"I will not fail to speak of Leviathan's limbs, its strength and its graceful form. Who can strip off its outer coat? Who can penetrate its double coat of armor? Who dares open the doors of its mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth? Its back has rows of shields tightly sealed together; each is so close to the next that no air can pass between. They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted. Its snorting throws out flashes of light; its eyes are like the rays of dawn. Flames stream from its mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke pours from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds. Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth" (NIV).
The belief in dragons was based not just in legend but also in hard evidence — or so it seemed. For millennia no one knew what to make of the giant bones that were occasionally unearthed around the globe, and dragons seemed a logical choice for people who had no knowledge of dinosaurs.
St. George and the Dragon, by Paolo Uccello, 1470.
Many dragons
Though most people can easily picture a dragon, people's ideas and descriptions of dragons vary dramatically. Some dragons have wings; others don't. Some dragons can speak or breathe fire; others can't. Some are only a few feet long; others span miles. Some dragons live in palaces under the ocean, while others can only be found in caves and inside mountains.
As folklorist Carol Rose discusses in her book "
Giants, Monsters, & Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth" (Norton, 2001), dragons "have composite features from many other beasts, such as the head of an elephant in India, that of a lion or bird of prey in the Middle East, or numerous heads of reptiles such as serpents. Their body color may range from green, red, and black to unusually yellow, blue or white dragons."
Zoologist Karl Shuker describes a wide variety of dragons in his book "
Dragons: A Natural History" (Simon & Schuster, 1995), including giant snakes, hydras, gargoyles and dragon-gods, as well as more obscure variants such as basilisks, wyverns and cockatrices. The dragon, whatever else it might be, is clearly a chameleon, its features adapting to the cultural and literary expectations of the era.
Dragons continue to capture the public's imagination in fantasy books and films, appearing in everything from the kid-friendly 2010 film "How to Train Your Dragon" to the more adult-oriented "Game of Thrones" books and to "The Hobbit" book and movies. The popular role-playing game Advanced Dungeons and Dragons describes more than a dozen varieties of dragons, each with unique personalities, powers, and other characteristics (Black dragons, for example, are fond of eels — who knew?).
A history of dragons
The word "dragon" comes from the ancient Greek word "draconta," meaning "to watch," suggesting that the beast guards valuables. Dragons typically guard treasure such as mountains of gold coins or gems, though this makes little logical sense: a creature as powerful as a dragon surely doesn't need to pay for anything. It is instead a symbolic treasure, not for the hoarding dragon but instead booty for the brave knights who would vanquish it.
\
Dragons are one of the few monsters cast in mythology primarily as a powerful and fearsome opponent to be slain. They don't simply exist for their own sake; they exist largely as a foil for bold adventurers. Other mythical beasts such as trolls, elves and fairies interact with people (sometimes mischievously, sometimes helpfully) but their main role is not as combatant.
The Christian church created legends of righteous and godly saints battling and vanquishing
Satan in the form of dragons. The most celebrated of these was St. George the Dragon Slayer, who in legend comes upon a town threatened by a terrible dragon. He rescues a fair maiden, protects himself with the sign of the cross, and slays the beast. The town's citizens, impressed by St. George's feat of faith and bravery, immediately convert to Christianity.
Vanquishing a dragon was not only an important career opportunity for any ambitious saint, knight or hobbit, but according to legend it was also a way to raise armies. As Michael Page and Robert Ingpen note in their "
Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were" (Viking Penguin, 1987), "The use of dragon's teeth provides a simple method of expanding the armed forces of any country. It was first practiced by Cadmus, King of Thebes. First, prepare a piece of ground as though for sowing grain.
\Next, catch and kill any convenient dragon and draw all its teeth.
Sow these in the furrows you have prepared, cover lightly, and stand well away."
Soon veteran warriors "clad in bronze armor and armed with swords and shields ... emerge rapidly from the earth and stand in ranks according to the way in which the dragons teeth were sown." Apparently these draconis dentata soldiers are a quarrelsome lot and will turn on each other lacking a ready enemy, so if you plan to do this, be sure your adversaries are nearby.
Scholars believe that the fire-breathing element of dragons came from medieval depictions of the mouth of hell; for example, art by Hieronymus Bosch and others. The entrance to hell was often depicted as a monster's literal mouth, with the flames and smoke characteristic of Hades belching out. If one believes not only in the literal existence of hell, but also the literal existence of dragons as Satanic, the association is quite logical.
