Kitabı oku: «Mythical Monsters», sayfa 8

Among the many proofs which may be cited of community of origin between the Asiatics and certainly a large proportion of the American population is the practice of scalping enemies, quoted by Herodotus as prevalent amongst the Scythians, and universally existing amongst all tribes of North American Indians; the discovery of jade ornaments amongst Mexican remains, and the general esteem in which that material is held by the Chinese; the use of the Quipos among the Peruvians, and the assertion in the I-king, or Book of Change, one of the oldest of the Chinese Classics, that “The ancients knotted cords to express their meaning, but in the next age the sages renounced the custom and adopted a system of written characters;”¹³⁰ the discovery of the meander pattern among Peruvian relics, and the common use of this ornamentation on Chinese vases and tripods, at dates long preceding the Trojan era, in which it is commonly supposed to have originated; the similarity of the features of Chinese, and other Mongols, with those of various Indian tribes; the resemblance of masks and various other remains to Chinese patterns discovered recently by Desirée de Charnay in Central America; and the reserve and stolid demeanour of both races. A good illustration of this is afforded by the story told of the celebrated statesman Sieh Ngan (A.D. 320-385), in Mayer’s Chinese Reader’s Manual; it could be imagined to apply to any Indian sachem.

It is related of Sieh Ngan that, at the time when the capital was menaced by the advancing forces of Fukien, he sat one day over a game of chess with a friend, when a despatch was handed to him, which he calmly read and then continued the game. On being asked what the news was, he replied: “It is merely an announcement that my young people have beaten the enemy.” The intelligence was, in fact, of the decisive rout of the invaders by the army under his brother Sieh She and his nephew Sieh Hüan. Only when retired within the seclusion of his private apartments did he give himself up to an outburst of joy. The very expression “my young people” is the equivalent of “my young men” which the Indian chief would have employed.

A singular custom prevails among the Petivaces, an Indian tribe of Brazil.¹³¹ “When they are delivered of a child, and ought to have all the ceremony and attendance proper to a lying-in woman, the husband presently lies down in his hammock (as if he had been brought to bed himself), and all his wives and neighbours come about and serve him. This is a pleasant fancy indeed, that the woman must take all the pains to bring the child into the world, and then the man lie down and gruntle upon it.”

Compare with this the account given by Marco Polo of the same custom prevalent among the Miau-tze, or aborigines of China, as distinguished from their present occupants. Their reduction to submission is recorded in the early works on the country.

“Proceeding five days’ journey, in a westerly direction from Karazan, you enter the province of Kardandan belonging to the dominion of the great Khan, and of which the principal city is named Vochang (probably Yung-chang in the western part of Yunnan). These people have the following singular usage. As soon as a woman has been delivered of a child, and rising from her bed, has washed and swathed the infant, her husband immediately takes the place she has left, has the child beside him, and nurses it for forty days. In the meantime the friends and relations of the family pay to him their visits of congratulation; whilst the woman attends to the business of the house, carries victuals and drink to the husband in his bed, and suckles the infant at his side.”¹³²

We find a reference in Hudibras to this grotesque practice, in which it is imputed, but erroneously, to the Chinese themselves, and it reappears on the western side of Europe, among those singular people the Basques, who have their own especial Deluge tradition, and use a language which, according to Humboldt, approaches some of the dialects of the North American Indians more nearly than any other. They profess to trace the custom up to Aïtor or Noah, whose wife bore a son to him when they were in exile, and, being afraid to stay by herself for fear of being discovered and murdered, bade her husband take care of the child, while she went out to search for food and firing.

The change of name which prevails among the Chinese and Japanese in both sexes, at different periods of life, is also found upon the other continent,¹³³ where males and females when they come to years of discretion do not retain the names they had when young, and, if they do any remarkable deed, assume a new name upon it.

Less importance is to be attached to the coincidence of sun worship, Deluge tradition, and the preservation of ancestral ashes.¹³⁴ These, though probably not, might have been indigenous; but we can hardly conceive this of serpent worship, which Mr. Fergusson suggests arose among a people of Turanian origin, from which it spread to every country or land of the Old World in which a Turanian settled. The coincidence between the serpent mounds of North America and such an one as is described by M. Phené in Argyllshire¹³⁵ is remarkable; and still more so is that between the Mexican myth of the fourfold destruction of the world by fire and water, with those current among the Egyptians and that of the four ages in the Hindu mythology.

