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Accessing Dragons and Dragon Lore by Ernest Ingersoll]

> Title Page

> Introduction

> Contents

> Chapter One: Birth Of The Dragon

> Chapter Two: Wanderings of the Young Dragon

> Chapter Three: Indian Nagas and Draconic Prototypes

> Chapter Four: The Divine Spirit of the Waters

> Chapter Five: Draconic Grandparents

> Chapter Six: The Dragon as a Rain-God

> Chapter Seven: Korean Water And Mountain Spirits

> Chapter Eight: ''The Men of the Dragon Bones''

> Chapter Nine: The Dragon in Japanese Art

> Chapter Ten: The Dragon's Precious Pearl

> Chapter Eleven: The Dragon Invades the West

> Chapter Twelve: The 'Old Serpent' and his Progeny

> Chapter Thirteen: Welsh Romances and English Legends

> Chapter Fourteen: The Dragon and the Holy Cross

> Chapter Fifteen: To the Glory of Saint George

[ Accessing the title page]

+ DRAGONS AND DRAGON LORE BY ERNEST INGERSOLL

+ With an Introduction by HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN

+ President of the American Museum of Natural History

+ "There's no such thing in nature, and you'll draw, a faultless monster which the world ne'er saw."

+ 1928

+ Payson & Clarke Ltd.

+ New York

[ Accessing the Introduction]

+ became intensely interested in Dragon Worship and the Dragon Myth during my recent journey in China and Mongolia in support of the Central Asiatic Expeditions of Roy Chapman Andrews. Especially, in the royal city of Peking appears the apotheosis of the Dragon in every conceivable form of symbolism and architecture. The Dragons leading up to the steps of the temples and palaces of the Manchu emperors, and the superb dragon-screen guarding the approach to one of the royal palaces, are but two of the innumerable examples of the universal former belief in these mythical animals, and of the still prevailing beliefs among the common people of China.

+ For example, one night in a far distant telegraph station in the heart of the desert of Gobi, I overheard two men pointing out Leader Andrews and myself as 'men of the Dragon bones.' On inquiry, I learned that our great Central Asiatic Expedition was universally regarded by the natives as engaged in the quest of remains of extinct Dragons and that this superstition is connected with the still universal belief among the natives that fossil bones, and especially fossil teeth have a high medicinal value.

+ Not long after my return from Central Asia, I suggested to my friend, Ernest Ingersoll, that he write the present volume, preparing a fresh study of the history of the Dragon Myth which, now largely confined to China, once spread all over Asia and Europe, as dominant not only in mythology but entering even into the early teachings of Christianity, as so many other pagan myths have done. I knew that the author was well-qualified for a work of this character, because of his remarkable success in previous volumes for old and young, and in his original observations on various forms of animal life, from the American oyster to many birds and mammals.

+ He is especially versed, perhaps, in regard to one very interesting question which is often asked, namely, how far the animals of myth and of legend, like the Dragon, the Hydra, the Phoenix, the Unicorn and the Mermaid, are products of pure imagination, and how far due to some fancied resemblance of a living form or to the tales of travelers. For example, it occurred to me, while examining the giant fossil eggs of the extinct ostrich of China (now known under the scientific name Struthiolithus, assigned by the late Doctor Eastman), that it may have given rise to the myth of the Phoenix or of the Roc.

[Accessing the Context]

I BIRTH OF THE DRAGON

II WANDERINGS OF THE YOUNG DRAGON

III INDIAN NAGAS AND DRACONIC PROTOTYPES

IV THE DIVINE SPIRIT OF THE WATERS

V DRACONIC GRANDPARENTS

VI THE DRAGON AS A RAIN-GOD

VII KOREAN WATER AND MOUNTAIN SPIRITS

VIII "THE MEN OF THE DRAGON BONES"

IX THE DRAGON IN JAPANESE ART

X THE DRAGON'S PRECIOUS PEARL

XI THE DRAGON INVADES THE WEST

XII THE 'OLD SERPENT' AND HIS PROGENY

XIII WELSH ROMANCES AND ENGLISH LEGENDS

XIV THE DRAGON AND THE HOLY CROSS

XV TO THE GLORY OF ST. GEORGE

[ Accessing the BIRTH OF THE DRAGON]

+ Millions of person to-day have as firm a faith in its reality as in any fact, or supposed fact, of their intuition or experience. As an element in the ancient Oriental creation-myths, it is perhaps the most antique product of human imagination; and it stalks, picturesque and portentous, through medieval legend.

+ The dragon was born in the youth of the East, a creature engendered between inward fear and outward peril, was nurtured among prehistoric wanderers, and has survived in the hinterlands of ignorance and superstition because it embodied the underlying principle of all morality--the eternal contrast and contest between Good and Evil, typified by the incessant struggle of man with the forces of nature and with his twofold self. In the East the dragon, like the primitive gods, was by turns deity and demon; carried westward, it fell almost wholly into the latter estate, or was transformed into a purely allegorical figure; and it has its counterpart, if not its descendants, in the religious faith and rites of every known land and all sorts of peoples.

+ The dragon is as old as the sensitiveness and imagination of mankind, and doubtless had assumed a definite shape in some crude, material expression as long ago as when men first began to paint, or to carve in wood and on stone, marks and images that were at least symbols of the supposed realities visible to their mental eyes.

+ Physical conditions were much the same in Mesopotamia as in Egypt. Like the Nile, the Euphrates was a permanent river, flowing from the Armenian mountains through a vast expanse of arid, yet fertile, land to the great marshes (now much reduced) at the head of the Persian Gulf. It rose to full banks, or over them, in early summer, fed by melting snow, and the annual inundations along its course were of the highest benefit and importance to the agriculturists settled at least six or seven thousand years ago in its lower basin. As population and tillage increased, irrigation--popularly believed to have been introduced by the gods--became more and more a necessity, and this need for abundant and well-regulated water influenced the local religion, the features of which we have learned from the engraved seals, inscribed tablets, and other shreds of evidence exhumed from the ruins of temples and royal houses.

+ The primitive theory of world-creation and the Theogony of these pre-Babylonians are similar to those of Egypt; and the Sumerians, the earliest known permanent residents in the Euphrates Valley, were perhaps allied racially with the men of the Nile country--certainly there was communication between them long before the date of any records yet obtained.

