“The jewel that grants all desires” is possessed by the Indian Nagas, as it is by Chinese and Japanese dragons. In the Mahábhárata, the Pandava hero Arjuna is, after being slain in combat, restored to life by his Naga wife, who had obtained this magic jewel from the Naga king.[12]
The Nagas are guardians of pearls, and the females have many pearl necklaces.
Note may here be taken of interesting Indian evidence that throws light on the process of transferring to a local animal complex ideas associated with another animal figuring in an imported myth. The great enemy of African snakes is, as has been said, the secretary bird; the Indian enemy is the mungoose. In early Buddhist art the mungoose, spitting jewels, is placed in the right hand of Kubera, god of wealth, who stands on the back of a Yaksha (a bird demon). By devouring snakes (Nagas) the mungoose (according to the myth) “appropriates their jewels, and has hence developed into the attribute of Kubera”.[13] Here the pearl-guarding shark, having become a jewel-guarding dragon-snake, is substituted [[74]]by the jewel-spitting mungoose which has “devoured” its attributes.
The god Kubera has a heaven of its own, and is a form of Yama, god of death. In his form as Dharma, god of justice, Yama figures in the Mahábhárata[14] as a “blue-eyed mungoose with one side of his body changed into gold”, his voice being “loud and deep as thunder”. Here Yama links with Indra, god of thunder, who, having a heaven of his own, is also a god of death. Egypt had its “blue-eyed Horus”.[15] The god Horus was the living form of Osiris. The living Pharaoh was a Horus, and the dead Pharaoh an Osiris, as Dr. Gardiner reminds us.
The combination of bird and serpent is found in Persia as well as in Tibet. On an archaic cylinder seal from the ancient Elamite capital of Susa, the dragon is a lion with an eagle’s head and wings; the forelegs are those of the eagle, and the hind legs those of a lion.
A form of the god Tammuz, namely the god Nin-Girsu (“Lord of Girsu”) of the Sumerian city of Lagash (Girsu appears to have been a suburb), was a lion-headed eagle.[16] The god Ea had a dragon form.[17] The dragon of the Ishtar gate of Babylon is a combination of eagle, serpent, and lion, and is horned.
There can remain little doubt that the Chinese dragon has an interesting history, not only in China but outside that country. It cannot be held to have independent origin. At a remote period dragon beliefs reached China, India, and Polynesia, and even America.[18]
In each separated area the dragon took on a local [[75]]colouring, but the fundamental beliefs connected with it remained the same. It was closely connected with water (the “water of life”), and also with trees (the “trees of life”). Thus we find that in China a dragon might assume “the shape of a tree growing under water”;[19] a boat once collided with drift-wood which was found to be a dragon. Crocodiles are sometimes mistaken for logs of wood.
In Hawaii two noted dragons (mo-o) lived in a river. “They were called ‘the moving boards’ which made a bridge across the river.”[20]
The Indian Nagas were not only water deities but tree spirits, as Dr. Rhys Davids has emphasized.[21]