BIRD AND SERPENT MYTHS
Culture Complexes in Dragon-lore—Polynesian Dragon Beliefs—Oceanic
and African Fish-gods—Reptile Deities where no Reptiles are
found—Chinese Dragons and Indian Nagas—Dragon-links between India,
Tibet, China, and Japan—Birds and Snakes—Distribution of Egyptian
“Winged Disk”—Horus and the “Secretary Bird”—Indian Mungoose
supplants “Secretary Bird”—Mungoose form of God of Riches and
Death—Bird and Serpent combined in Dragon—Babylonian Dragon was a
combination of Eagle, Serpent, and Lion—Tree Forms of the Chinese
Dragon, the Polynesian Mo-o, and the Indian Nagas—The Dragon, the
Salmon, the Tree, and the “Thunder-bird”.
The intensive study of a country’s beliefs and ideas, as revealed in
its myths and legends, is greatly facilitated by the adoption of the
comparative method. It may not always be found possible to identify
areas in which certain beliefs had origin, but when we detect, as we do
in China, myths similar to those found in other lands, and especially
highly complex myths, that had origin in one particular country and
received additions in another, the imported elements may be sifted out
from a local religious system without much difficulty.
The Chinese dragon has distinct and outstanding Chinese
characteristics, but it is obviously not entirely a Chinese creation.
Attached to the “composite wonder beast” are complex ideas that have a
history outside China, as well as those ideas that reflect Chinese
natural phenomena and Chinese experiences and habits of life and
thought. The fused beliefs, as symbolized by the dragon, have passed
through a prolonged process of local development, but those that were
imported have not, it is found, been entirely divested of their
distinctive characteristics, and remain preserved as flies are in
amber.
Interesting and important evidence that throws light on the history of
the Chinese dragon is found in Polynesia, India, and Babylonia, and
even in Egypt and Europe. The cultural influence of Babylonia, which
radiated over a wide area for a score of centuries or longer, is
traceable in India, and, as is well known, Buddhist India exercised a
strong cultural influence on China. But, as will be shown, Babylonian
influence reached the Shensi province of China long before the Aryans
entered India. Buddhist ideas regarding the pearl-protecting dragon-god
of water and fire were evidently superimposed in China upon earlier
Babylonian ideas regarding the water-dragon, which had no particular
connection with pearls. At any rate, there is no mention of pearls in
the Babylonian myth.
When it is found that many of the ideas connected with the Chinese
dragon were prevalent in Polynesia, what conclusion is to be drawn?
There is no evidence that Chinese culture was an active force in New
Zealand or Hawaii, for instance. It cannot have been from China that
the Polynesians derived their dragon, or their beliefs connected with
the serpent, a reptile unknown to the islanders at first hand. The only
reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that the Chinese and the
Polynesians were influenced at an early period by intruders from other
lands. The Polynesian intruders must necessarily have been sea-traders.
Of course, the Polynesians may themselves have imported their dragon
beliefs from their homeland. That homeland, however, was certainly not
China.
The Polynesian Mo-o or Mo-ko (dragon) had, as was shown in the last
chapter, a connection with pearls. “On Maui”, writes W. D. Westervelt,
[108] “the greatest dragon of the island was Kiha-wahine. The natives
had the saying, ‘Kiha has mana, or miraculous power, like Mo-o-inanea’.
She lived in a large, deep pool on the edge of the village Lahaina, and
was worshipped by the royal family of Maui as their special guardian.”
Royal families were invariably the descendants of intruding conquerors.
It is of special interest, therefore, to find the Polynesian dragon-god
connected with a military aristocracy.
The Rev. George Brown, missionary and explorer, refers to similar
dragon beliefs among the people of New Britain. He tells of a spring
connected with the woman (goddess) who caused the deluge. The natives
“say that an immense fish lives in it, which will come out when they
call it”. The belief obtains among the Melanesians “that the creator of
all things was a woman”. She “made all lands” and “the natives prayed”
to her “when an eclipse of the sun or the moon took place”. [109] The
king of Samoan gods was a dragon. “This god”, Brown tells, “had the
body of a man to the breast only, and the body of an eel (muræna)
below. This eel’s body lies down in the ocean, and from the chest to
the head lies down in the house. This is the god to whom all things are
reported. The inferior gods are his attendants.” [110]
Gods half human and half reptile, or half human and half fish, are
found in various countries. In the British Museum are bronze reliefs of
the King of Benin (as the representative of his chief deity) half shark
and half man. The kings of Dahomey were depicted as sharks with bodies
covered with scales; their statues are in the Trocadero, Paris. [111]
That the Polynesian reptile deities were imported there can be no
doubt. As early as 1825 Mr. Bloxam, the English naval chaplain, drew
this necessary conclusion. In his The Voyage of the Blonde he says: “At
the bottom of the Parre (pali) there are two large stones, on which
even now offerings of fruit and flowers are laid to propitiate the
Aku-wahines, or goddesses, who are supposed to have the power of
granting a safe passage”. Referring to the female mo-o, or reptile
deities, Mr. Bloxam says it was difficult for him to get an explanation
of their name, the Hawaiians having “nothing of the shape of serpents
or large reptiles in their islands”. [112]
But the closest analogy to the Chinese dragon is found in India. The
Nagas (serpent-gods), which were taken over by the Buddhists, and the
Chinese dragons have much in common. “Cobras in their ordinary shape,”
writes Dr. Rhys Davids of the Nagas, “they lived beneath the waters
like mermen and mermaids, in great luxury and wealth, more especially
of gems.” Sometimes the tree-spirits (dryads) are called Nagas. “They
could at will, and often did, adopt the human form; and though terrible
if angered, were kindly and mild by nature.” [113] Kerns says “that the
Nagas are water-spirits represented, as a rule, in human shapes, with a
crown of serpents on their heads”, and also as “snake-like beings
resembling clouds”. [114] They are “demi-gods”. Like the Chinese
dragons, the Nagas are guardians of the four quarters of the universe.