+ There is evidence, moreover, that the peoples whom we know by the earliest 'civilized' remains thus far discovered were preceded in the valleys of both the Euphrates and the Nile by a population far more primitive, which was displaced--in the case of Sumer, presumably by immigrants from southern Persia; for probably the culture represented by Susa is older than that of the cities of Sumer. Both peoples conceived the earth to be an island floating on an infinite expanse and depth of water which welled up around it as an ocean, often imaged forth as an encircling serpent, on whose horizon rested the dome of the sky. At first "darkness was upon the face of the deep," yet the great primeval gods were even then alive,--indistinct, fickle, anthropomorphic originators and representatives of natural phenomena.

+ The word 'dragon' as we see it written to-day calls to mind the grotesque, writhing figure of Chinese or Japanese ornament; but in this treatise, we must accept the term in a far wider scope, as representing supernatural powers in any sense, yet not invariably hateful. As to the matter of sex, demon-women arose very early to vex the sun-gods of Egypt, but they soon became changed in sex, and dragons have been masculine ever since.

+ What happened to Tiamat is variously explained. Dr. Hopkins' summarizes her history, gathered from the tablets and seals recovered from the ruins of Nippur and elsewhere, thus:

+ Chaos bred monsters, and then the divine Heaven and Earth, as Anshar and Kishar, ancestors of Anu, Enlil, and Ea, prepared for conflict, to maintain order. . . . The eleven opposing monsters of Chaos are created by Tiamat and headed by Kingu, to whom Tiamat gives the tablets of destiny and whom she makes her consort. The peace-loving gods seem to fear; they send a messenger to Tiamat, "May her liver be pacified, her heart softened" [apparently without effect]. . . . At any rate, we next see Bel-Marduk, at the command of his father, going joyfully into battle after preparing for the conflict by making weapons, bow, lance, club, lightning-bolt, storm-winds, and a net wherewith to catch Tiamat. The gods get drunk with joy, anticipating victory and hailing Marduk as already lord of the universe. On Storm (his chariot) he rushes forth, haloed with light, from which Kingu shrinks. He follows the seven winds. Tiamat, however, fears him not, but when Marduk challenges her, she fights, "raging and shaking with fury," yet all in vain. For Marduk stifles her with a poisonous gas ('evil wind'), and then transfixes her, also taking the tablets from Kingu and netting the other monsters. But Tiamat he cuts in two, making one half of her the sky.

[ Accessing the WANDERINGS OF THE YOUNG DRAGON]

+ Contrary to this view, most students, possessing broader information than formerly, now believe that such resemblances--strikingly numerous--are not mere coincidences arising from a postulated unity of human nature, but are the result of a spread of travelers and instruction from centers where new and impressive ideas or useful inventions have arisen. One of the foremost advocates of this theory of the geographical dispersion of myths and culture, as opposed to local independence of origin, is Professor Smith, quoted in the first chapter, whose books have been of much use to me in this connection. The theory does not deny the occasional independent rise of similar notions and practices here and there but asserts that it alone accounts for all the important cases, particularly the central nature-myths, of which this of the dragon is esteemed the most important. The doctrine derives its main strength from its ability to show that in the very early, virtually prehistoric, times much closer contact and more frequent intercommunication than was formerly known or considered probable existed among primitive peoples all over the inhabited world. Assuming that at the dawn of history the most advanced communities were those of Egypt and Mesopotamia (with Elam), which were certainly in communication with one another both by land and by sea forty or fifty centuries before Christ, let us see how widespread, if at all, was their influence.

+ That the Egyptians were building large, sea-going ships as early as 2000 B.C. is well known. In them, they traded with Crete and Phoenicia (whence the Phoenicians probably first learned the art of navigation) and with western Mediterranean ports. They sailed up and down the Red Sea, exploring Sinai and Yemen; visited Socotra, where grew the dragon-blood tree; went far south along the African shore; searched the Arabian coast, gathering frankincense (said to be guarded in its growth by small winged serpents); and made voyages back and forth between the Red Sea and the ports of Babylonia and Elam on the Persian Gulf. What surprise could there be records available that these Egyptian mariners or those in the ships of the people about the Gulf of Persia sometimes continued on to India? Indeed Colonel St. Johnston elaborates a theory that not only the Malay Archipelago but the islands of the South Pacific, especially Polynesia, were colonized prehistorically by a stream of immigrants from Africa and India, who crept along the shore of the Indian Ocean, and from island to island in the East Indies, gradually reaching Australia and going on thence to the sea-islands beyond; and he and others believe that they carried with them ancestral ideas of supernatural beings, whence they made for themselves fish-gods and sea-monsters which some ethnologists regard as not only analogs but descendants, of dragons.

+ It is stoutly held, furthermore, that the religion of the half-civilized tribes of Mexico owes its characteristic features of serpent-worship and dragon-like symbols to the teaching of Asiatic visitors reaching middle America via Polynesia; but this is disputed, and I shall be content to avoid this controversy--also as far as possible serpent-worship per se--and confine myself to continental Asia and Europe.

+ The southwestern part of Persia, or Elam, was inhabited contemporaneously with early Babylonia, if not before, by a people of equal or superior culture, and holding a like religion. Their capital, Susa, was the most important city east of the lofty mountains between them and the valleys of Mesopotamia and attracted traders and visitors from a great surrounding space. Most numerous, probably, were those from the north, from Iran, the country about the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains--inhabited by a race that used to be called Aryans; but many came also from Turanic nomads wandering with their cattle in the valley of the Oxus and eastward to the foot of the Hindoo Koosh, and still others from the eastern plains and coast-lands stretching to the Indus valley.

+ We may suppose these herdsmen and hunters to have been very simple-minded and crude, and their only semblance of religion to have been the rudest fetishism, animated by fear of ghosts and magic. Only the most enterprising among them, or prisoners of war brought back as slaves, would be likely to visit the more educated South, but there they would hear of definite 'gods' with stories behind them of the creation of the world, the gift of precious rain, and of unseen beings of immeasurable power; and they would learn the reason for representing these divine heroes in the forms they saw inscribed on monuments and temples, or in little images given them, thus getting some notion of the philosophy of worship.

