[68] Compare Yule’s Marco Polo, II. 82–84. [↑]
[69] Yule in Ency. Brit. Art. Cambodia, 724, 725, 726. [↑]
[70] Fa Hian (a.d. 400) about fifty miles north-west of Kanauj found a dragon chapel (Beal’s Buddhist Records, I. 40) of which a white-eared dragon was the patron. The dragon, he notes, gives seasonable showers and keeps off all plagues and calamities. At the end of the rains the dragon turns into a little white-eared serpent and the priests feed him. At the deserted Kapilavastu in Tirhut Fa Hian was shown a tank and in it a dragon who, he says, constantly guards and protects a tower to Buddha and worships there night and morning (Ditto, I. 50).
Sung-Yun (a.d. 519) notices (Beal’s Buddhist Records, I. 69) in Swát (Udyána) a tank and a temple with fifty priests called the temple of the Nága Rája because the Nága supplies it with funds. In another passage (Ditto, 92) he notices that in a narrow land on the border of Posse (Fars) a dragon had taken his residence and was stopping the rain and piling the snow. Hiuen Tsiang (Ditto, I. 20) notes that in Kucha, north of the Tarim river east of the Bolor mountains, the Shen horses are half dragon horses and the Shen men half dragon men. In Aksu, 150 miles west of Kucha, fierce dragons molest travellers with storms of flying sand and gravel (Ditto, 25); the hot lake or Johai, 100 miles north-east of Aksu, is jointly inhabited by dragons and fish; scaly monsters rise to the surface and travellers pray to them (Ditto, 26). An Arhat (page 63) prays that he may become a Nágarája. He becomes a Nágarája, kills the real Nágarája, takes his palace, attaches the Nágas to him, and raises winds and tempests; Kanishka comes against him and the Arhat takes the form of a Bráhman and knocks down Kanishka’s towers. A great merit-flame bursts from Kanishka’s shoulders and the Bráhman Nágarája apologises. His evil and passionate spirit, the fruit of evil deeds in a former birth, had made the Arhat pray to be a Nágarája. If clouds gathered the monks knew that the Nágarája meant mischief. The convent gong was beaten and the Nágarája pacified (or scared) Ditto, 64–66. Nágas were powerful brutes, cloud-riding wind-driving water-walking brutes, still only brutes. The account of the Nága or dragon of Jelalábád (in Kambojia) is excellent. In Buddha’s time the dragon had been Buddha’s milkman. He lost his temper, laid flowers at the Dragon’s cave, prayed he might become a dragon, and leaped over the cliff. He laid the country waste and did so much harm that Tathágata (or Buddha) converted him. The Nága asked Buddha to take his cave. Buddha said No. I will leave my shadow. If you get angry look at my shadow and it will quiet you (Ditto, 94). Another typical dragon is Apalála of the Swát river (Ditto, 68). In the time of Kaśyapa Buddha Apalála was a weaver of spells named Gangi. Gangi’s spells kept the dragons quiet and saved the crops. But the people were thankless and paid no tithes. May I be born a dragon, cursed Gangi, poisonous and ruinous. He was born the dragon of the Swát valley, Apalála, who belched forth a salt stream and burned the crops. The ruin of the fair and pious valley of Swát reached Śakya’s (Buddha’s) ears. He passed to Mangala and beat the mountain side with Indra’s mace. Apalála came forth was lectured and converted. He agreed to do no more mischief on condition that once in twelve years he might ruin the crops. (Ditto, 122.) In a lake about seven miles west of Takshaśilá, a spot dear to the exiled Kambojan, lived Elápatra the Nágarája, a Bhikshu or ascetic who in a former life had destroyed a tree. When the crops wanted rain or fair weather, the Shamans or medicine-men led the people to pray at Elápatra’s tank (page 137). In Kashmir, perhaps the place of halt of the Kambojan in his conquests eastwards, in old times the country was a dragon lake.