THE DRAGON: A. FANCY OR A FACT 121 



are carried in a distorted and exaggerated form to regions 

 where it does not exist. 



The dragon ap- 

 pears to be nothing 

 more nor less in its 

 origin than one of the 

 great snakes (pythons), 

 often 25 ft. in length, 

 which inhabit tropical 



T. FlG. 21. The Chinese Imperial Dragon 



from a drawing on a tile of the old Imperial 

 Palace of Nankin. It has five claws. No 

 one outside the Imperial service may use 

 it, under penalty of death. Ordinary 

 people have to be content with a four- 

 clawed dragon. Compare this with the 

 European heraldic dragon, Fig. 16. 



India and Africa, 

 dangerous character 

 and terrible appear- 

 ance and movement 

 impressed primitive 

 mankind, and tradi- 

 tions of it have passed 



with migrating races both to the East and to the West, 

 so that we find the mythical dragon in ancient China and 

 in Japan, no less than in Egypt and in Greece. It 

 retains its snake-like body and tail, especially in the 



Chinese and 

 Japanese repre- 

 sentations (Figs. 

 21 and 22) ; but 

 in both East and 

 West, legs and 



wings have been 

 added 



FIG. 22. A flying snake with two pairs of wings 



a " fabulous" creature thus drawn in an ancient gradually 



Chinese work, the " Shan Hai King." This to it for the pur- 



book dates from about 350 A.D., but probably p Ose o f making it 



isbased on records of a thousand years' earlier ^^ terr j b]e and 



expressing some 



of its direful qualities. Chinese traditions indicate the 

 mountains of Central Asia as the home of the dragon, 

 whilst the ancient Greeks considered it to have come 



