[52] The Dragon in China and Japan. [↑]
CHAPTER XVIII
Japanese Gods and Dragons
Japanese Version of Egyptian Flood Myth—A Far Eastern Merodach—Dragon-slaying Story—The River of Blood—Osiris as a Slain Dragon—Ancient Shinto Books—Shinto Cosmogony—Separation of Heaven and Earth—The Cosmic “Reed Shoot” and the Nig-gil-ma—The Celestial Jewel Spear—Izanagi and Izanami—Births of Deities and Islands—The Dragons of Japan—The Wani—Bear, Horse, and other Dragons—Horse-sacrifice in Japan—Buddhist Elements in Japanese Dragon Lore—Indian Nagas—Chinese Dragons and Japanese Water-Snakes.
There is no Shinto myth regarding the creation of man; the Mikados and the chiefs of tribes were descendants of deities. Nor is there a Deluge Myth like the Ainu one, involving the destruction of all but a remnant of mankind. The Chinese story about Nu Kwa, known to the Japanese as Jokwa, was apparently imported with the beliefs associated with the jade which that mythical queen or goddess was supposed to have created after she had caused the flood to retreat, but it does not find a place in the ancient Shinto books. There is, however, an interesting version of the Egyptian flood story which has been fused with the Babylonian Tiamat dragon-slaying myth. Susa-no-wo,[1] a Far Eastern Marduk, slays an eight-headed dragon and splits up its body, from which he takes a spirit-sword—an avatar of the monster.
Hathor-Sekhet, of the Egyptian myth, was made drunk, so that she might cease from slaying mankind, [[346]]and a flood of blood-red beer was poured from jars for that purpose. Susa-no-wo provides sake (rice beer) to intoxicate the dragon which has been coming regularly—apparently once a year—for a daughter of an earth god. When he slays it, the River Hi is “changed into a river of blood”.
Another version of the Egyptian myth, as the Pyramid Texts bear evidence, appears to refer to the “Red Nile” of the inundation season as the blood of Osiris, who had been felled by Set at Nedyt, near Abydos.[2] Lucian tells that the blood of Adonis was similarly believed to redden each year the flooded River of Adonis, flowing from Lebanon, and that “it dyed the sea to a large space red”.[3] Here Adonis is the Osiris of the Byblians. Osiris, as we have seen, had a dragon form; he was the dragon of the Nile flood, and the world-surrounding dragon of ocean.[4] He was also the earth-giant; tree and grain grew from his body.[5] The body of the eight-headed Japanese dragon was covered with moss and trees.
Susa-no-wo, as the rescuer of the doomed maiden, links with Perseus, the rescuer of Andromeda from the water-dragon.[6] The custom of sacrificing a maiden to the Nile each year obtained in Ancient Egypt. In the Tiamat form of the Babylonian myth, Marduk cut the channels of the dragon’s blood and “made the north wind bear it away into secret places”.[7] The stories of Pʼan Ku of China and the Scandinavian Ymir, each of [[347]]whose blood is the sea, are interesting variants of the legend.[8]
The Japanese dragon-flood myth is merely an incident in the career of a hero in Shinto mythology, which is a mosaic of local or localized and imported stories, somewhat clumsily arranged in the form of a connected narrative.