Manthan. (secondary)