+ They would talk of these things by the camp-fire, when they had returned to Iran or Bactria or the Afghan hills, along with their tales of the civilization in Susa, and gradually plainsmen and mountaineers would grow wiser and more imitative. Sailors and merchants also carried enlightening information and ideas, crude as they may seem to us, into the minds of the natives of the shores of India and along the banks of the navigable Indus, whence this news from the West percolated into the more or less savage interior of the peninsula. Later we shall meet with some results of this slow and accidental propaganda.

+ Meanwhile, a stronger influence was affecting the North Persians. Soon after we first become acquainted with the Sumerians settled in Ur and other places on the lower Euphrates, we learn that they were conquered by Semitic tribes from the West, who created the Babylonian empire. After a while, this was overthrown by still more powerful forces higher up the river, until finally, the Assyrians became rulers of the whole valley, and ultimately of all Asia Minor north of the Arabian desert. The ancient gods received new names, but the old ideas remained. The antique dragon still stood at the gates of the Assyrian king's palace, and Ea, the fish-god, reappeared on the shores of the Mediterranean as Dagon of the Philistines. But this is running ahead of my story.

+ North of Assyria, among the mountains of Armenia, dwelt the Medes, a nation of uncertain affinities, but apparently well advanced towards civilization even in the earlier period of Babylon's history. They were not, at least primitively, influenced much by the sea-born myths of their southern neighbors, but held a religious creed combined of sun-worship and reverence for serpents-- a conjunction which has had many examples elsewhere.

+ . . . Darkness now is spread around, No pathway can be traced; The fiery horses plunge and bound Amid the dismal waste. And now the dragon stretches far His cavern-throat, and soon Licks the horses and the car, And tries to gulp them down. But sword and javelin sharp and keen, Wound deep each sinewy jaw; Midway remains the huge machine And chokes the monster's maw. And from his place of ambush leaps, And brandishing his blade, The weapon in the brain he steeps And splits the monster's head. But the foul venom issuing thence, Is so o'erpowering found, Isfendiar, deprived of sense, Falls staggering to the ground. As for the dragon-- In agony, he breathes, a dire Convulsion fires his blood, And, struggling ready to expire, Ejects a poison flood. And thus disgorges wain and steeds. And swords and javelins bright; Then, as the dreadful dragon bleeds, Upstarts the warrior knight.

[ Accessing the "THE DIVINE SPIRIT OF THE WATERS"]

+ It is generally agreed that the original Chinese came in from the plateaus west and north of the Yellow River by following its sources down to the plains. This river takes its name (Hoang-Ho) from the hue of its soil-laden current, and that may account, in connection with the golden tint of the venerated sun's light, for the supremacy of yellow in Chinese mythology and political history: it is the national as it was the imperial color until the yellow dragon-flag of the senile empire fell beneath the stripes of the young Republic.

+ Everywhere the dragon, when first heard of, is associated with the genesis of the arts of civilization in China. Myths relating to it go back to the thirty-third century before Christ, and to the sage Fu Hsi who then (or, as some say, between 2853 and 2738 B.C.) dwelt in the Province of Honan, and from whom dates the legendary as distinguished from a mythical period before him. One day Fu Hsi saw a yellow 'dragon-horse'--a horse-headed water-beast of some sort--arise from the Lo River, a tributary of the Hoang Ho, marked on its back with an arrangement of curling hairs expressing somehow those mysterious Trigrams that have survived for the puzzlement of scholars, but are generally considered as the formula or apparatus of a system of prehistoric divination based on mathematics--the theory of the symbolic quality of numbers so widespread and influential in the ancient East. The Trigrams are expounded in that book of unknown antiquity, the Yi King, which is the Bible of the Taoists, and seem to form an attempt at a graphic demonstration of the mystical principle at the heart of Chinese philosophy expressed in the terms 'yang' and its antithesis 'yin'. We shall meet these contrasted terms wherever our search may lead us and shall learn that the sages have found in them, as DeGroot, the foremost expositor of Chinese theology, expresses it, a "clue to the mysteries of nature and an unfathomable lake of metaphysical wisdom."

+ Be this as it may, the dragon-horse is a strange feature of the history of our subject, and one still among the possibilities of vision to the eyes of the faithful. A native commentary on one of the Classics, written in the second century B.C., and consulted by Dr. Visser, informs its readers that a dragon-horse is the vital spirit of heaven and earth fused together. "Its shape consists of a horse's body, yet it has dragon-scales. Its height is eight ch'ih, five ts'un. A true dragon-horse has wings at its sides and walks upon the water without sinking. If a holy man is on the throne it comes out of the midst of the Ming River carrying a map [i.e., the Trigrams] on its back." Wang Fu, another author of early Han times, says: "The people paint the dragon's shape with a horse's head and a snake's tail. Further, there are such expressions as 'three joints' and 'nine resemblances,' to wit, from head to shoulder, from shoulder to breast, from breast to tail." The nine resemblances referred to seem to indicate nine kinds of animals, parts of which are combined in this imaginary beast. Another description mentions particularly a tail like that of a huge serpent; and Wang Kia asserts in his book, written A.D. 557, that Emperor Muh, of the Chow dynasty, once "drove around the world in a carriage drawn by eight winged dragon-horses."

+ Some kings saddled and rode these prototypes of the classic Pegasus. Certainly, horse-like figures with queer little feathery wings and upturned feathery tails appear in art produced under the Han dynasty, and later one finds drawings or sculptures of them showing well-developed wings. Visser quotes a reference, as late as 741 A.D., to the appearance, somewhere in China, of a living blue-and-red example that was heard "neighing like a flute." The dragon-horse is known in Japanese folklore also.

+ It seems to me very natural and interesting that these earliest recoverable notions of the aspect of the dragon should have conceived of it as having an equine form, reminiscent of the primitive home and habits of the ancestors of these adventurers in the Hoang-Ho Valley in whose nomadic life horses had borne so essential a part; and it is further interesting to observe that in Tibet representations of the dragon, with little resemblance otherwise to the conventional Chinese model, have the legs and hoofs of the horse instead of those of the lion or the eagle.

+ Recalling the significance attached by some native commentators to the strange markings on the back of the equine creature which legend says appeared before the sage Fu Hsi, that, namely, they taught him the making and use of the ideographic characters by which Chinese is written, it is worthwhile to mention a tradition of the legendary emperor Tsang Kie, to whose reign is popularly attributed the introduction of writing as well as other inventions of importance. "One day, the emperor, surrounded by his principal ministers, was thinking of . . . how much had been accomplished, when an immense dragon descended from the clouds and placed itself at his feet. The emperor and those who had assisted him in his wonderful discoveries got upon the reptile's back, which forthwith took its flight to celestial regions." Several early Buddhist heroes and worthies were similarly translated.

