The Evolution of the Dragon Part 12

A photographic reproduction of the 36th page of the Dresden Maya Codex.

Of the three pictures in the top row one represents the elephant-headed G.o.d _Chac_ with a snake's body. He is pouring out rain. The central picture represents the lightning animal carrying fire down from heaven to earth. On the right _Chac_ is shown in human guise carrying thunder-weapons in the form of burning torches.

In the second row a G.o.ddess sits in the rain: her head is prolonged into that of a bird, holding a fish in its beak. The central picture shows _Chac_ in his boat ferrying a woman across the water from the East. The third ill.u.s.tration depicts the familiar conflict between the vulture and serpent.

In the third row _Chac_ is seen with his axe: in the central picture he is standing in the water looking up towards a rain-cloud; and on the right he is shown sitting in a hut resting from his labours.]

What makes America such a rich storehouse of historical data is the fact that it is stretched across the world almost from pole to pole; and for many centuries the jetsam and flotsam swept on to this vast strand has made it a museum of the cultural history of the Old World, much of which would have been lost for ever if America had not saved it. But a record preserved in this manner is necessarily in a highly confused state. For essentially the same materials reached America in manifold forms. The original immigrants into America brought from North-Eastern Asia such cultural equipment as had reached the area east of the Yenesei at the time when Europe was in the Neolithic phase of culture. Then when ancient mariners began to coast along the Eastern Asiatic littoral and make their way to America by the Aleutian route there was a further infiltration of new ideas. But when more venturesome sailors began to navigate the open seas and exploit Polynesia, for centuries[150] there was a more or less constant influx of customs and beliefs, which were drawn from Egypt and Babylonia, from the Mediterranean and East Africa, from India and Indonesia, China and j.a.pan, Cambodia and Oceania. One and the same fundamental idea, such as the attributes of the serpent as a water-G.o.d, reached America in an infinite variety of guises, Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Indonesian, Chinese and j.a.panese, and from this amazing jumble of confusion the local priesthood of Central America built up a system of beliefs which is distinctively American, though most of the ingredients and the principles of synthetic composition were borrowed from the Old World.

Every possible phase of the early history of the dragon-story and all the ingredients which in the Old World went to the making of it have been preserved in American pictures and legends in a bewildering variety of forms and with an amazing luxuriance of complicated symbolism and picturesque ingenuity. In America, as in India and Eastern Asia, the power controlling water was identified both with a serpent (which in the New World, as in the Old, was often equipped with such inappropriate and arbitrary appendages, as wings, horns and crests) and a G.o.d, who was either a.s.sociated or confused with an elephant. Now many of the attributes of these G.o.ds, as personifications of the life-giving powers of water, are identical with those of the Babylonian G.o.d Ea and the Egyptian Osiris, and their reputations as warriors with the respective sons and representatives, Marduk and Horus. The composite animal of Ea-Marduk, the "sea-goat" (the Capricornus of the Zodiac), was also the vehicle of Varuna in India whose relationship to Indra was in some respects a.n.a.logous to that of Ea to Marduk in Babylonia.[151] The Indian "sea-goat" or _Makara_ was in fact intimately a.s.sociated both with Varuna and with Indra. This monster a.s.sumed a great variety of forms, such as the crocodile, the dolphin, the sea-serpent or dragon, or combinations of the heads of different animals with a fish's body (Fig.

14). Amongst these we find an elephant-headed form of the _makara_, which was adopted as far east as Indonesia and as far west as Scotland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 14.

A. The so-called "sea-goat" of Babylonia, a creature compounded of the antelope and fish of Ea.

B. The "sea-goat" as the vehicle of Ea or Marduk.

C to K--a series of varieties of the _makara_ from the Buddhist Rails at Buddha Gaya and Mathura, circa 70 B.C.-70 A.D., after Cunningham ("Archaeological Survey of India," Vol. III, 1873, Plates IX and XXIX).

L. The _makara_ as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir George Birdwood. It is not difficult to understand how, in the course of the easterly diffusion of culture, such a picture should develop into the Chinese Dragon or the American Elephant-headed G.o.d.]

