The Evolution of the Dragon Part 11

Both in its beneficent and destructive aspects water was regarded as animated by the dragon, who thus a.s.sumed the role of Osiris or his enemy Set. But when the attributes of the Water G.o.d became confused with those of the Great Mother, and her evil avatar, the lioness (Sekhet) form of Hathor in Egypt, or in Babylonia the destructive Tiamat, became the symbol of disorder and chaos, the dragon became identified with her also.

Similarly the third member of the Earliest Trinity also became the dragon. As the son and successor of the dead king Osiris the living king Horus became a.s.similated with him. When the belief became more and more insistent that the dead king had acquired the boon of immortality and was really alive, the distinction between him and the actually living king Horus became correspondingly minimized. This process of a.s.similation was advanced a further stage when the king became a G.o.d and was thus more closely identified with his father and predecessor. Hence Horus a.s.sumed many of the functions of Osiris; and amongst them those which in foreign lands contributed to making a dragon of the Water G.o.d.

But if the distinction between Horus and Osiris became more and more attenuated with the lapse of time, the identification with his mother Hathor (Isis) was more complete still. For he took her place and a.s.sumed many of her attributes in the later versions of the great saga which is the nucleus of all the literature of mythology--I refer to the story of "The Destruction Of Mankind".

The attributes of these three members of the Trinity, Hathor, Osiris, and Horus, thus became intimately linked the one with the other; and in Susa, where the earliest pictorial representation of a real dragon developed, it received concrete form (Fig. 1) as a monster compounded of the lioness of Hathor (Sekhet) with the falcon (or eagle) of Horus, but with the human attributes and water-controlling powers which originally belonged to Osiris. In some parts of Africa the earliest "dragon" was nothing more than Hathor's cow or the gazelle or antelope of Horus (Osiris) or of Set.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 1.--Early Representation of a "Dragon" Compounded of the Forepart of an Eagle and the Hindpart of a Lion--(from an Archaic Cylinder-seal from Susa, after Jequier).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 2.--The Earliest Babylonian Conception of the Dragon Tiamat--(from a Cylinder-seal in the British Museum, after L. W. King).]

But if the dragon was compounded of all three deities, who was the slayer of the evil dragon?

The story of the dragon-conflict is really a recital of Horus's vendetta against Set, intimately blended and confused with different versions of "The Destruction of Mankind".[132] The commonplace incidents of the originally prosaic stories were distorted into an almost unrecognizable form, then secondarily elaborated without any attention to their original meaning, but with a wealth of circ.u.mstantial embellishment, in accordance with the usual methods of the human mind that I have already mentioned. The history of the legend is in fact the most complete, because it is the oldest and the most widespread, ill.u.s.tration of those instinctive tendencies of the human spirit to bridge the gaps in its disjointed experience, and to link together in a kind of mental mosaic the otherwise isolated incidents in the facts of daily life and the rumours and traditions that have been handed down from the story-teller's predecessors.

In the "Destruction of Mankind," which I shall discuss more fully in the following pages (p. 109 _et seq._), Hathor does the slaying: in the later stories Horus takes his mother's place and earns his spurs as the Warrior Sun-G.o.d:[133] hence confusion was inevitably introduced between the enemies of Re, the original victims in the legend, and Horus's traditional enemies, the followers of Set. Against the latter it was Osiris himself who fought originally; and in many of the non-Egyptian variants of the legend it is the rain-G.o.d himself who is the warrior.

Hence all three members of the Trinity were identified, not only with the dragon, but also with the hero who was the dragon-slayer.

But the weapon used by the latter was also animated by the same Trinity, and in fact identified with them. In the Saga of the Winged Disk, Horus a.s.sumed the form of the sun equipped with the wings of his own falcon and the fire-spitting uraeus serpents. Flying down from heaven in this form he was at the same time the G.o.d and the G.o.d's weapon. As a fiery bolt from heaven he slew the enemies of Re, who were now identified with his own personal foes, the followers of Set. But in the earlier versions of the myth (i.e. the "Destruction of Mankind"), it was Hathor who was the "Eye of Re" and descended from heaven to destroy mankind with fire; she also was the vulture (Mut); and in the earliest version she did the slaughter with a knife or an axe with which she was animistically identified.

But Osiris also was the weapon of destruction, both in the form of the flood (for he was the personification of the river) and the rain-storms from heaven. But he was also an instrument for vanquis.h.i.+ng the demon, when the intoxicating beer or the sedative drink (the potency of which was due to the indwelling spirit of the G.o.d) was the chosen means of overcoming the dragon.