+ The interesting point of resemblance in these legends is that they agree in making the knowledge of writing a divine gift--a fact most appropriate to the pride of the Chinese in literary accomplishments.

+ The earliest example known to me of a dragon in recognizable Chinese form is shown on some ancient pillars In the city of Yung-Ch'eng near Tientsin.

+ Here the dragon heads the list of the four 'celestial' or 'intelligent' animals that existed in and made possible the Golden Age.

+ I find in Dr. Laurence Binyon's delightful little book The Flight of the Dragon," a comment illuminating this association of things and ideas:

+ In Chinese popular tradition there are five colors. These are blue, yellow, red, white, and black. Each of these is linked by tradition with certain associations. Thus blue is associated with the east, red with the south, white with the west, black with the north and yellow with the earth. . . . Blue appears originally not to have been distinguished from green--at least the same word was used for both--and it was associated with the east because of the coming of spring with its green. That black should be associated with the cold north seems more intelligible, and that to the black north would be opposed the red of the fiery south; but that white should belong to the west because autumn comes with the winds from that quarter, heralded by white frosts, seems a far-fetched explanation. And when we pursue the ulterior significance of the colors into still wider regions; when we find blue associated with wood, red with fire, white with metal, black with water; still more when we are told that the five colors have each correspondence with the emotions (white with mourning, for instance, and black with worry), and not only with these but with musical notes, with the senses and with flavors, I fear the august common-sense of the Occident becomes affronted and impatient.

+ Preeminent in all these plexus of faiths and fancies is the cardinal fact that the Oriental dragon stands for 'water.'

+ "If one represents water without representing dragons there is nothing to show the divinity of its phenomena," declared an ancient writer cited by Dr. Visser. Another antique script describes a divine being in the waters of the earth akin to the snake, which sleeps in pools during the winter, whence in spring it ascends to the sky. These mysticisms evidently refer to fresh waters alone (the salt seas are in another class), just as in Ur, Ea, the god of the rain-clouds, and of the streams and lakes they fed, was regarded as quite distinct from oceanic deities; and such reverential ideas must, it would seem, have had their genesis in the minds of people of an arid region whose thoughts were continually on their water supply. But in the softer circumstances which resulted from their finding homes in the fertile valleys of China, they felt the apprehension of drouth less severely and began to ponder on the reasonableness of their ancient fears and present generation. "Water," declared Lao Tzu, "is the weakest and softest of things, yet overcomes the strongest and the hardest."

+ It penetrates everywhere subtly, without noise, without effort. "So it becomes typical of the spirit, which is able to pass out into all other existences of the world and resume its own form in man; and, associated with the power of fluidity, the dragon becomes the symbol of the infinite." Water-worship, indeed, is a widespread and very ancient cult, the central idea being that water is the source and means of fertility and also of purification in its higher senses. Hence great rivers have been invested with a sacred character, notably the Nile and the Ganges; even the Yangtse and Hoang rivers have inspired similar sentiments. Plutarch says that Nile water, which fecundated the earth, was carried in processions in honor of Isis as representing the seed of Osiris. The stark necessity of water in the plan of creation and the scheme of life seems to have impressed the primitive man of and Central Asia with amazing force.

+ Since early times high floods, tempests and ordinary thunderstorms have been attributed by rural Chinese to dragons fighting in the air or in rivers. This is not a blessing to humanity, such as they bestow by peacefully shedding rain on the planted fields, and therefore the threatening 'herds' of dragons advancing to combat were looked at with fright. An account of a dragon-fight in a pool in northern Liang, in 503 B.C., relates that vicious creatures "squirted fog over a distance of some miles." The only way to stop such dreadful duels is by the use of fire, which no water-spirit can endure; therefore heaven sends sacred fire (the lightning) to compel angry demons to cease troubling the clouds or mundane waters and injuring poor farmers, as all-destroying deluges might result. Hence, occasional small or local damage to mankind, as innocent bystanders, from the vigorous quelling of draconic riots, is regarded as cheap payment for security against overwhelming floods. More dreadful however than immediate storm-damage was the presage in the sky-battles of possible harm to, or even the overthrow of, the reigning family, which almost certainly would follow were the yellow and the blue dragon-hosts, partisans of the Imperial House, to be defeated.

+ It is true that in primitive China as elsewhere serpents were regarded as the genii of lakes, springs, and caves, and here and there the people paid them to worship. The dragon, however, is not, nor ever was, an ordinary snake deified, but has been exalted, albeit rather uncertainly, into a true deity as a manifestation of a principle that underlies all Chinese philosophy, and is expressed in the contrasted and pregnant words yang and yin--fight versus darkness, the constructive as opposed to the destructive, goodwill contrasted with bad-heartedness.

+ In the Shan Hai King, a very old Classic, is described as a god seated at the foot of Mt. Chung. "He is called 'Enlightener of the Darkness.' By looking [i.e., opening the eyes; a popular belief is that a dragon's vital spirit lies in his eyes, also that he is deaf] he creates daylight, and by closing his eyes he creates night. By blowing he makes winter, by inhalation he makes summer. He neither eats nor drinks, nor does the rest. His breath causes wind. His length is a thousand miles. . . . As a living being, he has a human face, the body of a snake, and red color."

+ The author assures us that this god is The Dragon, that he is full of yang (heavenly virtue), and that it is logical that he should diffuse light, overcoming the nine yin; wherefore he symbolizes great men (assumed to be full of yang) particularly the emperor and his sons ('dragon-seed') which is one of the many explanations of the association of the Thunder Dragon, specifically the yellow one, with the imperial estate. If this is true--and the possession of yang by dragons is affirmed by sages again and again--the good nature of Chinese dragons, in general, is well accounted for. In China, at any rate, they have been on the whole benevolent and helpful when treated with respect and generously encouraged by sacrifices and gifts. Undoubtedly they have sometimes shown poor judgment in the matter of flooding rains and careless use of lightning, yet in general, they seem to mean well and to be kind in answer to prayers for rain when the crops really need it. If not--well, the farmers know how to bring them to their sense of duty!