I have already called attention[152] to the part played by the _makara_ in determining the development of the form of the elephant-headed G.o.d in America. Another form of the _makara_ is described in the following American legend, which is interesting also as a mutilated version of the original dragon-story of the Old World.

In 1912 Hernandez translated and published a Maya ma.n.u.script[153] which had been written out in Spanish characters in the early days of the conquest of the Americas, but had been overlooked until six years ago.

It is an account of the creation, and includes the following pa.s.sages: "All at once came the water [? rain] after the dragon was carried away.

The heaven was broken up; it fell upon the earth; and they say that _Cantul-ti-ku_ (four G.o.ds), the four Baccab, were those who destroyed it.... 'The whole world', said _Ah-uuc-chek-nale_ (he who seven times makes fruitful), 'proceeded from the seven bosoms of the earth.' And he descended to make fruitful _Itzam-kab-uin_ (the female whale with alligator-feet), when he came down from the central angle of the heavenly region" (p. 171).

Hernandez adds that "the old fishermen of Yucatan still call the whale _Itzam_: this explains the name of _Itzaes_, by which the Mayas were known before the founding of Mayapan".

The close a.n.a.logy to the Indra-story is suggested by the phrase describing the coming of the water "after the dragon was carried away".

Moreover, the Indian sea-elephant _makara_, which was confused in the Old World with the dolphin of Aphrodite, and was sometimes also regarded as a crocodile, naturally suggests that the "female whale with the alligator-feet" was only an American version of the old Indian legend.

All this serves, not only to corroborate the inferences drawn from the other sources of information which I have already indicated, but also to suggest that, in addition to borrowing the chief divinities of their pantheon from India, the Maya people's original name was derived from the same mythology.[154]

It is of considerable interest and importance to note that in the earliest dated example of Maya workmanship (from Tuxtla, in the Vera Cruz State of Mexico), for which Spinden a.s.signs a tentative date of 235 B.C., an unmistakable elephant figures among the four hieroglyphs which Spinden reproduces (_op. cit._, p. 171). A similar hieroglyphic sign is found in the Chinese records of the Early Chow Dynasty (John Ross, "The Origin of the Chinese People," 1916, P. 152).

The use of the numerals four and seven in the narrative translated by Hernandez, as in so many other American doc.u.ments, is itself, as Mrs.

Zelia Nuttall has so conclusively demonstrated,[155] a most striking and conclusive demonstration of the link with the Old World.

Indra was not the only Indian G.o.d who was transferred to America, for all the a.s.sociated deities, with the characteristic stories of their exploits,[156] are also found depicted with childlike directness of incident, but amazingly luxuriant artistic phantasy, in the Maya and Aztec codices.

We find scattered throughout the islands of the Pacific the familiar stories of the dragon. One mentioned by the Bishop of Wellington refers to a New Zealand dragon with jaws like a crocodile's, which spouted water like a whale. It lived in a fresh-water lake.[157] In the same number of the same _Journal_ Sir George Grey gives extracts from a Maori legend of the dragon, which he compares with corresponding pa.s.sages from Spenser's "Faery Queen". "Their strict verbal and poetical conformity with the New Zealand legends are such as at first to lead to the impression either that Spenser must have stolen his images and language from the New Zealand poets, or that they must have acted unfairly by the English bard" (p. 362). The Maori legend describes the dragon as "in size large as a monstrous whale, in shape like a hideous lizard; for in its huge head, its limbs, its tail, its scales, its tough skin, its sharp spines, yes, in all these it resembled a lizard" (p. 364).

Now the attributes of the Chinese and j.a.panese dragon as the controller of rain, thunder and lightning are identical with those of the American elephant-headed G.o.d. It also is a.s.sociated with the East and with the tops of mountains. It is identified with the Indian Naga, but the conflict involved in this identification is less obtrusive than it is either in America or in India. In Dravidian India the rulers and the G.o.ds are identified with the serpent: but among the Aryans, who were hostile to the Dravidians, the rain-G.o.d is the enemy of the Naga. In America the confusion becomes more p.r.o.nounced because Tlaloc (Chac) represents both Indra and his enemy the serpent. The representation in the codices of his conflict with the serpent is merely a tradition which the Maya and Aztec scribes followed, apparently without understanding its meaning.