Another coincidence, although perhaps of minor value, will be seen in the dresses of the soldiers of China and Mexico, as noted in the passages annexed. “Thus, in our own time, the Chinese soldiers wear a dress resembling the tiger skin, and the cap, which nearly covers the face, is formed to represent the head of a tiger”;¹³⁶ while the Mexican warriors, according to Spanish historians, “wore enormous wooden helmets in the form of a tiger’s head, the jaws of which were armed with the teeth of this animal.”¹³⁷

Mr. C. Wolcott-Brooks, in an address to the California Academy of Science, has pointed out that, according to Chinese annals, Tai Ko Fo Kee, the great stranger-king, ruled the kingdom of China, and that he is always represented in pictures with two small horns like those associated with the representation of Moses. He and his successors are said to have introduced into China “picture writing” like that in use in Central America at the time of the Spanish conquest. Now there has been found at Copan, in Central America, a figure strikingly like the Chinese symbol of Fo Kee, with his two horns. “Either,” says Mr. Brooks, “one people learned from the other, or both acquired their forms from a common source.”

In reviewing all these cases we cannot fail to perceive that early and frequent communication must have taken place between the two worlds, and that the myths of one have probably been carried with them by the migrants to the other.

Fig. 32. – Mural Tablet, Temple of Longevity, Canton.

CHAPTER VI.
THE DRAGON

The dragon is defined in the Encyclopædia Britannica for 1877 as “the name given by the ancients to a huge winged lizard or serpent (fabulous).”

Fig. 33. —Draco, orFlying Lizard fromSingapore.

(After N. B. Dennys.)

The text also goes on to state that “they (the ancients) regarded it as the enemy of mankind, and its overthrow is made to figure among the greatest exploits of the gods and heroes of heathen mythology. A dragon watched the gardens of the Hesperides, and its destruction formed one of the seven labours of Hercules. Its existence does not seem to have been called in question by the older naturalists; figures of the dragon appearing in the works of Gesner and Aldrovandus, and even specimens of the monster, evidently formed artificially of portions of different animals, have been exhibited.” A reference is also made to the genus Draco, comprising eighteen specimens of winged lizards, all small, and peculiar to India and the islands of the Malay archipelago.

Such is the meagre account of a creature which figures in the history and mythology of all nations, which in its different forms has been worshipped as a god, endowed with beneficent and malevolent attributes, combatted as a monster, or supposed to have possessed supernatural power, exercised alternately for the benefit or chastisement of mankind.

Its existence is inseparably wedded to the history, from the most remote antiquity, of a nation which possesses connected and authentic memoirs stretching uninterruptedly from the present day far into the remote past; on which the belief in its existence has been so strongly impressed, that it retains its emblem in its insignia of office, in its ornamentation of furniture, utensils, and dwellings, and commemorates it annually in the competition of dragon boats, and the processions of dragon images; which believes, or affects to believe, in its continued existence in the pools of the deep, and the clouds of the sky; which propitiates it with sacrifices and ceremonies, builds temples in its honour, and cultivates its worship; whose legends and traditions teem with anecdotes of its interposition in the affairs of man, and whose scientific works, of antiquity rivalling that of our oldest Western Classics, treat of its existence as a sober and accepted fact, and differentiate its species with some exactness. It is, moreover, though not very frequently, occasionally referred to in the Biblical history of that other ancient, and almost equally conservative branch of the human race, the Jews, not as a myth, or doubtfully existent supernatural monster, but as a tangible reality, an exact terrible creature.

Equally do we find it noticed in those other valuable records of the past which throw cross lights upon the Bible narrative, and confirm by collateral facts the value of its historic truth; such as the fragments of Chaldæan history handed down by the reverent care of later historians, the careful narrative of Josephus, and the grand resurrection of Chaldæan and Assyrian lore effected by the marvellously well directed and fortunate labour of G. H. Smith and those who follow in his train.