[ Accessing the KOREAN WATER AND MOUNTAIN SPIRITS]

+ "The ring [Li Lung?]," Dr. Griffis writes, "is one of the four supernatural or spiritually endowed creatures. He is an embodiment of all the forces of motion, changes, and power for offense and defense in animal life, with the mysterious attributes of the serpent. There are many varieties of the genus Dragon. . . . In the spring it ascends to the sites, and in the autumn buries itself in the watery depths. It is this terrific manifestation of movement and power which the Korean artist loves to depict--always in connection with waters, clouds, or the sacred jewel of which it is the guardian."

+ There is also a terrestrial dragon, which presides over mines and gems; and the intense regard for it is perhaps the chief reason why mines have been so little worked in Chosen, the people superstitiously fearing that disasters may follow disturbance of the metals which they believe are peculiarly the treasure of this jealous earth-spirit.

+ "All mountains are personified in Korea," we are told by Angus Hamilton, and are "usually associated with dragons. In lakes, there are dragons and lesser monsters. . . . The serpent is almost synonymous with the dragon. Certain fish in time become fish-dragons; snakes become elevated to the dignity and imbued with the ferocity of dragons when they have spent a thousand years in the captivity of the mountains and a thousand years in the water. All these apparitions may be propitiated with sacrifices and prayers."

+ Apart from any historical suggestions which this interesting story may contain, one notes that the exorcism of the threatening demons was accomplished in just the same way as Christian monks did by a show of the Cross, as we shall see when we come to consider the dragon-lore of medieval Europe.

+ Whatever is most excellent the Koreans compare to the divinely virtuous Dragon. A 'dragon-child' is one that is a paragon of propriety; 'a dragon-horse,' one having great speed, and so on to indicate the superlative. A common proverb, "When the fish has been transformed into the dragon," means that a happy change has taken place. This embodiment of good nature and good luck is, of course, simply the Chinese lung, friendly and worthy of respect and worship.

+ It appears, however, that Buddhistic travellers and missionaries from cobra-worshipping India, corrupted this gentle faith long ago by the introduction of the Hindoo doctrines and practice of naga-worship, inculcating a system of diabolism that filled the land with fear and defensive magic: the cheerful old dragons of the past became horrid snakes, lurking in every pool, and filling the seas with terror.

+ A Korean book describes an exorcist of nagas who went with his pitcher full of water to the pond inhabited by naga and by his magic formulae surrounded the reptile with a ring of fire. As the water in the pitcher was its only refuge the naga turned himself into a small snake and crept into the pitcher. Whether the exorcist then killed him the story does not reveal; but in the tale, Visser finds evidence of the Nagas "not only as rain-gods but also as beings wholly dependent on the presence of water and much afraid of fire--just like the dragons in Chinese and Japanese legends."

+ The ceremony, at least when held on land, was performed by a mudang (a professional female exorcist) in a boat, accompanied by as many of the leading persons of the village as were able to crowd in with her. "Her fee is about forty dollars. The most interesting part of the ceremony is the mudang's dance, which is performed on the edge of a knife-blade laid across the mouth of a jar that is filled to the brim with water." Even more elaborately nonsensical was the ceremony on a ferryboat--a great institution in a land without bridges, as Korea used to be.

[Accessing the "THE DRAGON'S PRECIOUS PEARL"]

+ A MOST curious, interesting, and at the same time obscure feature of this whole baffling subject is that of the so-called Pearl which accompanies the dragon in pictures and legends from the earliest times, and is common to the religious traditions of the whole East--India, China, and Japan. Necklaces of pearls are a regular part of the regalia of naga-queens in their submarine palaces; and we read often in the old Vedic books of a magical 'jewel of good luck,' which was in custody of the naga-maidens but was lost by them through the terror of their monstrous enemy, the bird Garuda. There are traces of it in early Taoism, but it is best preserved in Buddhism as the jewel in the lotus, the mani of the mystic, ecstatic, formula Om Mani Padme hum--the "Jewel that grants all desires," the 'divine pearl' of the Buddhists throughout the Orient.

+Koreans commonly believe that the yellow (chief) dragon carries on his forehead (as also in Japan) a pear-shaped pearl having supernatural properties and healing power. In China alone, however, is this mystical accessory of the dragon made a significant part of pictures and decorative designs. Some say that originally every proper dragon carried a pearl under his chin; others that it was a special mark of imperial rank. A sixth-century writer asserts that such pearls are "spit out of dragons like snake-pearls out of snakes," and have enormous value.

+ This extraordinary gem is represented as a spherical object, or 'ball,' half as big, or quite as large, as the head of the dragon with which it is associated, for it is never depicted quite by itself. The gem is white or bluish with a reddish or golden halo and usually has an antler-shaped 'flame' rising from its surface. Almost invariably there hangs downward from the center of the sphere a dark-colored, comma-like appendage, frequently branched, wavering below the periphery.

+ A biologist might easily at first glance conclude that the whole affair represented the entry of a spermatozoon into an ovum; and the Chinese commonly interpret the ball with its comma-mark as a symbol of yang and yin, male and female elements, combined in the earth--which seems pretty close to the biologist's view. Such is the Dragon-Pearl.

+ In purely decorative work, where the figure of a dragon is writhing in clouds or adapting its lithe body under an artist's hand to the shape or purpose of a piece of porcelain, a bronze article, or a silken garment, the pearl may be drawn close to the dragon, or wherever convenient.

+ When, however, it is desirable to express the significance of this sacred adjunct of dragon-hood, it is treated with strict attention to reverence and tradition. Then are pictured celestial dragons ascending and descending through the upper air, tearing a path, perhaps, through swirling mists and shadows, "in pursuit of effulgent jewels or orbs that appear to be whirling in space, and that was supposed to be of magic efficiency, granting every wish."

+ A passion for gems is a well-known characteristic of these beings, and that it has 'always' been so is shown by a fable recorded by Joly. T'an T'ai Miah Ming, a disciple of Confucius, was attacked, at the instigation of the god of the Yellow River, by two dragons seeking to rob him of a valuable gem; but T'an T'ai slew the dragons and then, to show his contempt for worldly goods, threw the treasure into the river. Twice it leaped back into his boat, but at last, he broke it in pieces and scattered the fragments.