[71] Madhyantika drove out the waters but left one small part as a house for the Nága king (I. 150). What sense have these tales? In a hilly land where the people live in valleys the river is at once the most whimsical and the most dangerous force. Few seasons pass in which the river does not either damage with its floods or with its failure and at times glaciers and landslips stop the entire flow and the valley is ruined. So great and so strange an evil as the complete drying of a river must be the result of some one’s will, of some one’s temper. The Dragon is angry he wants a sacrifice. Again the river ponds into a lake, the lake tops the earth bank and rushes in a flood wasting as only a dragon can waste. For generations after so awful a proof of power all doubts regarding dragons are dead. (Compare Drew’s Cashmere and Jummoo, 414–421.) In India the Chinese dragon turns into a cobra. In China the cobra is unknown: in India than the cobra no power is more dreaded. How can the mighty unwieldy dragon be the little silent cobra. How not? Can the dragon be worshipful if he is unable to change his shape. To the spirit not to the form is worship due. Again the worshipped dragon becomes the guardian. The great earth Bodhisattva transforms himself into a Nágarája and dwells in lake Anavatapta whose flow of cool water enriches the world (Buddhist Records, II. 11). In a fane in Swát Buddha takes the form of a dragon and the people live on him (125). A pestilence wasted Swát. Buddha becomes the serpent Suma, all who taste his flesh are healed of the plague (126). A Nága maiden, who for her sins has been born in serpent shape and lives in a pool, loves Buddha who was then a Śakya chief. Buddha’s merit regains for the girl her lost human form. He goes into the pool slays the girl’s snake-kin and marries her. Not even by marriage with the Śakya is her serpent spirit driven out of the maiden. At night from her head issues a nine-crested Nága. Śakya strikes off the nine crests and ever since that blow the royal family has suffered from headaches (132). This last tale shows how Buddhism works on the coarser and fiercer tribes who accept its teaching. The converts rise to be men though a snake-head may peep out to show that not all of the old leaven is dead. In other stories Buddha as the sacramental snake shows the moral advance in Buddhism from fiend to guardian worship. The rest of the tales illustrate the corresponding intellectual progress from force worship to man, that is mind, worship. The water force sometimes kindly and enriching sometimes fierce and wasting becomes a Bodhisattva always kindly though his goodwill may have to give way to the rage of evil powers. So Bráhmanism turns Náráyana the sea into Śiva or Somnáth the sea ruler. In this as in other phases religion passes from the worship of the forces of Nature to which in his beginnings man has to bow to the worship of Man or conscious Mind whose growth in skill and in knowledge has made him the Lord of the forces. These higher ideals are to a great extent a veneer. The Buddhist evangelist may dry the lake; he is careful to leave a pool for the Nágarája. In times of trouble among the fierce struggles of pioneers and settlers the spirit of Buddha withdraws and leaves the empty shrine to the earlier and the more immortal spirit of Force, the Nágarája who has lived on in the pool which for the sake of peace Buddha refrained from drying. [↑]
[71] Kashmir has still a trace of Gandhára. Compare (Ency. Brit. Art. Kashmir page 13: The races of Kashmir are Gandháras, Khasás, and Daradas.) [↑]
[72] Mr. Fergusson (Architecture, 219) places the Káshmir temples between a.d. 600 and 1200 and allots Mártand the greatest to about a.d. 750. The classical element, he says, cannot be mistaken. The shafts are fluted Grecian Doric probably taken from the Gandhára monasteries of the fourth and fifth centuries. Fergusson was satisfied (Ditto, 289) that the religion of the builders of the Káshmir temples was Nága worship. In Cambodia the Bráhman remains were like those of Java (Ditto, 667). But the connection between the Nakhonwat series and the Káshmir temples was unmistakeable (Ditto, 297, 665). Nága worship was the object of both (Ditto, 677–679). Imperfect information forced Fergusson to date the Nakhonwat not earlier than the thirteenth century (Ditto, 660, 679). The evidence of the inscriptions which (J. As. Ser. VI. Tom. XIX. page 190) brings back the date of this the latest of a long series of temples to the ninth and tenth centuries adds greatly to the probability of some direct connection between the builders of the Mártand shrine in Káshmir and of the great Nakhonwat temple at Angkor. [↑]
[73] Ency. Brit. Art. Tibet, 344. [↑]
[74] Ency. Brit. Art. Cambodia. [↑]