Fig. 34. – Bronze Dragons supporting the Armillary Sphere, Observatory, Pekin.

Among the earliest classics of Europe, its existence is asserted as a scientific fact, and accepted by poets as a sound basis for analogies, comparisons, allegories, and fable; it appears in the mythology of the Goth, and is continued through the tradition and fable of every country of Europe; nor does it fail to appear even in the imperfect traditions of the New World,¹³⁸ where its presence may be considered as comparatively indigenous, and undetermined by the communications dependent on the so-called discovery of later days.

Turning to other popular accounts, we find equally limited and incredible versions of it. All consider it sufficiently disposed of by calling it fabulous,¹³⁹ and that a sufficient explanation of any possible belief in it is afforded by a reference¹⁴⁰ to the harmless genus of existing flying lizards referred to above.

Some consider it an evolution of the fancy, typifying noxious principles; thus, Chambers¹⁴¹ says, “The dragon appears in the mythical history and legendary poetry of almost every nation as the emblem of the destructive and anarchical principle; … as misdirected physical force and untamable animal passions… The dragon proceeds openly to work, running on its feet with expanded wings, and head and tail erect, violently and ruthlessly outraging decency and propriety, spouting fire and fury both from mouth and tail, and wasting and devastating the whole land.”

The point which strikes me as most interesting in this passage is the reference to the legendary theory of the mode of the dragon’s progress, which curiously calls to mind the semi-erect attitude of the existing small Australian frilled lizard (Chlamydosaurus). This attitude is also ascribed to some of the extinct American Dinosaurs, such as the Stegosaurus.

No one, so far as I am aware, in late days has hitherto ventured to uphold the claims of this terrible monster to be accepted as a real contemporary of primitive man,¹⁴² which may even have been co-existent with him to a comparatively recent date, and but lately passed away into the cohort of extinct species, leaving behind it only the traditions of its ferocity and terrors, to stamp their impression on the tongues of all countries.

No one has endeavoured to collate the vast bulk of materials shrouded in the stories of all lands. If this were perfectly effected, a diagnosis of the real nature of the dragon might perhaps be made, and the chapter of its characteristics, alliances, and habits completed like that of any other well-established species.

The following sketch purposes only to initiate the task here propounded, the author’s access to materials being limited, and only sufficient to enable him, as he thinks, to establish generally the proposition which it involves, to grasp as it were some of the broader and salient features of the investigation, while leaving a rich gleaning of corroborative information for the hand of any other who may please to continue and extend his observations.

At the outset it will be necessary to assign a much more extended signification to the word dragon than that which is contained in the definition at the head of this chapter. The popular mind of the present day doubtless associates it always with the idea of a creature possessing wings; but the Lung of the Chinese, the δράκων of the Greeks, the Draco of the Romans, the Egyptian dragon, and the Nâga of the Sanscrit have no such limited signification, and appear to have been sometimes applied to any serpent, lacertian, or saurian, of extraordinary dimensions, nor is it always easy to determine from the passages in which these several terms occur what kind of monster is specially indicated.

Thus the dragon referred to by Propertius in the quotation annexed may have been a large python. “Lanuvium¹⁴³ is, of old, protected by an aged dragon; here, where the occasion of an amusement so seldom occurring is not lost, where is the abrupt descent into a dark and hollowed cave; where is let down – maiden, beware of every such journey – the honorary tribute to the fasting snake, when he demands his yearly food, and hisses and twists deep down in the earth. Maidens, let down for such a rite, grow pale, when their hand is unprotectedly trusted in the snake’s mouth. He snatches at the delicacies if offered by a maid; the very baskets tremble in the virgin’s hands; if they are chaste, they return and fall on the necks of their parents, and the farmers cry ‘We shall have a fruitful year.’”¹⁴⁴

To the same class may probably be ascribed the dragon referred to by Aristotle.¹⁴⁵ “The eagle and the dragon are enemies, for the eagle feeds on serpents”; and again,¹⁴⁶ “the Glanis in shallow water is often destroyed by the dragon serpent.” It might perhaps be supposed that the crocodile is here referred to, but this is specially spoken of in another passage, as follows¹⁴⁷: “But there are others which, though they live and feed in the water, do not take in water but air, and produce their young out of the water; many of these animals are furnished with feet, as the otter and crocodile, and others are without feet, as the water-serpent.”