+ Japanese legends relating to this matter, as briefly given by Joly, in his elaborate work on the legendary art of Japan, are connected with the mythical character Riujin, the ruler of the waters of the globe, whose home is beneath the sea, or in deep lakes, and who is represented as a very old man bearing a coiled dragon on his head or back. Riujin carries the divine jewel time, esteemed as a symbol of purity and usually shown in Japan on the forehead of the dragon; also the jewels of the flowing and the retreating tides, which he gave to Jingo-Kogo, Hikohodermi, and others.

+ In representations of Hidaka Sonja, one of the worshipful sixteen arhats, special disciples of Buddha, "he is generally shown," Joly tells us, "with a bowl from which issues a dragon or a rain-cloud. He holds the bowl aloft with his left hand and with his right carries the sacred gem. Sometimes he is shown seated on a rock, the dragon occasionally aside, and crouching to reach the time."

+ Another legend relates that Riujin once captured from the Chinese queen, the daughter of Kamatari, a most precious jewel, which later was recovered from Riujin by a fisher-girl, wife of Kamatari, who went to the dragon's submarine palace and got possession of the gem. She immediately stabbed her breast and hid the jewel in the wound, then floated to the surface and was found by Kamatari, the jewel guiding him to her by the dazzling light it shed from the concealing wound that became fatal to the heroine. Such stories are logical if the 'jewel' (time, pearl) is identified with the moon.

[ Accessing the "THE 'OLD SERPENT' AND HIS PROGENY"]

+For now were all transformed

Alike, to serpents all, as accessories

To his bold riot. Dreadful was the din

Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarming now

With complicated monsters head and tail,

Scorpion, and asp, and Amphisbaena dire,

Cerastes horned, hydrus and ellops drear,

And dips (not so thick swarmed once the soil

Bedropt with the blood of Gorgon, or the isle

Ophiusa), but still greatest he the midst,

Now Dragon has grown, larger than whom the sun

Engendered in the Pythian vale on slim,

Huge Python; and his power no less he seemed

Above the rest still to retain.

+ "Where wast thou in the day when I formed the dragon? His food is in the sea and his dwelling in the air; his eyes flash fire; his ears are like the bow of the clouds, there pours forth from the flame as though he was a whirling wind-column of dust; his belly burns and his breath flames forth in hot coals like unto rocks; it is as though the clash of his teeth were sounds of thunder and the glance of his eye was the flashings of lightning; armies pass him while he is lying; nothing terrifies him; in him there is no joint . . . he destroys all that by which he passes."

+ The rendering by the English word 'dragon' in the authorized version of the Bible of both the two similar words tan and thanin is explained by Canon Tristram in his authentic Natural History of the Bible. "Tan," he announces, "is always used in the plural for some creature inhabiting desert places, frequently coupled with the ostrich and wild beasts." The Prophets and Psalmist abound in such references and hear their cries from the most desolate haunts they are able to picture to their minds. "I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning like the ostriches," exclaims Micah, remembering nocturnal voices that had echoed in the desert from ghostly ruins and perilous wastes--voices of real animals such as jackals, whose mournful howlings disturb the nervous and superstitious, or owls, always troublesome to timorous souls.

+ The writer of the article 'Dragon' in the Jewish Cyclopedia informs us that in the Septuagint version the word signifies a dangerous monster whose bite is poisonous. This accords with the Hindoo definition of a naga, which designates a venomous snake alone, a cobra. Such monsters must be imagined, says this Hebrew commentator, as of composite but snake-like form, and always as at home in water, even in the waves of the sea (Psalms 48: 7), where they were created by God with the fishes. "At the beginning of things YHWH overpowered them in creating the world. It is clear that this story, which is found only in fragments in the 0. T. was originally a myth representing God's victory over the seas."

+ Faiths, traditions, and figures of speech relating to these matters were an important element in the Christianity brought to Rome by early Jewish propagandists of the new religion, a striking novelty in which was the doctrine of punishment after death for wickedness wrought in life. No longer were men taught that when life ceased their spiritual selves were transported to another world more or less like this one; on the contrary they were sternly warned that if they died in their sins they went to a place of eternal suffering, in charge of a supreme torturer, who daily went roaming about on earth in ingenious and subtle disguises, tempting men to put themselves everlastingly in his power. He was called chiefly 'Satan' and 'Devil.' Both these names were terms taken from Oriental languages, and naturally soon came to be concretely represented by the figure of the Eastern dragon, with whom the populace, grown acquainted with Oriental things by the empire's conquests in Asia Minor and Persia, was vaguely familiar.

+ To fully identify this dragon of tradition with the Devil of the Bible, and so increase the terror of his power, was easy to the zealous, if not over-wise, ministers of Christianity and evidence of their success is found in the many representations in medieval religious art to be seen in ancient books and manuscripts, numerous examples of which have been copied into Carus's History of the Devil and other similar treatises.

+ "Set," remarks Dr. G. E. Smith, "the enemy of Osiris, who is the real prototype of the evil dragon, was the antithesis of the god of Justice; he was the father of falsehood and the symbol of chaos. He was the prototype of Satan, as Osiris was the first definite representative of the Deity of which any record has been preserved. . . .

+ "The history of the evil dragon is not merely the evolution of the Devil, but it also affords the explanation of his traditional peculiarities, his bird-like features, his horns, his red color, his wings, and cloven hoofs, and his tail. They are all of them the dragon's distinctive features, and from time to time in the history of past ages we catch glimpses of the reality of this identification. In one of the earliest woodcuts found in a printed book, Satan is represented as a monk with the bird's feet of the dragon. A most interesting intermediate phase is seen in a Chinese watercolor in the John Rylands Library (at Manchester, England), in which the thunder-dragon is represented in a form almost exactly reproducing that of the Devil of European tradition."