Medieval theology aside, few people today believe in the literal existence of dragons in the way they may believe in the existence of
Bigfoot or the
Loch Ness monster, for example. The dragon (or at least the dragon version most familiar to Westerners) is simply too big and too fantastic to take seriously or literally. In the modern age of satellite imagery and smart phone photos and videos, it's simply implausible that any giant, unknown winged fire-breathers inhabit Earth's skies unseen.
However, only a few centuries ago rumors of dragons seemed to have been confirmed by eyewitness accounts from sailors returning from Indonesia who reported encountering dragons — Komodo dragons, a type of monitor lizard — which can be aggressive, deadly, and reach 10 feet in length. (In a possible parallel to dragons, it was previously believed that the bite of a
Komodo dragon was especially deadly because of toxic bacteria in its mouth, though that myth was debunked in 2013 by a team of researchers from the University of Queensland who discovered that the
Komodo dragon's mouths are no dirtier than those of other carnivores.)Western scientists only verified the existence of the Komodo dragon around 1910, but rumors and stories of these fearsome beasts circulated long before that.
Dragons, in one form or another, have been around for millennia. Through epic fantasy fiction by J.R.R. Tolkien and others, dragons have continued to spark our collective imagination and — unlike the dinosaurs that helped inspire stories about them — show no sign of dying out.
Additional resources
Wiki
A
dragon is a
legendary creature, typically with
serpentine or
reptilian traits, that features in the
myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the
European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies, and the
Chinese dragon, with counterparts in Japan (namely the
Japanese dragon), Korea and other East Asian countries.
[1]
The two traditions may have evolved separately, but have influenced each other to a certain extent, particularly with the cross-cultural contact of recent centuries. The English word
dragon derives from
Greek δράκων (
drákōn), "dragon, serpent of huge size, water-snake".
[2]
The word dragon entered the English language in the early 13th century from Old French dragon, which in turn comes from Latindraconem (nominative draco) meaning "huge serpent, dragon", from the Greek word δράκων, drakon (genitive drakontos, δράκοντος) "serpent, giant seafish". The Greek and Latin term referred to any great serpent, not necessarily mythological, and this usage was also current in English up to the 18th century.
Morphology
A dragon is a mythological representation of a
reptile. In antiquity, dragons were mostly envisaged as
serpents, but since the Middle Ages, it has become common to depict them with legs, resembling a
lizard.
Dragons are usually shown in modern times with a body like a huge lizard, or a snake with two pairs of lizard-type legs, and able to emit fire from their mouths. The
European dragon has bat-like wings growing from its back. A dragon-like creature with wings but only a single pair of legs is known as a
wyvern.
Comparative mythology
Saint George Killing the Dragon, 1434/35, by
Martorell
Although dragons occur in many legends around the world, different cultures have varying stories about monsters that have been grouped together under the dragon label. Some dragons are said to breathe fire or to be poisonous, such as in the
Old English poem
Beowulf.
[3] (Dr. Paweł Frelik, one-time Editor-in-Chief of the
European Journal of American Studies and President of the
Science Fiction Research Association (2013-2014), writes, "Dragons emitting fire were traditional elements of folk tales and myths and, as such, later permeated into modern fantasy. They are present, for example, in
Anne McCaffrey's
Dragonflight and its sequels."
[4]) They are commonly portrayed as serpentine or reptilian, hatching from
eggs and possessing typically scaly or feathered bodies. They are sometimes portrayed as hoarding treasure. Some myths portray them with a row of dorsal spines.
European dragons are more often winged, while
Chinese dragons resemble large snakes. Dragons can have a variable number of legs: none, two, four, or more when it comes to early
European literature.
Dragons are often held to have major spiritual significance in various religions and cultures around the world. In many
Asian cultures dragons were, and in some cultures still are, revered as representative of the primal forces of nature, religion and the universe. They are associated with wisdom—often said to be wiser than humans—and longevity. They are commonly said to possess some form of magic or other supernatural power, and are often associated with wells, rain, and rivers. In some cultures, they are also said to be capable of
human speech. In some traditions dragons are said to have taught humans to talk.
The
Order of the Dragon was created to defend Europe against the invading Ottoman Turks in the 15th century.
Narratives about dragons often involve them being killed by a hero. This topos can be traced to the
Chaoskampf of the
mythology of the Ancient Near East (e.g.
Hadad vs.
Yam,
Marduk vs.