In China and j.a.pan the Indra-episode plays a much less prominent part, for the dragon is, like the Indian Naga, a beneficent creature, which approximates more nearly to the Babylonian Ea or the Egyptian Osiris. It is not only the controller of water, but the impersonation of water and its life-giving powers: it is identified with the emperor, with his standard, with the sky, and with all the powers that give, maintain, and prolong life and guard against all kinds of danger to life. In other words, it is the bringer of good luck, the rejuvenator of mankind, the giver of immortality.

But if the physiological functions of the dragon of the Far East can thus be a.s.similated to those of the Indian Naga and the Babylonian and Egyptian Water G.o.d, who is also the king, anatomically he is usually represented in a form which can only be regarded as the Babylonian composite monster, as a rule stripped of his wings, though not of his avian feet.

In America we find preserved in the legends of the Indians an accurate and unmistakable description of the j.a.panese dragon (which is mainly Chinese in origin). Even Spinden, who "does not care to dignify by refutation the numerous empty theories of ethnic connections between Central America" [and in fact America as a whole] "and the Old World,"

makes the following statement (in the course of a discussion of the myths relating to horned snakes in California): "a similar monster, possessing antlers, and sometimes wings, is also very common in Algonkin and Iroquois legends, although rare in art. As a rule the horned serpent is a water spirit and an enemy of the thunder bird. Among the Pueblo Indians the horned snake seems to have considerable prestige in religious belief.... It lives in the water or in the sky and is connected with rain or lightning."[158]

Thus we find stories of a dragon equipped with those distinctive tokens of Chinese origin, the deer's antlers; and along with it a snake with less specialized horns suggesting the Cerastes of Egypt and Babylonia. A horned viper distantly akin to the Cerastes of the Old World does occur in California; but its "horns" are so insignificant as to make it highly improbable that they could have been in any way responsible for the obtrusive role played by horns in these widespread American stories.

But the proof of the foreign origin of these stories is established by the horned serpent's achievements.

It "lives in the water or the sky" like its h.o.m.ologue in the Old World, and it is "a water spirit". Now neither the Cobra nor the Cerastes is actually a water serpent. Their achievements in the myths therefore have no possible relationship with the natural habits of the real snakes.

They are purely arbitrary attributes which they have acquired as the result of a peculiar and fortuitous series of historical incidents.

It is therefore utterly inconceivable and in the highest degree improbable that this long chain of chance circ.u.mstances should have happened a second time in America, and have been responsible for the creation of the same bizarre story in reference to one of the rarer American snakes of a localized distribution, whose horns are mere vestiges, which no one but a trained morphologist is likely to have noticed or recognized as such.

But the American horned serpent, like its Babylonian and Indian h.o.m.ologues, is also the enemy of the thunder bird. Here is a further corroboration of the transmission to America of ideas which were the chance result of certain historical events in the Old World, which I have mentioned in this lecture.

In the figure on page 94 I reproduce a remarkable drawing of an American dragon. If the Algonkin Indians had not preserved legends of a winged serpent equipped with deer's antlers, no value could be a.s.signed to this sketch: but as we know that this particular tribe retains the legend of just such a wonder-beast, we are justified in treating this drawing as something more than a jest.

"Petroglyphs are reported by Mr. John Criley as occurring near Ava, Jackson County, Illinois. The outlines of the characters observed by him were drawn from memory and submitted to Mr. Charles S. Mason, of Toledo, Ohio, through whom they were furnished to the Bureau of Ethnology.

Little reliance can be placed upon the accuracy of such drawing, but from the general appearance of the sketches the originals of which they are copies were probably made by one of the middle Algonquin tribes of Indians.[159]

"The 'Piasa' rock, as it is generally designated, was referred to by the missionary explorer Marquette in 1675. Its situation was immediately above the city of Alton, Illinois."

