Serpents and Dragons: Crash Course World Mythology #38 Video Lecture | World Mythology: Crash Course - Personal Learning

Hey there!
I’m Mike Rugnetta, this is Crashcourse mythology
and today we continue our look at mythical
creatures with one of the most popular beasts
of all time: [[[Thoth stands up very straight.]]]
Dragons!
Aaaand also serpents – but mostly DRAGONS!
[[[Thoth slightly disappointed.]]]
Hide your thatched roofed cottages and get
ready for some burninating.
Intro
To talk about dragons, we gotta start with
snakes.
In myth, snakes often serve a function similar
to more terrifying creatures.
They’re etymologically similar, too.
In fact, the Latin word draco is used for
both dragons and snakes.
In the Judeo Christian tradition, the most
important serpent is that apple-shilling,
well… snake... from the garden of Eden.
Fun fact: he didn’t really start out as
a snake; he had legs until the Lord punished
him by making him slither on his belly.
No more scampering for that guy.
In the Babylonian stories of creation, we
learn about the enormous snake Tiamat, which
we’ve mentioned before.
Across the Ancient Near East, we find a number
of snakes associated with goddesses: Ishtar
in Mesopotamia, Wadjet in Egypt, and even
Athena in Greece, when she wasn’t hanging
out with owls.
Somewhere along the way snakes start sort
of morphing into dragons.
Not…
literally.
That would be dope tho.
I mean in their stories.
Babylon had guardian dragons called Mušḫuššu,
with a serpent’s head and body, the front
feet of a lion and a poisonous scorpion’s
tail.
In Biblical Babylon, king Nebuchadnezzar kept
a dragon in the temple of the god Bel and
suggested that Daniel, a noble youth of Jerusalem,
worship it.
Daniel said that he preferred to worship the
Lord and that he could kill the dragon even
without a weapon.
Daniel killed it by feeding it cakes of boiled
pitch, fat and hair, which made it explode.
For this mess, the king threw Daniel into
the lion’s den.
In the Persian Book of Kings, the hero Rostam
kills a dragon that can make itself invisible.
He does this with the help of his trusty horse,
Rakhsh.
According to the long epic poem: “when Rakhsh
saw the strength of its massive body bearing
down on Rostam, he laid back his ears and
sank his teeth into the dragon’s shoulders.
He tore at the dragon’s flesh, and the lion-like
Rostam was astonished at his ferocity.”
Dragons play a significant role in Welsh mythology,
as well.
Wales even has a red dragon on its flag.
And this isn’t just any dragon -- it appears
in the nation’s cultural epic, the Mabinogion.
Ages ago the red dragon was living peacefully
on the British Isles.
And then one day, an all-white dragon invades
and attempts to seize control of Britain.
The red dragon defends its territory, and
the two become locked in a fierce battle.
The noise of their fighting is terrible!
It causes crops to fail and women to miscarry,
so the British king Lludd digs a huge pit
and fills it with mead.
Turns out dragons, at least British ones,
can’t resist mead.
And so they drink the pit dry and fall into
a deep sleep.
With the two beasts unconscious, Ludd and
his men rush to imprison them.
Over in England, St. George is famous for
slaying a dragon, though the story takes place
in Silene, likely modern-day Libya.
There, the country is being tormented by a
dragon, and the only way to appease it is
to sacrifice a sheep and a virgin ... every
day.
And this goes on for quite some time, but
when the King’s daughter is the chosen virgin,
St. George appears.
Seems like maybe he could have shown up a
little bit earlier, but in any case he’s
here now.
He charges the dragon and wounds it with a
lance.
Then, he asks the princess for her garter
and throws it around the dragon’s neck.
After this, the dragon is so docile that it
follows the princess back to the capital where
St. George kills it in the town square after
making all of the people promise to convert
to Christianity.
Man sometimes mythological stories feel a
LOT like mad libs…
GEORGE defeated a DRAGON with a GARTER and
got the PEASANTS to respect MY BUTT-HEY, STAN.
COME ON.
Nearby, in Germany, we meet another famous
dragon, Fafnir, who actually started out life
... as a dwarf prince.
In German mythology, Fafnir and his brother
Regin kill their father, the dwarf king, to
steal his gold.
Then Fafnir takes the gold from his brother
and turns into a dragon to guard it.
Fafnir is killed and his crimes are avenged
by the great hero Sigurd (AKA Siegfried).
No word on whether he used a giant ice spear
or brought Fafnir back to life as Ice Fafnir.
Also, QUICK ASIDE: if you’ve pulled a caper
that requires you to transform into a dragon,
things probably AREN’T gonna turn out well
for you.
We can find even more tales of dragons, and
some of a slightly different variety, by moving
to Asia.
According to Lihui Yang and Deming An, authors
of the Handbook of Chinese Mythology, the
dragon “is the controller of the rain, the
river, the sea and all other kinds of water;
symbol of divine power and energy; great helper
of heroes; and bearer of gods and demigods.”