Tiamat,
Teshub vs.
Illuyanka, etc.; the Biblical
Leviathan presumably reflects a corresponding opponent of an early version of
Yahweh). The motif is continued in Greek
Apollo, and the early Christian narratives about
Michael the Archangel and
Saint George. The slaying of
Vrtra by
Indra in the
Rigveda also belongs in this category. The theme survives into medieval legend and folklore, with dragon slayers such as
Beowulf,
Sigurd,
Tristan,
Margaret the Virgin,
Heinrich von Winkelried,
Dobrynya Nikitich,
Skuba Dratewka/
Krakus. In the Bible, the archetype is alluded to in the descendants of
Adam crushing the head of the
Serpent, and in Christian mythology, this was interpreted as corresponding to
Christ as the
Last Adam crushing the
devil.
The
blood of a slain dragon is depicted as either beneficent or as poisonous in medieval legend and literary fiction. In German legend, dragon blood has the power to render invincible skin or armor bathed in it, as is the case with
Siegfried's skin or
Ortnit's armor. In the
Slavic myth, the Earth refuses it as it is so vile that
Mother Earth wishes not to have it within her womb, and it remains above ground for all eternity. The blood of the dragon in
Beowulf has
acidic qualities, allowing it to seep through iron.
Heinrich von Winkelried dies after the blood of the dragon slain by him accidentally drips on him.
Europe
Greek mythology
In
Ancient Greece the first mention of a "dragon" is derived from the
Iliad where
Agamemnon is described as having a blue dragon motif on his sword belt and an emblem of a three-headed dragon on his breast plate.
[5] However, the Greek word used (δράκων
drákōn,
genitiveδράκοντοϛ
drákontos) could also mean "snake".
In
217 AD,
Flavius Philostratus (
Greek:
Φλάβιος Φιλόστρατος)
[6] discussed dragons (δράκων, drákōn) in India in
The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (II,17 and III,6–8). The
Loeb Classical Library translation (by F.C. Conybeare) mentions (III,7) that "In most respects the tusks resemble the largest swine's, but they are slighter in build and twisted, and have a point as unabraded as sharks' teeth."
According to a collection of books by
Claudius Aelianus (
Greek:
Κλαύδιος Αἰλιανός)
[7] called
On Animals, Ethiopia was inhabited by a species of dragon that hunted elephants. It could grow to a length of 180 feet (55 m) and had a lifespan rivaling that of the most enduring of animals.
[8]
A dragon illustration in a 1460 edition of the Medieval
Liber Floridus
European
European dragons exist in folklore and mythology among the overlapping
cultures of Europe. Dragons are generally depicted as living in rivers or having an underground lair or cave.
[9] They are commonly described as having hard or armoured hide, and are rarely described as flying, despite often being depicted with wings.
European dragons are usually depicted as malevolent under Christianity; pre-Christian dragons, such as
Y Ddraig Goch, the Red Dragon of Wales, are seen as benevolent
Slavic dragon
"Dragon Family" in
Varna, Bulgaria
Main article:
Slavic dragon
In
Slavic mythology, the words
"zmey",
"zmiy" or
"zmaj" are used to describe dragons. These words are masculine forms of the Slavic word for "snake", which are normally feminine (like Russian
zmeya). In
Romania, there is a similar figure, derived from the Slavic dragon and named
zmeu. Exclusively in Polish and Belarusian folklore, as well as in the other Slavic folklores, a dragon is also called (variously)
смок,
цмок, or
smok. In South Slavic folklores, the same thing is also called
lamya (ламйа, ламjа, lamja). Although quite similar to other
European dragons, Slavic dragons have their peculiarities.
Africa
South and West Asia
Ancient India
The
Life of Apollonius of Tyana by
Flavius Philostratus:
[12] contains a long detailed description of India heavily infested with dragons, but this does not correspond with modern Indian belief, and likely not with Indian belief as it was in his time, whether Apollonius invented this story, or whether he believed someone else who told him it.
Assam, India
In Assam, dragon symbols are used in the Assamese Culture. Generally, dragons motifs are made for religious purposes. Such motifs are placed along the mukut in Naamghars. Dragons with lion body are placed on the top of the gates of these Naamghars, which symbolises that they guard the ghar. Dragon Symbols are also used in clothes.
