53 



in love with her. She gave birth to a son, Poh Fuh. Finally the 

 King degraded Queen Chen and the Grownprince, and made Pao 

 Sze queen and Poh Fuh crownprince. The Great Astrologer Poh Yang 

 said: 'The misfortune is complete; there is no help for it'". Then 

 we read that the Emperor, who by all manner of devices tried 

 to make the woman laugh, did not succeed until by a false sign 

 of an enemy's attack he caused the lords to come up in great 

 haste. This made Pao Sze burst into laughter, but it was the 

 cause of the King's death and the ruin of the dynasty, for when 

 the enemy actually came, the lords, whom the King had deluded 

 several times by false alarms, did not come to the rescue. Thus 

 the King was killed, Pao Sze was taken prisoner, and the treasures 

 of the House of Cheu were all taken by force. Japanese legends 

 tell us that Pao SzS was reborn in the twelfth century as 

 Tamamo no mae, the Emperor Konoe or Toba's concubine, who 

 changed into a fox \ 



It is clear that in the above passages the dragons were harbingers 

 of evil, because the Emperors did. not walk in the Tao. 



In A. D. 55-3 a dragon was seen ascending near the Imperial 

 Palace, and the next year a huge black serpent rose from the 

 Palace moat to the sky, spreading a dazzling light and followed 

 by a small snake. Calamity was predicted on account of these 

 apparitions, and the Emperor tried to avert the evil by offerings 

 of moneys, magic, Buddhist prayers and philanthropy; but it 

 was all in vain, for at the end of the same year he was killed ^ 



The History of the Liao dynasty^ says: "[In the first year of 

 the rien-hien era (A. D. 926) J the Emperor (rai-Tsu, 907—926) 

 stopped at Fu-yu-fu and did not take any precautions. That 

 evening a big star fell before his tent, and on the day sin-sze, 

 when he captured the castle of Tau-tsze, the Emperor saw a 

 yellow dragon coiling and winding, about one mile in length. 

 The brightness of its light blinded the eye ; it entered the Imperial 



1 Of. my treatise on 'TAe Fox and the Badger in Japanese Folklore", Transactions 

 of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. XXXVI, Part 3, pp. 51 sqq. 



2 The dragons are fond of money, comp. the Japanese work SeiyUki, ^ ^ gg 

 (written by Tachibana Nankei, /fi§ ^ ^i in 1795—1797), Zoku Teikoku Bunko, 

 Vol. XX, Oh. II, p. 259. This has perhaps something to do with their liking for the 

 vital spirit of copper (cf below, Book II, Ch. Ill, § 3). 



3 History of the South {Nanshi, ^ ^ , written by Yen Sheu, ^ ^ , who 



lived in the first half of the seventh century A. D.), Ch. VIII (^ gg, "fC ). 



4 Liao sM, ^ ^, (906-1168), Sect. ^^ jflB. ^fS |E . T ' ^'^^''^su pen ki, 

 "Fundamental history of (the Emperor) T'ai-Tsu", Ch. II, p. 6a. 



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