Comparatively few Chinese of the older generation seem to question the
existence of dragons or to doubt the marvelous powers usually
attributed to them. In view of this fact it is surprising to find how
ignorant is the average person who holds this belief when asked to give
an accurate description of the great creature. Perhaps this is not
strange, however, when we remember that there are apparently no books
which purport to give any complete account of the dragon. The
innumerable references to it in Chinese literature largely deal with
the dragon’s performances and say little about his appearance. In order
to make a satisfactory study of the dragon one must, therefore, follow
a tedious process of collecting, eliminating, and coördinating a
multitude of stories, proverbs, and incidents from history, and make a
careful study of selected pictures and carvings, and if possible secure
interviews with those who profess to have seen the great king of the
animal creation.
One writer, who is anxious to make intelligible to the average person
the accepted representation of the king of all created life below man,
describes the dragon in terms of animals with many of which we are
quite familiar. He says that it has the head of a camel, the horns of a
deer, the ears of a cow, the neck of a snake, the body of a fish, the
scales of a carp, the claws of an eagle, the eyes of a devil, and the
paws of a tiger.
The bodies of all dragons, we are informed, are symmetrically divided
into three sections of equal length, these divisions being from the
point of the nose to the shoulders, from the shoulders to the thighs,
and from the thighs to the tip of the tail.
The “Shoh Wen,” a book written during the Tang dynasty, says that the
dragon has the following marvelous powers: “It may cause itself to
become visible or invisible at will, and it can become long or short,
and coarse or fine, at its own good pleasure.” This wonderful
versatility, of course, makes it difficult for us to find any recorded
statement of the maximum length of this creature, since there is no
limit set for its expansion. Another book of the Tang dynasty helps out
a little, however, when it describes a certain dragon, which was found
dead, as having been over one hundred feet long, while other accounts
lead us to believe that the dragon at times assumes a size several
miles in length. The smallest size of which any statement has been
found was the length of a silkworm.
In color, dragons are differentiated as being red, yellow, blue, white,
or black. During the Manchu dynasty, yellow was the imperial color, and
the yellow or golden dragon was designated the imperial dragon. In the
preceding dynasty, the Ming dynasty, when red was the national color,
it is believed that the red dragon was proclaimed, by decree of the
emperor, the official dragon of the empire.
Every careful observer in the Far East has noticed a difference in the
number of claws in the pictures of dragons—some possessing three,
others four, and still others five claws. The smallest number is found
on the dragons of Japanese art. Ordinarily Chinese dragons have four
claws, while those of five were recognized as imperial dragons. The two
types of Chinese dragons, with these slight variations, are, however,
one and the same species, and are identical in every other respect. An
attempt has been made to prove that the variation of claws from three
through four to five is a historic development, but we can find no
conclusive proof to substantiate this theory. It is possible that the
ancient dragon designs of China have only three claws on each foot.
Japan borrowed her art from China, and it is not unlikely that at the
period when she borrowed this design the Chinese dragon was represented
with only three claws.
It is said of the carp that it always has exactly thirty-six scales in
each row, leading from its head to its tail. After the same manner,
dragons are described as possessing eighty-one scales in each series.
The true dragon has nine sons. Each is different in appearance from the
other and each possesses his own peculiar characteristics. These
children of the dragon are the variants in appearance from the general
line which we are accustomed to look for in the dragon, and which we
often see in carvings and architecture. The dragon heads on bells, on
the peak tiles of temples and palaces, on sword hilts, on monuments,
and in similar places are representations of the progeny of the God of
Rain and do not portray that god himself.