In Tibet, the Naga is shown with the upper part of the body in human shape and the lower in snake shape; there are horns on the head and wings spreading out from the shoulders. The same form is found in Japan.
This Tibetan link between the Indian Naga and the Chinese Dragon is important. The bird-god has been blended with the snake-god. In India the bird-gods (Garudas) are enemies of the Nagas (snakes), and Garudas in “eagle shape” are found depicted in low relief, carrying off Nagas in snake shape. This eternal conflict between eagle-like birds and serpents is one of the features of Babylonian mythology.
The story of Zu, the Babylonian Eagle-god, is found on tablets that were stored in the library of the great Assyrian King, Ashur-bani-pal. Zu, it is related, stole from the gods the “tablets of destiny”, and was pursued and caught by Shamash, the sun-god. In one version of the myth Zu, the eagle, is punished by the serpent, which conceals itself in the body of an ox. When the eagle comes to feast on the flesh it is seized by the serpent and slain. [[71]]
In Polynesia the eternal conflict between bird-god and serpent-god is illustrated in wood-carvings. The Egyptian winged disk, as adopted by the islanders, shows the bird in the centre with a struggling snake in its beak. The Central American peoples had likewise this bird-and-serpent myth. Indeed, it figures prominently in their mythologies. In Mexico the winged disk was placed, as in Egypt, above the entrances to the temples.
The bird-and-serpent myth is to be found even in the Iliad. When Hector set forth with his heroes to break through the wall of the Achæan camp, an eagle appeared in the air, bearing in its talons “a blood-red monstrous snake, alive and struggling still”. The writhing snake manages to sting the eagle, which immediately drops it.[8]
In ancient Egyptian myths the bird was the Horus hawk and the serpent was Set. Horus assumed, in his great battle against the snake, crocodile, and other enemies of Ra, the winged disk form—the winged sun, protected by the two snake-goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt.
This strange combination of deities in the “winged disk” symbol was as distinctively an Egyptian cultural and political complex as the Union Jack is distinctively a British complex. As the Union Jack has been carried to many a distant land, so was the Egyptian winged disk, “the flag” of Egyptian culture. In those areas in which the winged disk is found, are found also traces of Egyptian ideas which, of course, were not necessarily introduced by the Egyptians themselves.
How did this myth of the struggle between bird and serpent have origin? The only country in the world in which a great bird hunts serpents is Africa. The bird in question is the famous secretary bird (Serpentarius secretarius), which is nowadays domesticated by South African [[72]]farmers so as to keep down snakes. It is found in East and West Africa. “In general appearance it looks like a modified eagle mounted on stilts.”[9] The bird attacks a snake with wings outspread, and flaps them in front of its body to prevent itself from being bitten during the conflict. Early Egyptian seafarers were no doubt greatly impressed when, “in the land of Punt”, they saw these strange birds, with heads like eagles or hawks, standing over snakes they had clutched in their talons, and then flying away with them dangling from their beaks. The mariners’ stories about the snake-devouring bird appear to have crept into the mythology of Egypt, with the result that the Horus hawk became the hunter of Set in his “hissing serpent” form. Above the hole in the ground into which the Set serpent fled for concealment and safety was set a pole surmounted by the head of the Horus hawk. As Dr. Budge puts it: “Horus, the son of Isis, stood upon him (Set) in the form of a pole or staff, on the top of which was the head of a hawk”.[10] But, one may urge, it could not have been until after Egyptian vessels visited the coasts haunted by the secretary bird that the bird and serpent variation of the Horus-Set myth was formulated in the land of Egypt, whence, apparently, it was distributed far and wide. Horus was not necessarily an enemy of serpents, seeing that there are two in his disk.
In Tibet, as has been stated, the bird and serpent were combined, and the “composite beast” was given a human head with horns. The horned and winged dragon of China is thus, in part, a combination of the original secretary bird and the snake. [[73]]
The later blending process was, no doubt, due to Buddhistic influence. Both Nagas (snakes) and Garudas (eagles or secretary birds) were included in northern India among the gods and demons who worshipped Buddha. The Nagas understood the language of birds. They gave charms to human beings so that they might share this knowledge. In European and Arabian stories folk-heroes acquire the language of birds, or of all animals, after eating the hearts of dragons. A Naga king causes an Indian king to understand what animals say.[11]