To see these Chinese Dragons in action, we’re
going look at a story of creation for dragons
and humanity alike in the Thoughtbubble.
Long ago, the earth was divided into five
parts.
Birds lived in the east, ruled by the phoenix.
Beasts lived in the south under their king
the tiger.
The west was home to insects, ruled by the
bee.
And the north was occupied by fishes and shrimp
under the benign rule of the giant turtle.
A monkey, with six arms and three heads, lived
in the center.
And one by one the kings of the other four
regions would visit this monkey and have sex
with her.
Eventually, the monkey became pregnant and
after 9,900 years she gave birth to ninety-nine
eggs.
All of the eggs, except the biggest one, were
stolen by the kings of the other four realms.
The monkey guarded that last egg until it
hatched.
Out of this egg came ... the python.
His mother ordered him to retrieve the other
ninety-eight eggs, and so off he went on his
quest, defeating and devouring birds, beasts,
insects, fishes AND shrimp that got in his
way.
But as he ate all that protein, the python
changed appearance.
He grew wings.
His head turned into a bull’s head with
deer horns and a pig’s mouth.
He grew hawk’s legs attached to his serpent’s
torso.
He became ... not a python ... but a dragon.
The tiger, the bee, the phoenix and the turtle
were so frightened that they returned the
other eggs to him without question.
The dragon then broke every egg in turn, each
one giving birth to a new creature.
All of them spread out across the earth, except
the last two.
Out of those emerged man and woman, and from
these two people all of the other humans were
born.
Thanks, Thoughtbubble.
So it’s been a while since we’ve had a
nice creation story.
Maybe you can see just how different this
dragon is from the ones in the Western tradition.
The deer horns and the pig mouth are… notable,
for instance.
Chinese dragons have lots of variation.
In some stories the dragon has a horse’s
head, its eyes are sometimes those of a rabbit.
Sometimes it has the scales of a fish and
the abdomen of a clam.
Sometimes tiger paws and sometimes eagle claws.
The Chinese dragon also has a special relationship
to water - which we’re going to see in this
next story.
Once, a black dragon is born to a poor human
family in Shandong province, which is a pretty
serious shock to his human mother.
It’s such a shock that when he starts to
breastfeed, she faints.
And I mean, can you really blame her?
When his father comes home and finds his wife
unconscious with a strange dragon baby, he
grows angry and hits the baby dragon with
a spade, cutting off part of its tail.
The injured dragon is so upset that he bursts
through the roof and flies away.
Many stories say he goes to northeast China
and settles in the Black Dragon River where
he becomes the river’s god.
He takes his mother’s name, Li, and becomes
Short-Tailed Old Li.
Years later, back in Shandong province, Short-Tailed
Old Li’s mother dies.
The dragon flies back to visit her grave,
which he does every year on the same date,
May 13, to pay his respects.
Each time he returns he brings rain, and so
from then on, he’s worshipped as a rain
god.
Throughout Chinese myths, dragons are associated
with rain and storms.
Wherever a dragon appears, there are clouds.
Because of this, the Chinese developed a number
of rituals to get dragons to show up, and
make it rain during droughts.
One of these is to throw a tiger’s bone
into a pool where a dragon lives.
Tigers are the enemies of dragons, and so
their bones should irritate them, causing
them to fly up wildly from the pool, thus
triggering a storm.
If you don’t have any tiger bones, you can
also try throwing your garbage into the dragon
pool.
Dragons are notoriously fastidious and their
inability to deal with the mess could force
them to bring rain and wash the pool clean.[1]
Dragons are also used as symbols of royal
power.
From Chinese Imperial Palaces to British heraldry,
kings love to see themselves as harnessing
the power of dragons.
The Japanese royal family even claimed descent
from dragons.
Daenerys Targaryen's claim to the Iron Throne
stems from her status as the mother of dragons.
And yet, there are important differences between
dragons in the east and the west.
In the west, dragons are almost always monsters
with fiery breath waiting to be offed by heroes
or gods.
Killing a dragon is an important rite of passage
for many western heroes, sorta like a violent,
scaly bar mitzvah with swords and fire breath.
But, in Asian myths, dragons are often benign.
Yes, they’re powerful and fearsome, but
they bring rain instead of fire, which is
usually great news for agrarian people.
At least ... in moderation.
And most uniquely, in Chinese mythology, sometimes
it’s the dragon that gets to be the hero.
Next time we’re going to round out our monster
mash with an episode on those witches of eastwick,
those maidens of malevolence: HAGS.
________________
[1] Handbook of Chinese Mythology p. 108
[2] Rosen, p52
[3] Rosen p. 52 and Daniel 14: 23-27
[4] Ferdowsi, A. Shanameh: The Persian Book
of Kings.
Penguin 2006 p. 155