CHAPTER V. 



CAUSING UAIN, THUNDER AND STORM. 



§ 1- TVift fynr i.a of thun dgr. clouds an d rain. 



The Classics have taught us that the dragon is thunder, and 

 at the same time that he is a water animal, akin to the snake, 

 sleeping in pools during winter and arising in spring. When 

 autumn comes with its dry weather, the dragon descends and 

 dives into the water to remain there till spring arrives again. 

 When in the first .month of the year now and then thunderclaps 

 were heard and a little rain came down, the ancients were 

 convinced that this was the work of the dragons, who in the 

 form of dark clouds appeared in the sky. If our interpretation 

 of the words of the Tih king is right, the "advantage" given 

 by them when they were seen soaring over the rice fields, and 

 the "blessing power then spread by them everywhere", was 

 nothing but the fertilizing rain they poured down upon the earth. 

 In later texts, at any rate, we have seen them clearly qualified 

 as the gods of clouds and rain, whnse fareath_ tiirned into clo uds ^ 

 and whose pow e r manifested itself in hea vy rains. Koh Hung ^, 

 e.g., in the Pao P%h fe^^ states the following: "If on a ym day 

 there is in the mountains a being who calls himself a "forester", 



it is a tiger, and if on a dfen day a being calls himself 



"Rain-master'', it is a dragon If one only knows these their 



animal names, they cannot do him any harm". The tiger, indeed, 

 is the god of the mountains and woods, as the _ dragon is the 

 divinity of water and rain. 



1 Cf. the 'Rh ya yih, quoting Wang Fu, above, Book I, Ch. Ill, § 2, p. 66; 

 Han Yij, Sa ^! (A- D. 768—824), quoted T. S., Sect. -^ ^, Ch. 127, p. 86, says 



the same: M^M^W' 



2 Ch. IV, Sect. ^ ^ , quoted by De Groot, Rel. Syst., Vol. V, p. 601 : |Jj 



f^n B^^mmM^^^' ^ Bmmm^m 



m „ ^ ^ ^ #1 ^ MiJ T> il :^ W m c 



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