Dragon motifs atop the gateway to the Maidam of the great Assamese general Brave Lachit Phukan Lung
Persian
15th-century Persian miniature of
Rostam slaying a dragon
Aži Dahāka is the source of the
modern Persian word azhdahā or ezhdehā اژدها (Middle Persian azdahāg) meaning "dragon", often used of a dragon depicted upon a banner of war. The Persians believed that the baby of a dragon will be the same color as the mother's eyes. In
Middle Persianhe is called Dahāg or Bēvar-Asp, the latter meaning "[he who has] 10,000 horses." Several other dragons and dragon-like creatures, all of them malevolent, are mentioned in
Zoroastrian scripture. (See
Zahhāk).
Jewish
In Jewish religious texts, the first mention of a dragon-like creature is in the
Biblical works of
Job(26:13), and
Isaiah (27:1) where it is called
Nachash Bare'ach, or a "
Pole Serpent".
[13] This is identified in the
Midrash Rabba to Genesis 1:21 as
Leviathan from the word
Taninim (תנינים) "and God created the great sea-monsters."
[14]In
modern Hebrew the word
Taninim is used for
Crocodiles but this is a 20th-century usage unconnected with the original Biblical meaning.
[citation needed]
In Jewish astronomy this is also identified with the
North Pole, the star
Thuban which, around 4,500 years ago, was the star in the
Draco constellation's "tail".
[13] However this can also have been either the
celestial pole or the
ecliptic pole. The ancient observers noted that Draco was at the top of the celestial pole, giving the appearance that stars were "hanging" from it, and in Hebrew it is referred to as
Teli, from talah (תלה) – to hang.
[17] Hebrew writers from Arabic-speaking locations identified the
Teli as
Al Jaz'har, which is a Persian word for a "knot" or a "node" because of the intersection of the inclination of the orbit of a planet from the elliptic that forms two such nodes. In modern astronomy these are called the
ascending node and the
descending node, but in
medieval astronomy they were referred to as "dragon's head" and "dragon's tail".
[18]
East Asia
In East Asia, the concept of dragon appears largely in a form of a
Long, a beneficent dragon-like creature from Chinese folklore. Another dragon-like creature is a
Naga, which is prevalent in some Southeast Asian countries with more direct influence from Vedic religion.
Chinese dragon
Main article:
Chinese dragon
In China, depiction of the dragon (
traditional:龍;
simplified:龙) can be found in artifacts from the Shang and Zhou dynasties with examples dating back to the 16th century
BC.
[20] Archaeologist Zhōu Chong-Fa believes that the Chinese word for dragon is an
onomatopoeia of the sound of thunder.
[21] The Chinese name for dragon is pronounced
lóng in
Mandarin Chinese[20] or
lùhng in
Cantonese.
[22] Sometime after the 9th century AD, Japan adopted the Chinese dragon through the spread of Buddhism.
[20] Although the indigenous name for a dragon in Japanese is
tatsu (たつ?), a few of the Japanese words for dragon stem from the Chinese word for dragon, namely,
ryū (りゅう?) or
ryō (りょう?) (
traditional:龍;
simplified:竜).
[20] The
Vietnamese word for dragon is
rồng (
龍) and the
Korean word for dragon is
ryong (
hangul:용,
hanja:龍).
The
Chinese dragon (
simplified Chinese:
龙;
traditional Chinese:
龍;
pinyin:
lóng) is the highest-ranking animal in the Chinese animal hierarchy, strongly associated at one time with the emperor and hence power and majesty (the mythical bird
fenghuang was the symbol of the Chinese empress), still recognized and revered. Its origins are vague, but its "ancestors can be found on Neolithic pottery as well as Bronze Age ritual vessels."
[23] Tradition has it composed of nine different animals, with
nine sons, each with its own imagery and affiliations. It is the only mythological animal of the 12 animals that represent the
Chinese calendar. 2012 was the Chinese year of the Water Dragon.
Vietnamese dragon decoration on the roof of
Ly dynasty imperial palaces
Japanese
Japanese dragon myths amalgamate native legends with imported stories about dragons from China, Korea and India. Like these other Asian dragons, most Japanese ones are
water deities associated with rainfall and
bodies of water, and are typically depicted as large, wingless, serpentine creatures with clawed feet. Gould writes (1896:248),
[24] the Japanese dragon is "invariably figured as possessing three claws".