A somewhat inexplicable habit is ascribed to the dragon in Book ix.¹⁴⁸: “When the draco has eaten much fruit, it seeks the juice of the bitter lettuce; it has been seen to do this.”

Pliny, probably quoting Aristotle,¹⁴⁹ also states that the dragon relieves the nausea which affects it in spring with the juices of the lettuce; and Ælian¹⁵⁰ repeats the story.

It is also probable that some large serpent is intended by Pliny in the story which he relates,¹⁵¹ after Democritus, that a man called Thoas was preserved in Arcadia by a dragon. When a boy, he had become attached to it and had reared it very tenderly; but his father, being alarmed at the nature and monstrous size of the reptile, had taken and left it in the desert. Thoas being here attacked by robbers who lay in ambush, he was delivered from them by the dragon, which recognized his voice and came to his assistance. It may be noted in regard to this that there are many authenticated instances of snakes evidencing considerable affection for those who have treated them with kindness.¹⁵²

The impression that Pliny’s dragon was intended to represent some large boa or python is strengthened by his statement:¹⁵³ “The dragon is a serpent destitute of venom; its head placed beneath the threshold of a door, the gods being duly propitiated by prayers, will ensure good fortune to the house, it is said.”

It is remarkable that he attributes to the dragon the same desire and capacity to attack the elephant as is attributed to the Pa snake in Western China, and by the old Arabian voyagers to serpents in Borneo.

The Shan-hai-king, a Chinese work of extreme antiquity, of which special mention will be made hereafter, says: “The Pa snake swallows elephants, after three years it ejects the bones; well-to-do people, eating it, are cured of consumption.”

Diodorus Siculus, in speaking of the region of the Nile in Libya, says that, according to report, very large serpents are produced there and in great numbers, and that these attack elephants when they gather around the watering places, involve them in their folds till they fall exhausted, and then devour them.

Diodorus, in another passage referring to the crocodiles and hippopotami of Egypt, speaking of Ethiopia and Libya, mentions a variety of serpents as well as of other wild beasts, including dragons of unusual size and ferocity.

While El Edrisi says: “On peut encore citer le serpent de Zaledj dont parlent Ben Khordadébe, l’auteur du Livre des Merveilles, et divers autres écrivains qui s’accordent à dire qu’il existe dans les montagnes de l’ile de Zaledj une espèce de serpent qui attaque l’elephant et le buffle, et qui ne les abandonnent qu’après les avoir vaincu.”¹⁵⁴

Artemidorus, also, according to Strabo,¹⁵⁵ “mentions serpents of thirty cubits in length, which can master elephants and bulls. In this he does not exaggerate; but the Indian and African serpents are of a more fabulous size, and are said to have grass growing on their backs.”

Iphicrates, according to Bryant, “related that in Mauritania there were dragons of such extent that grass grew upon their backs.”

It is doubtful whether large serpents, or real dragons, are referred to by Pliny in the following interesting passages which I give at length: the surprise which he expresses at Juba’s believing that they had crests, leads me to suspect that there was possibly some confusion of species involved; that Juba might have been perfectly accurate so far as the crests are concerned, and that the beasts in question, in place of being pythons of magnitude, were rather some gigantic lizard-like creature, of great length and little bulk, corresponding with the Chinese idea of the dragon, and, therefore, naturally bearing horny crests, similar to those with which the monster is usually represented by the latter people.

It must be noticed here, that if we postulate the existence of the dragon, we are not bound to limit ourselves to a single species, or even two, as the same causes which effected the gradual destruction of one would be exceedingly likely to effect that of another; we must not, therefore, be too critical in comparing descriptions of different authors in different countries and epochs, since they may refer only to allied, but not identical, animals.