+ Very old and primitive is the Teutonic tale of the dragons of the Underworld which come flying toward the shades of the dead, trying to obstruct their advance when on their way to the realm of a blissful eternity. There were also dragons on earth as well as beneath it, and one of these has survived to serve on the operatic stage wherever Wagner's Nibelungen series is produced. This is the story as recited in the Saga of Volsung--a German epic of unknown authorship produced about the end of the 12th century: The great god Wotan (or Odin) is possessed of a vast treasure which is committed by the gods into the keeping of two giants. One of them, Fafnir, kills his brother in order to get possession of all the wealth, and then transforms himself into a dragon to guard it. Wotan wants to recover his treasure. A knight, Siegfried (Norse, Sigurd) forges a magical sword out of the pieces of his father's sword 'Nothing.' Wotan and his brother Alberich come to where the dragon Fafnir is watching over the stolen money and jewels, including a magic ring belonging to Alberich to which a curse is attached. Siegfried approaches the horrid lair, whereupon Fafnir comes out, and in the fight that ensues Siegfried slays the beast by the aid of his magic sword. The king tells the hero about the ring, and Siegfried goes and gets it, but its possession ensures him constant trouble and unhappiness. Everyone regards this 'dragon' like a demon in serpent form, and he is always so represented on the operatic stage, and in the illustrations accompanying the tale in the many books in which it has been recounted in prose and verse, for it is the favorite hero-myth of the Germans.

+ In the Norse saga of King Olaf the hero plows the northern seas in his Viking boat and surprises and seizes the great freebooter Road, who has been ravaging the shores of Norway in his 'dragon-boat.' That craft is destroyed, and Olaf then instructs the shipwrights to construct for his majesty a 'serpent boat' twice as big. These were Norse sea-boats having tall figureheads of serpent-dragon form, in regard to which much that is entertaining is written in old books.

[Accessing the "THE DRAGON'S AND THE HOLY CROSS"]

+ The industry of Dr. E. Cob-ham Brewer has brought together, in his Dictionary of Miracles, a large number of such records, culled from the authentic writings of St. Jerome, Gregory of Tours, and other fathers of the Church, among which is the following characteristic example indited by Richard de la Val Dreiser, the successor of the 'great' St. Bernard of Mentholatum (993-1008), who declares he was an eye-witness of the incident. "Saint Bernard left at the bottom of the Alps," as Dr. Brewer repeats the story, "the bishop, clergy and procession, which had followed him thither; and with nine pilgrims ascended the mountain where was the brigand Proc-us, called 'the giant,' and worshiped as a god. Saint Bernard and his companions came up to the giant and saw hard by a huge dragon ready to devour them. Bernard made the sign of the Cross, and then threw his stole over the monster's neck. The stole instantly changed itself into an iron chain, except the two ends held in the saint's hands." The nine pilgrims thereupon killed the dragon, and the two silken ends of the stole were long preserved in the abbey of St. Maurice-en-Valois.

+ This method of subduing Satanic demons which, owing to the ancient curse (Genesis 3:14) were obliged to assume a form that compelled them to crawl on their bellies, was a favorite one--we have already seen it used by St. Samson in Ireland. St. Germanus (fifth century) marched boldly into the dark cavern in Scotland inhabited by a prodigious dragon, threw his handkerchief around its neck, and led it forth to a deep pit into which he cast it, and so relieved the district of a man-killing nuisance. Paris was freed from a dreadful dragon of ghoulish habits in A.D. 136, by St. Marcel, who knocked it on the head three times with his cross. This done he wrapped his cloak about the creature's neck and led it four miles beyond the city's gates, where it was set free after it had promised to remain in a certain wood to the end of time--at any rate it has never reappeared. This is told by Gregory of Tours. After Ste. Martha had quieted the frightful dragon of the Rhone, she conducted it by her girdle (Mary describes it more piquantly as her garter) to Contrast, where the people put it to death; and they have been celebrating this deliverance ever since. Several other saintly heroes made captives of cave-dwelling monsters by similarly sanctified leading-strings.

+ In another class of cases evil beasts, and particularly serpents, are subjugated by holy men by the exhibition of a crucifix or some sign representing it. A terrorized community would summon a saint, sometimes from abroad, to deliver it from a despoiling monster (in one instance with a penchant for devouring children--possibly a reminiscence of child sacrifice to bloody deities) just as villagers in India or Africa now seek the help of sportsmen to kill for them a man-eating lion or tiger.

+ Out of these stories and faiths came the ascription to many of the religious worthies of the Middle Ages of a dragon in some form as a badge of distinction--needful when the mass of the people could not read, and must have some means of identifying the 'saints' one from another, just as they had to have a bush to tell them where wine was sold and a bloody pole instead of a written sign to indicate the barber's shop. In his book, Saints and Their Emblems, M. M. Drake shows that dragons appear thirty-five times attached to thirty martyrs and other persons, for some exhibit more than one, perhaps having more than a single experience with the fearsome beast. The artist depicting the saint in statue, painting or decorated glass, tries also to tell the story attached to his or her name. Thus in the case of Martha of Bethany she is shown in a sixteenth century window at St. Mary's in Shrews bury, England, holding an Asperger and holy water vessel with a dragon behind her; but elsewhere you may see her more often in the attitude of vanquishing a dragon by presenting her crucifix to his gaze. Instances might be multiplied, but the reader may find them in the Catalogs and descriptive Lives of medieval celebrities of the Church.

Maura connects the many tales of the freeing of various districts of serpents with the Biblical promise: "They shall take up serpents . . . and it shall not hurt them" (Mark 16: 18). Thus is explained St. Paul's escape from harm by the adder which he flung into the fire in Malta. Hence arose the popular belief that the ministers of the gospel were immune from poisoning by the venom of serpents and might safely attack them. "In Brittany," Maura reminds us, "the apostles who reached the faith are regarded as having destroyed serpents that ravaged the country. Thus did St. Ca don [at Barnacle, St. Auden and St. Pol DE Leon [at Blatz]. In Gaul in the fifth century St. Kenya the Virgin destroyed the snakes that ravaged the country in the vicinity of Key sham. In Pomerania were expelled serpents that vomited flames." St. Radegond fought in Poitier the dragon called Grand Gueule; St. Clement did a like service at Metz; St. Saturnin at Bernay; St. Armond at Maestricht, etc.; and some of these Christians are reported to have been snake-bitten without injury to their health. The most famous, however, of all these exploits is that by St. Patrick in Ireland, and it is more manifestly mythical than any of the others because there never were any snakes in Erin's Isle! A sequel to this beloved tradition is less familiar than the main facts, and is told by Dr. Brewer as follows:

+ When St. Patrick ordered the serpents of Ireland into the sea one of the older reptiles refused to obey; but the saint overmastered it by stratagem. He made a box and invited the serpent to enter in, pretending it would be a nice place for it to sleep in. The serpent said the box was too small, but St. Patrick maintained it was quite large enough. So high at length rose the argument that the serpent got into the box to prove it too small; whereupon St. Patrick clapped down the lid and threw the box into the sea.