This, in brief, is the framework of the dragon-story. The early Trinity as the hero, armed with the Trinity as weapon, slays the dragon, which again is the same Trinity. With its illimitable possibilities for dramatic development and fantastic embellishment with incident and ethical symbolism, this theme has provided countless thousands of story-tellers with the skeleton which they clothed with the living flesh of their stories, representing not merely the earliest theories of astronomy and meteorology, but all the emotional conflicts of daily life, the struggle between light and darkness, heat and cold, right and wrong, justice and injustice, prosperity and adversity, wealth and poverty. The whole gamut of human strivings and emotions was drawn into the legend until it became the great epic of the human spirit and the main theme that has appealed to the interest of all mankind in every age.

An ancient Chinese philosopher, w.a.n.g Fu, writing in the time of the Han Dynasty, enumerates the "nine resemblances" of the dragon. "His horns resemble those of a stag, his head that of a camel, his eyes those of a demon, his neck that of a snake, his belly that of a clam, his scales those of a carp, his claws those of an eagle, his soles those of a tiger, his ears those of a cow."[134] But this list includes only a small minority of the menagerie of diverse creatures which at one time or another have contributed their quota to this truly astounding hotch-potch.

This composite wonder-beast ranges from Western Europe to the Far East of Asia, and as we shall see, also even across the Pacific to America.

Although in the different localities a great number of most varied ingredients enter into its composition, in most places where the dragon occurs the substratum of its anatomy consists of a serpent or a crocodile, usually with the scales of a fish for covering, and the feet and wings, and sometimes also the head, of an eagle, falcon, or hawk, and the forelimbs and sometimes the head of a lion. An a.s.sociation of anatomical features of so unnatural and arbitrary a nature can only mean that all dragons are the progeny of the same ultimate ancestors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 7.--A Mediaeval Picture of a Chinese Dragon upon its cloud (After the late Professor W. Anderson)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 8.--A Chinese Dragon (After de Groot)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 9.--Dragon from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 10.--Babylonian Weather G.o.d]

But it is not merely a case of structural or anatomical similarity, but also of physiological ident.i.ty, that clinches the proof of the derivation of this fantastic brood from the same parents. Wherever the dragon is found, it displays a special partiality for water. It controls the rivers or seas, dwells in pools or wells, or in the clouds on the tops of mountains, regulates the tides, the flow of streams, or the rainfall, and is a.s.sociated with thunder and lightning. Its home is a mansion at the bottom of the sea, where it guards vast treasures, usually pearls, but also gold and precious stones. In other instances the dwelling is upon the top of a high mountain; and the dragon's breath forms the rain-clouds. It emits thunder and lightning. Eating the dragon's heart enables the diner to acquire the knowledge stored in this "organ of the mind" so that he can understand the language of birds, and in fact of all the creatures that have contributed to the making of a dragon.

It should not be necessary to rebut the numerous attempts that have been made to explain the dragon-myth as a story relating to extinct monsters.

Such fantastic claims can be made only by writers devoid of any knowledge of palaeontology or of the distinctive features of the dragon and its history. But when the Keeper of the Egyptian and a.s.syrian Antiquities in the British Museum, in a book that is not intended to be humorous,[135] seriously claims Dr. Andrews' discovery of a gigantic fossil snake as "proof" of the former existence of "the great serpent-devil Apep," it is time to protest.

Those who attempt to derive the dragon from such living creatures as lizards like _Draco volans_ or _Moloch horridus_[136] ignore the evidence of the composite and unnatural features of the monsters.

"Whatever be the origin of the Northern dragon, the myths, when they first became articulate for us, show him to be in all essentials the same as that of the South and East. He is a power of evil, guardian of h.o.a.rds, the greedy withholder of good things from men; and the slaying of a dragon is the crowning achievement of heroes--of Siegmund, of Beowulf, of Sigurd, of Arthur, of Tristam--even of Lancelot, the _beau ideal_ of mediaeval chivalry" (_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, vol. viii., p.

467). But if in the West the dragon is usually a "power of evil," in the far East he is equally emphatically a symbol of beneficence. He is identified with emperors and kings; he is the son of heaven the bestower of all bounties, not merely to mankind directly, but also to the earth as well.