There are withal Nagas in the sea who control winds and tides, and one
of the Naga kings is Sagara, who is a Neptune in Japan. The Nagas are
also “Lords of the Earth”, and send drought and disease when offended
or neglected. Ea, the sea-god of the early Babylonians, was known also
as Enki, “The Lord of the Earth”.
In Buddhist art the Naga is shown in three forms: (1) as a human being
with a snake on or poised over the head, reminding one of the Egyptian
kings or queens who wear the uræus symbol on their foreheads; (2) as
half human and half snake (the “mermaid form”); and (3) as ordinary
snakes. The first form is found not only in India, but in Tibet, China,
and Japan. Human-shaped Nagas are depicted worshipping Buddha, as they
stand in water.
In Tibet, the Naga is shown with the upper part of the body in human
shape and the lower in snake shape; there are horns on the head and
wings spreading out from the shoulders. The same form is found in
Japan.
This Tibetan link between the Indian Naga and the Chinese Dragon is
important. The bird-god has been blended with the snake-god. In India
the bird-gods (Garudas) are enemies of the Nagas (snakes), and Garudas
in “eagle shape” are found depicted in low relief, carrying off Nagas
in snake shape. This eternal conflict between eagle-like birds and
serpents is one of the features of Babylonian mythology.
The story of Zu, the Babylonian Eagle-god, is found on tablets that
were stored in the library of the great Assyrian King, Ashur-bani-pal.
Zu, it is related, stole from the gods the “tablets of destiny”, and
was pursued and caught by Shamash, the sun-god. In one version of the
myth Zu, the eagle, is punished by the serpent, which conceals itself
in the body of an ox. When the eagle comes to feast on the flesh it is
seized by the serpent and slain.
In Polynesia the eternal conflict between bird-god and serpent-god is
illustrated in wood-carvings. The Egyptian winged disk, as adopted by
the islanders, shows the bird in the centre with a struggling snake in
its beak. The Central American peoples had likewise this
bird-and-serpent myth. Indeed, it figures prominently in their
mythologies. In Mexico the winged disk was placed, as in Egypt, above
the entrances to the temples.
The bird-and-serpent myth is to be found even in the Iliad. When Hector
set forth with his heroes to break through the wall of the Achæan camp,
an eagle appeared in the air, bearing in its talons “a blood-red
monstrous snake, alive and struggling still”. The writhing snake
manages to sting the eagle, which immediately drops it. [115]
In ancient Egyptian myths the bird was the Horus hawk and the serpent
was Set. Horus assumed, in his great battle against the snake,
crocodile, and other enemies of Ra, the winged disk form—the winged
sun, protected by the two snake-goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt.
This strange combination of deities in the “winged disk” symbol was as
distinctively an Egyptian cultural and political complex as the Union
Jack is distinctively a British complex. As the Union Jack has been
carried to many a distant land, so was the Egyptian winged disk, “the
flag” of Egyptian culture. In those areas in which the winged disk is
found, are found also traces of Egyptian ideas which, of course, were
not necessarily introduced by the Egyptians themselves.
How did this myth of the struggle between bird and serpent have origin?
The only country in the world in which a great bird hunts serpents is
Africa. The bird in question is the famous secretary bird (Serpentarius
secretarius), which is nowadays domesticated by South African farmers
so as to keep down snakes. It is found in East and West Africa. “In
general appearance it looks like a modified eagle mounted on stilts.”
