AKT, 15 THE DRAGON GOD OF JAPAN CASANOWICZ 3 



that we have in this incident a reminiscence of the abolition of human sacrifices 

 to deities in the shape of lower animals. * * * lu certain stages of civiliza- 

 tion, sacrifices of the kind are practiced, and are frequently offered to water- 

 spirits conceived in animal form. * * * n may, of course, be that the 

 monster sent to devour Andromeda is to be regarded simply as the personifica- 

 tion of water or of specific rivers in their sinister aspect. 



Doctor Aston adds then, concerning the dragon of the Japanese 

 story : 



The circumstance that the scene of this episode in Susa no wo's career is 

 the bank of a river is, therefore, by no means immaterial. Indeed, we may 

 plausibly conjecture that the description of the serpent with its eight (or many) 

 heads and eight tails, its length extending over eight valleys and eight hills, 

 its body overgrown with moss, pines, and cedars, and its propensity for de- 

 vouring human beings, is nothing more than a fanciful representation of the 

 river, with its serpentine course, its tributaries and branches, its wooded 

 banks, and the danger by drowning in its pools or at its fords. 



The conception of a stream as a serpent or dragon, or one of these 

 animals as the embodiment of a water-deity, is widespread. There 

 is for the imagination a close nexus between a river and serpent. 

 The sinuous, often winding and twisting course of the former and 

 its mysterious movement without legs represents it to the fancy as a 

 great, long-stretched serpent, while the beautiful wave-like motion 

 of the latter and the water habitat of many of the species connects 

 it Avith rivers and streams as the greniios loci. 



Even in the Rig Veda there is deification of the cloud-snake. In later times 

 they (the serpents) answered to the Nymphs, being tutelary guardians of 

 streams and rivers.^ The Arabs still regard medicinal waters as inhabited 

 by jinn, usually of serpent form, [and] on the borders of the Arabian field we 

 have the sacred fountain of Ephea at Palmyra, with which a legend of a 

 demon in serpent form is connected.' A dragon's well is mentioned in Nehe- 

 miah II. 13, and a snake river in Josephus, Jewish War, V, 3, 2. 



In the Babylonian creation myth the primeval watery chaos is 

 symbolized by the monster Tiamat, and the conflict between Bel 

 Marduk and Tiamat is a favorite theme of Assyro-Babylonian glyptic 

 art. Tiamat is there pictured either as a composite dragon or — more 

 rarely — as a long-stretched serpent. Thus on a cylinder seal in the 

 Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, a cast of which is on 

 exhibition in the United States National Museum, Tiamat is repre- 

 sented as a large serpent with a peculiar horned head fleeing befoi-o 

 Marduk, who pursues her with a sickle-shaped scimitar. The per- 

 sonification of the watery chaos by the dragon or serpent Tiamat 

 may have been suggested to the Babylonian fancy by the waving 

 billows of the agitated sea. 



Reminiscences of the overthrow of Tiamat by the sun-god Marduk 

 may be traced in the Old Testament where, of course, not Marduk. 



' E. W. Hopkins, The religions of India, 189.5, p. 376, n. 3. 

 *W. Robertson-Smith, Religion of the Semites, 1889, p. 153f. 