“Africa produces elephants, but it is India that produces the largest, as well as the dragon, who is perpetually at war with the elephant, and is itself of so enormous a size, as easily to envelop the elephants with its folds, and encircle them in its coils. The contest is equally fatal to both; the elephant, vanquished, falls to the earth, and by its weight crushes the dragon which is entwined around it.¹⁵⁶

“The sagacity which every animal exhibits in its own behalf is wonderful, but in these it is remarkably so. The dragon has much difficulty in climbing up to so great a height, and therefore, watching the road, which bears marks of their footsteps, when going to feed, it darts down upon them from a lofty tree. The elephant knows that it is quite unable to struggle against the folds of the serpent, and so seeks for trees or rocks against which to rub itself.

“The dragon is on its guard against this, and tries to prevent it, by first of all confining the legs of the elephant with the folds of its tail; while the elephant, on the other hand, tries to disengage itself with its trunk. The dragon, however, thrusts its head into its nostrils, and thus, at the same moment, stops the breath, and wounds the most tender parts. When it is met unexpectedly, the dragon raises itself up, faces its opponent, and flies more especially at the eyes; this is the reason why elephants are so often found blind, and worn to a skeleton with hunger and misery.

“There is another story, too, told in relation to these combats. The blood of the elephant, it is said, is remarkably cold; for which reason, in the parching heats of summer, it is sought by the dragon with remarkable avidity. It lies, therefore, coiled up and concealed in the river, in wait for the elephants when they come to drink; upon which it darts out, fastens itself around the trunk, and then fixes its teeth behind the ear, that being the only place which the elephant cannot protect with the trunk. The dragons, it is said, are of such vast size that they can swallow the whole of the blood; consequently the elephant, being drained of its blood, falls to the earth exhausted; while the dragon, intoxicated with the draught, is crushed beneath it, and so shares its fate.¹⁵⁷

“Æthiopia produces dragons, not so large as those of India, but still twenty cubits in length. The only thing that surprises me is, how Juba came to believe that they have crests. The Æthiopians are known as the Asachæi, among whom they most abound; and we are told that on those coasts four or five of them are found twisted and interlaced together like so many osiers in a hurdle, and thus setting sail, with their heads erect, they are borne along upon the waves to find better sources of nourishment in Arabia.”¹⁵⁸

Pliny then goes on to describe, as separate from dragons, large serpents in India, as follows.

“Megasthenes¹⁵⁹ informs us that in India serpents grow to such an immense size as to swallow stags and bulls; while Metrodorus says that about the river Rhyndacus, in Pontus, they seize and swallow the birds that are flying above them, however high and however rapid their flight.

“It is a well-known fact that during the Punic war, at the river Bagrada, a serpent one hundred and twenty feet in length was taken by the Roman army under Regulus, being besieged, like a fortress, by means of balistæ and other engines of war. Its skin and jaws were preserved in a temple at Rome down to the time of the Numantine war.

“The serpents, which in Italy are known by the name of boa, render these accounts far from incredible, for they grow to such vast size that a child was found entire in the stomach of one of them which was killed on the Vaticanian Hill during the reign of Emperor Claudius.”¹⁶⁰

Aristotle tells us that “in Libya, the serpents, as it has been already remarked, are very large. For some persons say that as they sailed along the coast, they saw the bones of many oxen, and that it was evident to them that they had been devoured by serpents. And, as the ships passed on, the serpents attacked the triremes, and some of them threw themselves upon one of the triremes and overturned it.”¹⁶¹

It is doubtful whether the dragons described by Benjamin of Tudela, who travelled through Europe and the East and returned to Castille in 1173,¹⁶² as infesting the ruins of the palace of Nebuchodonosor at Babylon, so as to render them inaccessible, were creatures of the imagination such as the mediæval mind seems to have loved to dress up, or venomous serpents. But there is little doubt that the so-called dragons of later voyages were simply boas, pythons, or other large serpents, such as those described by John Leo, in his description of a voyage to Africa, as existing in the caverns of Atlas. He says, “There are many monstrous dragons which are thick about the middle, but have slender necks and tails, so that their motion is but slow.¹⁶³ They are so venomous, that whatever they bite or touch, certain death ensues.” There is also the statement of Job Ludolphus that (in Æthiopia) “the dragons are of the largest size, very voracious, but not venomous.”¹⁶⁴

I fancy that at the present day the numbers, magnitude, and terrifying nature of serpents but feebly represent the power which they asserted in the early days of man’s existence, or the terror which they then inspired. This subject has been so ably dealt with by a writer of the last century¹⁶⁵ that I feel no hesitation in transcribing his remarks at length.