[116] The bird attacks a snake with wings outspread, and flaps them in
front of its body to prevent itself from being bitten during the
conflict. Early Egyptian seafarers were no doubt greatly impressed
when, “in the land of Punt”, they saw these strange birds, with heads
like eagles or hawks, standing over snakes they had clutched in their
talons, and then flying away with them dangling from their beaks. The
mariners’ stories about the snake-devouring bird appear to have crept
into the mythology of Egypt, with the result that the Horus hawk became
the hunter of Set in his “hissing serpent” form. Above the hole in the
ground into which the Set serpent fled for concealment and safety was
set a pole surmounted by the head of the Horus hawk. As Dr. Budge puts
it: “Horus, the son of Isis, stood upon him (Set) in the form of a pole
or staff, on the top of which was the head of a hawk”. [117] But, one
may urge, it could not have been until after Egyptian vessels visited
the coasts haunted by the secretary bird that the bird and serpent
variation of the Horus-Set myth was formulated in the land of Egypt,
whence, apparently, it was distributed far and wide. Horus was not
necessarily an enemy of serpents, seeing that there are two in his
disk.
In Tibet, as has been stated, the bird and serpent were combined, and
the “composite beast” was given a human head with horns. The horned and
winged dragon of China is thus, in part, a combination of the original
secretary bird and the snake.
The later blending process was, no doubt, due to Buddhistic influence.
Both Nagas (snakes) and Garudas (eagles or secretary birds) were
included in northern India among the gods and demons who worshipped
Buddha. The Nagas understood the language of birds. They gave charms to
human beings so that they might share this knowledge. In European and
Arabian stories folk-heroes acquire the language of birds, or of all
animals, after eating the hearts of dragons. A Naga king causes an
Indian king to understand what animals say. [118]
“The jewel that grants all desires” is possessed by the Indian Nagas,
as it is by Chinese and Japanese dragons. In the Mahábhárata, the
Pandava hero Arjuna is, after being slain in combat, restored to life
by his Naga wife, who had obtained this magic jewel from the Naga king.
[119]
The Nagas are guardians of pearls, and the females have many pearl
necklaces.
Note may here be taken of interesting Indian evidence that throws light
on the process of transferring to a local animal complex ideas
associated with another animal figuring in an imported myth. The great
enemy of African snakes is, as has been said, the secretary bird; the
Indian enemy is the mungoose. In early Buddhist art the mungoose,
spitting jewels, is placed in the right hand of Kubera, god of wealth,
who stands on the back of a Yaksha (a bird demon). By devouring snakes
(Nagas) the mungoose (according to the myth) “appropriates their
jewels, and has hence developed into the attribute of Kubera”. [120]
Here the pearl-guarding shark, having become a jewel-guarding
dragon-snake, is substituted by the jewel-spitting mungoose which has
“devoured” its attributes.
The god Kubera has a heaven of its own, and is a form of Yama, god of
death. In his form as Dharma, god of justice, Yama figures in the
Mahábhárata [121] as a “blue-eyed mungoose with one side of his body
changed into gold”, his voice being “loud and deep as thunder”. Here
Yama links with Indra, god of thunder, who, having a heaven of his own,
is also a god of death. Egypt had its “blue-eyed Horus”. [122] The god
Horus was the living form of Osiris. The living Pharaoh was a Horus,
and the dead Pharaoh an Osiris, as Dr. Gardiner reminds us.
The combination of bird and serpent is found in Persia as well as in
Tibet. On an archaic cylinder seal from the ancient Elamite capital of
Susa, the dragon is a lion with an eagle’s head and wings; the forelegs
are those of the eagle, and the hind legs those of a lion.
A form of the god Tammuz, namely the god Nin-Girsu (“Lord of Girsu”) of
the Sumerian city of Lagash (Girsu appears to have been a suburb), was
a lion-headed eagle. [123] The god Ea had a dragon form. [124] The
dragon of the Ishtar gate of Babylon is a combination of eagle,
serpent, and lion, and is horned.
There can remain little doubt that the Chinese dragon has an
interesting history, not only in China but outside that country. It
cannot be held to have independent origin. At a remote period dragon
beliefs reached China, India, and Polynesia, and even America. [125]
In each separated area the dragon took on a local colouring, but the
fundamental beliefs connected with it remained the same. It was closely
connected with water (the “water of life”), and also with trees (the
“trees of life”). Thus we find that in China a dragon might assume “the
shape of a tree growing under water”; [126] a boat once collided with
drift-wood which was found to be a dragon. Crocodiles are sometimes
mistaken for logs of wood.
In Hawaii two noted dragons (mo-o) lived in a river. “They were called
‘the moving boards’ which made a bridge across the river.” [127]
The Indian Nagas were not only water deities but tree spirits, as Dr.
Rhys Davids has emphasized. [128]
Behind dragon worship is a complex of beliefs connected with what is
usually called “tree and well worship”. In Gaelic stories, the sacred
tree is guarded by the “beast” in the sacred well, and a form of the
“beast” (dragon) is the salmon; in the tree is the “thunder bird”.
Dragon, tree, and bird are connected with the god of thunder who sends
rain.
When Buddhism reached China, imported Naga beliefs were superimposed on
earlier Chinese beliefs connected with the dragon-god who controlled
the rain-supply, as Osiris in Egypt controlled the Nile, and the
Babylonian Ea the Euphrates.
In the next chapter various beliefs connected with the dragon are
brought out in representative legends.