Even in our country his symbolism is not always wholly malevolent, otherwise--if for the moment we shut our eyes to the history of the development of heraldic ornament--dragons would hardly figure as the supporters of the arms of the City of London, and as the symbol of many of our aristocratic families, among which the Royal House of Tudor is included. It is only a few years since the Red Dragon of Cadwallader was added as an additional badge to the achievement of the Prince of Wales.

But, "though a common ensign in war, both in the East and the West, as an ecclesiastical emblem his opposite qualities have remained consistently until the present day. Whenever the dragon is represented, it symbolizes the power of evil, the devil and his works. h.e.l.l in mediaeval art is a dragon with gaping jaws, belching fire."

And in the East the dragon's reputation is not always blameless. For it figures in some disreputable incidents and does not escape the sort of punishment that tradition metes out to his European cousins.

[130: An elaboration of a Lecture delivered in the John Rylands Library on 8 November, 1916.]

[131: In his lecture, "Dreams and Primitive Culture," delivered at the John Rylands Library on 10 April, 1918, Dr. Rivers has expounded the principles of dream-development.]

[132: _Vide infra_, p. 109 _et seq._]

[133: Hence soldiers killed in battle and women dying in childbirth receive special consideration in the exclusive heaven of (Osiris's) Horus's Indian and American representatives, Indra and Tlaloc.]

[134: M. W. de Visser, "The Dragon in China and j.a.pan," _Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam_, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Deel XIII, No. 2, 1913, p. 70.]

[135: E. A. Wallis Budge, "The G.o.ds of the Egyptians," 1904, vol. i, p. 11]

[136: Gould's "Mythical Monsters," 1886.]

The Dragon in America and Eastern Asia.

In the early centuries of the Christian era, and probably also even for two or three hundred years earlier still, the leaven of the ancient civilizations of the Old World was at work in Mexico, Central America and Peru. The most obtrusive influences that were brought to bear, especially in the area from Yucatan to Mexico, were inspired by the Cambodian and Indonesian modifications of Indian beliefs and practices.

The G.o.d who was most often depicted upon the ancient Maya and Aztec codices was the Indian rain-G.o.d Indra, who in America was provided with the head of the Indian elephant[137] (i.e. seems to have been confused with the Indian Ganesa) and given other attributes more suggestive of the Dravidian Naga than his enemy, the Aryan deity. In other words the character of the American G.o.d, known as _Chac_ by the Maya people and as _Tlaloc_ by the Aztecs, is an interesting ill.u.s.tration of the effects of such a mixture of cultures as Dr. Rivers has studied in Melanesia.[138]

Not only does the elephant-headed G.o.d in America represent a blend of the two great Indian rain-G.o.ds which in the Old World are mortal enemies, the one of the other (partly for the political reason that the Dravidians and Aryans were rival and hostile peoples), but all the traits of each deity, even those depicting the old Aryan conception of their deadly combat, are reproduced in America under circ.u.mstances which reveal an ignorance on the part of the artists of the significance of the paradoxical contradictions they are representing. But even many incidents in the early history of the Vedic G.o.ds, which were due to arbitrary circ.u.mstances in the growth of the legends, reappear in America. To cite one instance (out of scores which might be quoted), in the Vedic story Indra a.s.sumed many of the attributes of the G.o.d Soma. In America the name of the G.o.d of rain and thunder, the Mexican Indra, is _Tlaloc_, which is generally translated "pulque of the earth," from _tlal[l]i_, "earth," and _oc[tli]_, "pulque, a fermented drink (like the Indian drink _soma_) made from the juice of the agave".[139]

The so-called "long-nosed G.o.d" (the elephant-headed rain-G.o.d) has been given the non-committal designation "G.o.d B," by Sch.e.l.lhas.[140]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 11.--Reproduction of a Picture in the Maya Codex Troano representing the Rain-G.o.d _Chac_ treading upon the Serpent's head, which is interposed between the earth and the rain the G.o.d is pouring out of a bowl. A Rain-G.o.ddess stands upon the Serpent's tail.]

I reproduce here a remarkable drawing (Fig. 11) from the Codex Troano, in which this G.o.d, whom the Maya people called _Chac_, is shown pouring the rain out of a water-jar (just as the deities of Babylonia and India are often represented), and putting his foot upon the head of a serpent, who is preventing the rain from reaching the earth. Here we find depicted with childlike simplicity and directness the Vedic conception of Indra overcoming the demon Vritra. Stempell describes this scene as "the elephant-headed G.o.d B standing upon the head of a serpent";[141]

while Seler, who claims that G.o.d B is a tortoise, explains it as the serpent forming a footstool for the rain-G.o.d.[142] In the Codex Cortes the same theme is depicted in another way, which is truer to the Indian conception of Vritra, as "the restrainer"[143] (Fig. 12).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 12.--Another representation of the Elephant-headed Rain G.o.d. He is holding thunderbolts, conventionalised in a hand-like form. The Serpent is converted into a sac, holding up the rain-waters.]