“It is probable, in early times, when the arts were little known and mankind were but thinly scattered over the earth, that serpents, continuing undisturbed possessors of the forest, grew to an amazing magnitude, and every other tribe of animals fell before them. It then might have happened that the serpents reigned tyrants of the district for centuries together. To animals of this kind, grown by time and rapacity to one hundred or one hundred and fifty feet long, the lion, the tiger, and even the elephant itself were but feeble opponents. That horrible fetor, which even the commonest and the most harmless snakes are still found to diffuse, might in these larger ones become too powerful for any living being to withstand, and while they preyed without distinction, they might also have poisoned the atmosphere round them. In this manner, having for ages lived in the hidden and unpeopled forest, and finding, as their appetites were more powerful, the quantity of their prey decreasing, it is possible they might venture boldly from their retreats into the more cultivated parts of the country, and carry consternation among mankind, as they had before desolation among the lower ranks of nature.

“We have many histories of antiquity presenting us such a picture, and exhibiting a whole nation sinking under the ravages of a single serpent. At that time man had not learned the art of uniting the efforts of many to effect one great purpose. Opposing multitudes only added new victims to the general calamity, and increased mutual embarrassment and terror. The animal, therefore, was to be singly opposed by him who had the greatest strength, the best armour, and the most undaunted courage. In such an encounter hundreds must have fallen, till one more lucky than the rest, by a fortunate blow, or by taking the monster in its torpid interval and surcharged with spoil, might kill and thus rid his country of the destroyer. Such was the original occupation of heroes.

“But as we descend into more enlightened antiquity we find these animals less formidable, as being attacked in a more successful manner.

“We are told that while Regulus led his army along the banks of the river Bagrada in Africa, an enormous serpent disputed his passage over. We are assured by Pliny that it was one hundred and twenty feet long, and that it had destroyed many of the army. At last, however, the battering engines were brought out against it, and then, assailing it at a distance, it was destroyed. Its spoils were carried to Rome, and the general was decreed an ovation for his success.

“There are, perhaps, few facts better ascertained in history than this: an ovation was a remarkable honour, and was only given for some signal exploit that did not deserve a triumph. No historian would offer to invent that part of the story, at least, without being subject to the most shameful detection.

“The skin was kept for several years after, in the Capitol, and Pliny says he saw it there.

“This tribe of animals, like that of fishes, seem to have no bounds put to their growth; their bones are in a great measure cartilaginous, and they are consequently capable of great extension.

“The older, therefore, a serpent becomes, the larger it grows, and, as they live to a great age, they arrive at an enormous size. Leguat assures us that he saw one in Java that was fifty feet long.¹⁶⁶ Carli mentions their growing to above forty feet, and there is now in the British Museum one that measures thirty-two feet.

“Mr. Wentworth, who had large concerns in the Berbice in America, assures us that in that country they grow to an enormous length. He describes an Indian mistaking one for a log, and proceeding to sit down on it, when it began to move. A soldier with him shot the snake, but the Indian died of fright. It measured thirty-six feet. It was sent to the Hague.

“A life of savage hostility in the forest offers the imagination one of the most tremendous pictures in nature. In those burning countries where the sun dries up every brook for hundreds of miles round: where what had the appearance of a great river in the rainy season becomes in summer one dreary bed of sand; in those countries a lake that is never dry, or a brook that is perennial, is considered by every animal as the greatest convenience of nature. When they have discovered this, no dangers can deter them from attempting to slake their thirst. Thus the neighbourhood of a rivulet, in the heart of the tropical continents, is generally the place where all the hostile tribes of nature draw up for the engagement.

“On the banks of this little envied spot, thousands of animals of various kinds are seen venturing to quench their thirst, or preparing to seize their prey. The elephants are perceived in a long line, marching from the darker parts of the forest. The buffaloes are there, depending upon numbers for security; the gazelles relying solely upon their swiftness; the lion and tiger waiting a proper opportunity to seize.