[416] Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras), "The Village Gods of South India," Oxford, 1916, p. 24.
[417] "The Celtic Dragon Myth," p. 136.
[418] See Chapter I, p. 47.
[419] I do not propose to discuss here the interesting problems raised by this identification of the dragon with a man's good or evil spirit. But it is worthy of note that while the Babylonian might be possessed by seven evil spirits, the Egyptian could have as many as fourteen good spirits or kas. In a form somewhat modified by the Indian and Indonesian channels, through which they must have passed, these beliefs still persist in Melanesia; and the illuminating account of them given by C. E. Fox and F. W. Drew ("Beliefs and Tales of San Cristoval," Journ. Roy. Anthropol. Inst., Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 161), makes it easier to us to form some conception of their original meaning in ancient Babylonia and Egypt. The ataro which possesses a man (and there may be as many as a hundred of these "ghosts") leaves his body at death and usually enters a shark (or in other cases an octopus, skate, turtle, crocodile, hawk, kingfisher, tree, or stone).
[420] Vol. II, 19, 11-18, and 65, quoted by Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 282.
[421] Op. cit., p. 150.
[422] A. B. Cook, "Zeus," Vol. I, p. 337, in which (Fig. 269) the rider in the car is welcoming the thunderbolt as a divine gift from heaven, i.e. as a life-amulet, a giver of fertility and good luck. For a design representing the octopus as a weapon of the god Eros see the title-page of Usener's "Die Sintfluthsagen," 1899.