Vietnam
Vietnamese dragons (
rồng or
long) are symbolic creatures in the folklore and mythology of Vietnam. According to an ancient creation myth, the Vietnamese people are descended from a dragon and a fairy. To Vietnamese people, the dragon brings rain, essential for agriculture. It represents the emperor, the prosperity and power of the nation. Like the Chinese dragon, the Vietnamese dragon is the symbol of
yang, representing the universe, life, existence, and growth. Extant references to the Vietnamese Dragon are rare now, due to the fierce changes in history that accompanied the sinicization of the
Nguyễn Dynasty.
Pakhangba head in a Manipuri musical instrument
Korean
Main article:
Korean dragon
Manipur
Bhutan
Modern depictions
An illustration of an Eastern dragon
Sandra Martina Schwab writes, "With a few exceptions, including McCaffrey's Pern novels and the 2002 film
Reign of Fire, dragons seem to fit more into the medievalized setting of fantasy literature than into the more technological world of science fiction. Indeed, they have been called the emblem of fantasy. The hero's fight against the dragon emphasizes and celebrates his masculinity, whereas revisionist fantasies of dragons and dragon-slaying often undermine traditional gender roles. In children's literature the friendly dragon becomes a powerful ally in battling the child's fears."
[28]
In the early 20th century sculpture of the Norwegian artist
Gustav Vigeland, inspired by
Medieval art, dragons are a frequent theme—as symbols of
sin but also as a natural force, fighting against man.
The popular
role playing game system
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) makes heavy use of
dragons, and has served as inspiration for many other games' dragons. Though dragons usually serve as adversaries, they can be either good or evil, with their
alignment being determined by their species. For example, a
red dragon is evil and breathes fire while a
silver dragon is good and breathes cold.
Animals that may have inspired dragons
Nile crocodiles, today very restricted in range, were in ancient times occasionally found in Southern Europe, having swum across the
Mediterranean. Such wayward crocodiles may have inspired dragon myths.
[9][32] Skeletons of
whales, as well as
dinosaur and mammalian fossils may have been occasionally mistaken for the bones
http://www.livescience.com/25559-dragons.html of dragons and other mythological creatures; for example, a discovery in
300 BC in Wucheng,
Xingwen County,
Sichuan,
China, was labeled as such by
Chang Qu.
[9][33] Adrienne Mayor has written on the subject of fossils as the inspiration for myths in her book
The First Fossil Hunters,
[34] and in an entry in the
Encyclopedia of Geology she wrote: "Fossil remains generated a variety of
geomyths speculating on the creatures' identity and cause of their destruction. Many ancient cultures, from China and India to Greece, America, and Australia, told tales of dragons, monsters, and giant heroes..."
[35]
In Australia, stories of such creatures may have referred to the land crocodiles,
Quinkana sp., a terrestrial crocodile which grew to 5 to possibly 7 metres long, or the monitor lizard
Varanus priscus (formerly
Megalania prisca) a giant carnivorous
goanna that might have grown to 7 metres (23 ft), and weighed up to 1,940 kilograms (4,280 lb), or rainbow serpents (possibly
Wonambi naracoortensis) that were part of the extinct
megafauna of Australia.
[36] Today the Komodo monitor lizard
Varanus komodoensis is known in English as the
Komodo dragon.
In the book
An Instinct for Dragons[37] anthropologist David E. Jones suggests a hypothesis that humans just like monkeys have inherited instinctive reactions to snakes, large cats and birds of prey. Dragons have features that are combinations of these three. An instinctive fear for these three would explain why dragons with similar features occur in stories from independent cultures on all continents.
In Slovenia,
Johann Weikhard von Valvasor compiled folk stories on the
Olm, a subterranean salamander, in
The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola. It is mentioned as a baby dragon. Heavy rains of Slovenia would wash the olms up from their subterranean habitat, giving rise to the folk belief that great dragons lived beneath the Earth's crust, and the olms were the undeveloped offspring of these mythical beasts.
[38]
Cartography
There is a widespread belief that earlier
cartographers used the
Latin phrase
hic sunt dracones,
i.e., "the dragons are here", or "
here be dragons", to denote dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of the infrequent medieval practice of putting
sea serpents and other mythological creatures in the blank areas of maps. However, the only known use of this exact phrase is in the
Latin form "HC SVNT DRACONES" on the
Lenox Globe (ca. 1503–07).
[39]
Another map that contains dragons is the one of Bishop Olaus Magnus's. The
Carta Marina map of Scandinavia (1539) has many monsters in the northern sea, as well as a winged, bipedal, predatory land animal resembling a dragon in northern
Lapland.
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