+ Critics justly regard most of these tales as allegories of the success had by various missionary priests in staying the 'devils' of paganism or of false doctrine in their several fields of labor, and in converting local groups of people to Christianity. Some such expulsion of native rites and idols from one or another district probably indicates the reality behind the many legends of serpent clearance. Several of these tales, nevertheless, seem to me based upon actual feats of heroism, as, for example, that exploit of Bishop Romans, annually celebrated at Roue n, which may not be wholly mythical, since the 'horrible dragon' in this case might well be a bad man instead of a false doctrine. The adventure of that soldier-general of the army of Licerius in Thrace of the fourth century, who fought and slaughtered a dragon with his sword, and afterward canonized as St. Theodosius of Heracles, furnishes another case. The Thracian would probably insist, could they return to tell us about it, that Licences and his officers had put something to the sword more strategic than dragons, and more substantial than heresy.

+ These few typical examples out of many may suffice to show the way in which the general belief in supernatural and more or less harmful beings was utilized by the early Christian missionaries in Europe, to impress the sanctions of the new religion upon both the heathen and the indifferent or hostile men and women to whom they preached. Some of the best remembered of these legendary incidents, involving acts of extraordinary heroism or religious significance, have been periodically celebrated by quasi-religious ceremonies in Europe until recent times.

+ The most serious, elaborate, and picturesque of these festivals is that which, until lately, was annually celebrated at the ancient town of Tarascon, in Provence. It commemorated the taming of a singularly horrible and ravenous demon-beast by Ste. Marthe; but just who she was no one knows. Some say her name is a Christianized form of that of the Phoenician goddess Martis, patroness of sailors, whose symbols were a ship and a dragon; others recall classic reminiscences of Hercules and his battling with local giants, one of which was named Taras or Tariskos. Baring-Gould investigated the matter at length, and concluded that a Christian woman-missionary called Martha, who, soon after the death of Jesus, came with others to this part of Gaul, has become strangely confused with a Syrian prophetess named Martha, who accompanied the Roman general Gaius Marius, and aided him greatly by her magic and inspiration, during the two years of hard fighting by which he beat back the ravaging hordes of northern barbarians who invaded southern Gaul at the end of the second century, B.C. He regards the 'dragon' in this case as an image of the undying recollection of the appalling terror, devastation and suffering wrought by that invasion, and the ceremony as a grateful acknowledgment of the deliverance. The citizens generally, however, know little and care less about these explanations, for their minds are fixed on the miracle by which their forefathers were rescued. Roman monuments remaining at or near Tarascon, which represent Marius, Julia his wife, and the Syrian woman, the people have interpreted for centuries past as figures of Lazarus, Mary Magdalen, and Martha the hostess of Jesus.

Lagadigaddeu!

La Tarasco!

Lagadigaddeu!

La Tarasco!

De casteu!

Leissas-la passa

La vieio masco!

Leissas-la passa

Que vai dansa!, etc.

+ Another long-lived fete sanctioned by the Church is that of the 'Privilege' in Rouen. In that historic city on the Seine a narrow street leads down from the cathedral to the river, crossing on its way a large open space where stands the Chapelle de la Fierte Saint-Romain. With this ancient chapel is connected a curious custom, which was exercised for more than 750 years. The charter establishing it was granted to the Chapter of Rouen Cathedral by King Dagobert in the eighth century, and empowered the archbishop to release, once every year on Ascension Day, a chosen criminal from among those in the city condemned to death. On every Ascension Day, therefore, the people of Rouen flocked into the streets to witness the ceremonies with which this behest was carried out--the Procession of the Privilege of Saint Remain. First came the solemn visit of the Church to the Civic authorities, carrying the annual formal proclamation of the privilege (fierte). "Then every prison in the city must be searched, and every prisoner put on oath and examined as to the cause of his imprisonment. Finally the election of the favoured prisoner was put to vote of the Chapter. . . . He then confessed to the Chapter of Saint Romain, his fetters were removed, and he followed the archbishop to the Place Haute-Vielle Tour, where, in the Chapelle de la Fierte, a solemn service made him a free man. A solemn and magnificent procession then bore him, crowned with flowers, to the great thanksgiving Mass, after which he was free to go whither he would."

+ So the Marshalls describe the ceremony in their volume on the cathedral cities of France; and they give in the subjoined paragraph the legend that accounts for its origin, explaining that this legend appears to be of later date than the festival, which is mentioned "certainly as late as the twelfth century, and continued to delight the Rouennais as late as 1790." It looks to me as if it originated as an ingenious method by some kindly Church authority, in a time when tyranny ruled rather than law and justice, and innocent men, or personal enemies, might be immured in dungeons and forgotten, to make an annual survey and clearance of the prisons, freeing persons unjustly confined. This is the legend:

+ While Romain was bishop of Rouen a terrible dragon laid waste all the land and devoured the inhabitants. No one dared approach the monster, who was known as the Gargoyle [gargouille] until Saint Romain, armed only with his sanctity, set out to subdue it, accompanied by a condemned criminal--the prototype of those who were released on Holy Thursday--when the Gargoyle at once submitted and, with the episcopal stole around its neck, was led by the prisoner to the water's edge. It was then pushed in and drowned, whereupon the 'condemned criminal' was presumably rewarded for his courage by being given his freedom. At the head of the Portail de la Calende, the north porch of the cathedral, stands the figure of Saint Romain, and under his feet, with the stole around his neck, is the Gargoyle, craning its head around to look into the face of the bishop with the expression of a very hideous but very faithful dog. . . . In memory of the occurrence the standard of the dragon was borne in the processions at the Privilege--banners similar to those of the dragons of Bayeux and Salisbury.

[Typing ... Accessing to Central Ex - pocket 5-D .... homepage access only]

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WELCOME TO DRAGONS

CREATION CENTRAL

LET US BEGIN WITH

THE TYPE OF

DRAGONS FIRST

WE ALSO NEED INFO

ON THE DRAGONS

AND DO NOT

FORGET THE DNA SEQUENCE

I HOPE YOU ENJOY

YOUR STAY

SINCE YOU WILL BE TRACKED

FROM NOW ON

WELCOME TO THE TEAM....