Marquette's remarks are translated by Dr. Francis Parkman as follows:--

"On the flat face of a high rock were painted, in red, black, and green, a pair of monsters, each 'as large as a calf, with horns like a deer, red eyes, a beard like a tiger, and a frightful expression of countenance. The face is something like that of a man, the body covered with scales; and the tail so long that it pa.s.ses entirely round the body, over the head, and between the legs, ending like that of a fish.'"

Another version, by Davidson and Struve, of the discovery of the petroglyph is as follows:--

"Again they (Joliet and Marquette) were floating on the broad bosom of the unknown stream. Pa.s.sing the mouth of the Illinois, they soon fell into the shadow of a tall promontory, and with great astonishment beheld the representation of two monsters painted on its lofty limestone front.

According to Marquette, each of these frightful figures had the face of a man, the horns of a deer, the beard of a tiger, and the tail of a fish so long that it pa.s.sed around the body, over the head, and between the legs. It was an object of Indian worship and greatly impressed the mind of the pious missionary with the necessity of subst.i.tuting for this monstrous idolatry the worship of the true G.o.d."

A footnote connected with the foregoing quotation gives the following description of the same rock:--

"Near the mouth of the Piasa creek, on the bluff, there is a smooth rock in a cavernous cleft, under an overhanging cliff, on whose face 50 feet from the base, are painted some ancient pictures or hieroglyphics, of great interest to the curious. They are placed in a horizontal line from east to west, representing men, plants and animals. The paintings, though protected from dampness and storms, are in great part destroyed, marred by portions of the rock becoming detached and falling down."

Mr. McAdams, of Alton, Illinois, says, "The name Piasa is Indian and signifies, in the Illini, the bird which devours men". He furnishes a spirited pen-and-ink sketch, 12 by 15 inches in size and purporting to represent the ancient painting described by Marquette. On the picture is inscribed the following in ink: "Made by Wm. Dennis, April 3rd, 1825". The date is in both letters and figures. On the top of the picture in large letters are the two words, "FLYING DRAGON". This picture, which has been kept in the old Gilham family of Madison county and bears the evidence of its age, is reproduced as Fig. 3.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 3.--Wm. Dennis's Drawing of the "Flying Dragon"

Depicted on the Rocks at Piasa, Illinois.]

He also publishes another representation with the following remarks:--

"One of the most satisfactory pictures of the Piasa we have ever seen is in an old German publication ent.i.tled 'The Valley of the Mississippi Ill.u.s.trated. Eighty ill.u.s.trations from Nature, by H. Lewis, from the Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of Mexico,' published about the year 1839 by Arenz & Co., Dusseldorf, Germany. One of the large full-page plates in this work gives a fine view of the bluff at Alton, with the figure of the Piasa on the face of the rock. It is represented to have been taken on the spot by artists from Germany.... In the German picture there is shown just behind the rather dim outlines of the second face a ragged crevice, as though of a fracture. Part of the bluff's face might have fallen and thus nearly destroyed one of the monsters, for in later years writers speak of but one figure. The whole face of the bluff was quarried away in 1846-47."

The close agreement of this account with that of the Chinese and j.a.panese dragon at once arrests attention. The anatomical peculiarities are so extraordinary that if Pere Marquette's account is trustworthy there is no longer any room for doubt of the Chinese or j.a.panese derivation of this composite creature. If the account is not accepted we will be driven, not only to attribute to the pious seventeenth-century missionary serious dishonesty or culpable gullibility, but also to credit him with a remarkably precise knowledge of Mongolian archaeology.

When Algonkin legends are recalled, however, I think we are bound to accept the missionary's account as substantially accurate.

Minns claims that representations of the dragon are unknown in China before the Han dynasty. But the legend of the dragon is much more ancient. The evidence has been given in full by de Visser.[160]

He tells us that the earliest reference is found in the _Yih King_, and shows that the dragon was "a water animal akin to the snake, which [used] to sleep in pools during winter and arises in the spring." "It is the G.o.d of thunder, who brings good crops when he appears in the rice fields (as rain) or in the sky (as dark and yellow clouds), in other words when he makes the rain fertilize the ground" (p. 38).