The serpent (the American rattlesnake) restrains the water by coiling itself into a sac to hold up the rain and so prevent it from reaching the earth. In the various American codices this episode is depicted in as great a variety of forms as the Vedic poets of India described when they sang of the exploits of Indra. The Maya Chac is, in fact, Indra transferred to the other side of the Pacific and there only thinly disguised by a veneer of American stylistic design.

But the Aztec G.o.d Tlaloc is merely the Chac of the Maya people transferred to Mexico. Sch.e.l.lhas declares that the "G.o.d B," the "most common figure in the codices," is a "universal deity to whom the most varied elements, natural phenomena, and activities are subject". "Many authorities consider G.o.d B to represent Kukulkan, the Feathered Serpent, whose Aztec equivalent is Quetzalcoatl. Others identify him with Itzamna, the Serpent G.o.d of the East, or with Chac, the Rain G.o.d of the four quarters and the equivalent of Tlaloc of the Mexicans."[144]

From the point of view of its Indian a.n.a.logies these confusions are peculiarly significant, for the same phenomena are found in India. The snake and the dragon can be either the rain-G.o.d of the East or the enemy of the rain-G.o.d; either the dragon-slayer or the evil dragon who has to be slain. The Indian word _Naga_, which is applied to the beneficent G.o.d or king identified with the cobra, can also mean "elephant," and this double significance probably played a part in the confusion of the deities in America.

In the Dresden Codex the elephant-headed G.o.d is represented in one place grasping a serpent, in another issuing from a serpent's mouth, and again as an actual serpent (Fig. 13). Turning next to the attributes of these American G.o.ds we find that they reproduce with amazing precision those of Indra. Not only were they the divinities who controlled rain, thunder, lightning, and vegetation, but they also carried axes and thunderbolts (Fig. 13) like their h.o.m.ologues in the Old World. Like Indra, Tlaloc was intimately a.s.sociated with the East and with the tops of mountains, where he had a special heaven, reserved for warriors who fell in battle and women who died in childbirth. As a water-G.o.d also he presided over the souls of the drowned and those who in life suffered from dropsical affections. Indra also specialized in the same branch of medicine.

In fact, if one compares the account of Tlaloc's attributes and achievements, such as is given in Mr. Joyce's "Mexican Archaeology" or Professor Seler's monograph on the "Codex Vatica.n.u.s," with Professor Hopkins's summary of Indra's character ("Religions of India") the ident.i.ty is so exact, even in the most arbitrary traits and confusions with other deities' peculiarities, that it becomes impossible for any serious investigator to refuse to admit that Tlaloc and Chac are merely American forms of Indra. Even so fantastic a practice as the representation of the American rain-G.o.d's face as composed of contorted snakes[145] finds its a.n.a.logy in Siam, where in relatively recent times this curious device was still being used by artists.[146]

"As the G.o.d of fertility maize belonged to him [Tlaloc], though not altogether by right, for according to one legend he stole it after it had been discovered by other G.o.ds concealed in the heart of a mountain."[147] Indra also obtained soma from the mountain by similar means.[148]

In the ancient civilization of America one of the most prominent deities was called the "Feathered Serpent," in the Maya language, Kukulkan, Quiche Guk.u.matz, Aztec Quetzalcoatl, the Pueblo "Mother of Waters".

Throughout a very extensive part of America the snake, like the Indian Naga, is the emblem of rain, clouds, thunder and lightning. But it is essentially and pre-eminently the symbol of rain; and the G.o.d who controls the rain, Chac of the Mayas, Tlaloc of the Aztecs, carried the axe and the thunderbolt like his h.o.m.ologues and prototypes in the Old World. In America also we find reproduced in full, not only the legends of the antagonism between the thunder-bird and the serpent, but also the identification of these two rivals in one composite monster, which, as I have already mentioned, is seen in the winged disks, both in the Old World and the New.[149] Hardly any incident in the history of the Egyptian falcon or the thunder-birds of Babylonia, Greece or India, fails to reappear in America and find pictorial expression in the Maya and Aztec codices.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 13.