The dolphin, the bluish dugong[10] (probably the “semi-human whale” referred to by Ælian), and other denizens of the sea were regarded as deities by ancient seafarers. De Groot, in his The Religious System of China, quoting from the Shan hai King, relates that in the Eastern Sea is a “Land of Rolling Waves”. In this region dwell sea-monsters that are shaped like cows and have blue bodies. They are hornless and one-legged. Each time they leave or enter the waters, winds arise and rain comes down. Their voice is that of thunder and their glare that of sun and moon.

The reference to the single leg may have been suggested by the fact that when the dugong dives the tail comes into view. This interesting sea-animal has been “recklessly and indiscriminately slaughtered” in historic times.

Classical writers referred to some of the strange monsters seen by their mariners as “sea-cows”. In like manner the Chinese have connected denizens of the deep with different land animals.

The religious beliefs associated with various sea and land animals cling to that composite god the dragon. In dealing with it, therefore, we cannot ignore its history, not only in China but in those countries that influenced Chinese civilization, while attention must also be paid to countries that, like China, were influenced by the early sea and land traders and colonists.

In Polynesia the dragon is called mo-o and mo-ko. “Their (the Polynesian) use of this word in traditions”, says W. D. Westervelt,[11] “showed that they often had in mind animals like crocodiles and alligators, and sometimes [[51]]they referred the name to any monster of great mythical powers belonging to the man-destroying class. Mighty eels, immense sea-turtles, large fish of the ocean, fierce sharks, were all called mo-o. The most ancient dragons of the Hawaiians are spoken of as living in pools or lakes.” Mr. Westervelt notes that “one dragon lived in the Ewa lagoon, now known as ‘Pearl Harbour’. This was Kane-kua-ana, who was said to have brought the pipi (oysters) to Ewa. She[12] was worshipped by those who gather the shell-fish. When the oysters began to disappear about 1850, the natives said the dragon had become angry and was sending the oysters to Kahiki, or some far-away foreign land.” It is evident that such a belief is of great antiquity. The pearl under the chin of the Chinese dragon has, as will be seen, an interesting history.

But, it may be asked here, what connection has a mountain stag with the ancient pearl-fishers? As Wang Fu reminds us, the pearl-guarding Chinese dragon has “the horns of a stag”. It was sometimes called, De Groot states,[13] “the celestial stag”—the “stag of the sky”. This was not merely a poetic image. The sea-god Ea of ancient Babylonia was in one of his forms “the goat fish”, as some put it. Professor Sayce says, in this connection, “Ea was called ‘the antelope of the deep’, ‘the antelope the creator’, ‘the lusty antelope’. He was sometimes referred to as ‘a gazelle’. Lubin, ‘a stag’, was a reduplicated form of elim, ‘a gazelle’. Both words were equivalent to sarru, ‘king’.”[14] Whatever the Ea land animal was—whether goat, gazelle, antelope, or stag—it was associated with a sea-god who, according to Babylonian belief, brought the elements of culture to the [[52]]ancient Sumerians, who were developing their civilization at the seaport of Eridu, then situated at the head of the Persian Gulf, in which pearls were found. Ea was depicted as half a land animal and half a fish, or as a man wrapped in the skin of a gigantic fish as Egyptian deities were wrapped in the skins of wild beasts. One of Ea’s names was Dagan, which was possibly the Dagon worshipped also by the Philistines and by the inhabitants of Canaan before the Philistines arrived from Kaphtor (the land of Keftiu, i.e. Crete).

Ea was associated with the dragon Tiamat, which his son Marduk (Merodach) slew. It is stated in Babylonian script that Ea “conferred his name” on Marduk. In other words, Marduk supplanted Ea and took over certain of his attributes, and part of his history. He was the god of Babylon, which supplanted other cities, formerly capitals; he therefore supplanted the chief gods of these cities.

Ea was originally the slayer of the dragon Tiamat and the conqueror of the watery abyss over which he reigned, supplanting the dragon.[15] He became the dragon himself—the “goat fish” or “antelope of the deep”—the composite deity connected with animals deified by ancient hunters and fishers whose beliefs were ultimately fused with those of others with whom they were brought into close association in centres of culture. Ea, who had a dragon form, was connected with the serpent, or “worm”, as well as with the fish.

In Egypt Horus, Osiris, and Set were associated with the gazelle. Osiris was, in one of his forms, the River Nile. He was not only the Nile itself, but the controller of it; he was the serpent and soul of the Nile, and he was the ocean into which the Nile flowed, and the [[53]]leviathan of the deep. In the Pyramid texts Osiris is addressed: “Thou art great, thou art green, in thy name of Great-green (sea); lo, thou art round as the Great Circle (Okeanos); lo, thou art turned about, thou art round as the circle that encircles the Hauneba (Ægeans)”.[16] Osiris was thus the serpent (dragon) that, lying in the ocean, encircled the world. His son Horus is at one point in the Pyramid texts (Nos. 1505–8) narrative “represented as crossing the sea”.[17] Horus was sometimes depicted riding on the back of a gazelle or antelope. The Egyptian antelope-god was in time fused with the serpent or dragon of the sea. Referring to the evidence of Frobenius[18] in this connection, Professor Elliot Smith says that “in some parts of Africa, especially in the west, the antelope plays the part of the dragon in Asiatic stories”.[19] When we reach India, it is found that the wind-god, Vayu, rides on the back of the antelope. Vayu was fused with Indra, the slayer of the dragon that controlled the water-supply, and, indeed, retained it by enclosing it as the Osiris serpent of Egypt, or the serpent-mother of Osiris, enclosed the water in its cavern during the period of “the low Nile”, before the inundation took place.[20] After Osiris, as the water-confining serpent (dragon) was slain, the river ran red with his blood and rose in flood. Osiris, originally “a dangerous god”,[21] was the “new” or “fresh” water of the inundation. “The tradition of his unfavourable character”, Breasted comments, “survived in vague reminiscences long centuries after he had gained wide popularity.” Osiris ultimately became “the kindly [[54]]dispenser of plenty”, and his slayer, Set, originally a beneficent deity, was made the villain of the story and fused with the dragon Apep, the symbol of darkness and evil. This change appears to have been effected after the introduction of the agricultural mode of life. The Nile, formerly the destroyer, then became the preserver, sustainer, and generous giver of “soul substance” and daily bread.

When the agricultural mode of life was introduced into China the horned-dragon, or horned-serpent (for the dragon, Chinese writers remind us, has “the nature of a serpent”), became the Osiris water-serpent.