Great Beast that is called Dragon

Of all the creatures in the world, none inspire more awe and fear than the great beast known all over the world as Dragon. From the Orient to the Occident, the world of the fantastic beasts has been always ruled by the dragons. It is one of those universal myths, akin to the story of the Flood, that finds mention in almost every mythology and system of folktales in the world. And as many are the variations in the myths and cultures, that many are the variations in the depiction of dragons themselves. From Serpentine to Lizard-like, from brute beasts to intelligent beings, all forms of dragons exist, peppered across myths throughout the world.

Of the various depictions of dragons, the Oriental forms of these great beasts are perhaps the oldest. The dragons of the Orient are depicted as long, serpentine beasts. The departure from their serpentine forms comes in the form of short legs, or ‘claws’, which can number anywhere from 2 to 5, with 5-Clawed Dragons often being used to represent the Emperor in China. They are wingless, yet capable of flight through mystical means. Associated beasts include the Flood Dragons, which are shown as an intermediate stage of evolution between the Dragon and the Snake.

They are often associated with water, a fact that runs quite contrary to their western counterparts. Chineses dragons are associated with rain-bearing clouds while the Japanese Water deities are often draconic. This association is strengthened by the common motif in the Orient of praising the great rivers as physical manifestations of dragons.

The personalities of Oriental dragons is a complicated study. Most representations show them as quite benevolent beings, if not inordinately proud. They are displayed as extremely intelligent, often erudite and mysterious in a manner that reminds of the Western trope of ‘The Wizard’. They are shown as mounts or companions of deities, if not as deities themselves, who lend aid to the heroes when approached for help. Simultaneously, some dragons are also depicted as evil beings, though doubtlessly intelligent, and are often the final boss of their tales. But making a generalisation, we will find that Dragons are considered as auspicious beasts overall.

In a trend that is rather exceptional, Indian Mythology, equally as old as any other system of legends, lacks any mention of a creature that could be considered strictly draconic. Though serpents do form a significant part of the legends, their evolution into dragon never happened in the subcontinent, making Dragons one of the rare popular archetypes that are not quite as universal as some other myths have been depicted to be.

The Western Dragon has undergone a lot of revisions over the years. The Latin word root draco- was understood to mean the same as the word serpens- or the serpent. The earliest depiction of Dragons in Classical Mythology, like the tale of Ladon, Python or the Ismenian and Colchian Dragons, assigns a distinctly serpentine characteristic to these creatures. Till late Medieval ages, Dragons in the west were essentially puffed up great serpents. They lived underground and in swampy areas, favourite haunts of their cousins the snakes, and rarely were there any reports of Dragons breathing fire, though they were almost always poisonous.

It was only after the 12th Century CE that the familiar form of the Western Dragon, with the appearance more reminiscent of lizards, with horned visages and wing-like appendages, variously leathery or feathery, were envisioned. So was born the great beast that terrorised cities and villages for hundreds of years in literature. And strict definitions were formed of the allied species, with the four-legged dragons lording over the two-legged wyverns, wingless drakes or the legless basilisks as the king of all beasts, on land or in the sky

Western Dragon, without fail, have been depicted in antagonistic roles, from the serpent-legged Typhon that terrorised Olympus to the Dragon Fafnir and the beasts that were all so often the villains in the stories of Christianity and it has continued till modern times, when Smaug the Terrible, descendant of Ancalagon the Black, cast its shadow on the Misty Mountains and gave us one of the greatest masterpieces of modern literature.

In Western Myths, dragons were unflinchingly cruel, often mindless beasts. They were considered greedy as well, said to save up vast stores of wealth, up for taking for the Hero who would slay it. And the traditions of Greece, wherein these vengeful pawns of gods required a sacrifice of the Virgin for appeasement, added the qualities of lustful to their name, spawning stories of dragons kidnapping princesses and birthing one of the most well-known tropes we know of.

Modern descriptions of dragons run the whole of spatial and temporal gamut in their depictions of dragons. From brute, mindless beasts that they are in the world of Harry Potter, to great wyrms of incalculable age and power in some domains, to the intelligent, righteous beings of the Inheritance Cycle, almost every role imagined has been sometimes or the other thrust upon them.

There have been Dragon-slaying Heroes, like the Bard of Dale and Earendil, to Dragon-riding Heroes like Eragon and Aerys Targaryen. Dragons themselves have taken many roles, the Sleeping Evil, like Smaug, the Wise Advisor, as in the Metallic Dragons, the Foul Beasts, like the Chromatic Dragons, and Trusted Steeds, like in Inheritance Cycle.

The earliest of Dragons were snakes, and were representative of mankind’s near-universal fear and revulsion of the scaly beasts. Their association with water and earth were natural, given the similarity already envisaged to snakes.

Yet, the Dragons were also oft described, though in twisted words, as guardians of the Sacred Feminine and Virgin Lands. For the ascendancy of Patriarchy, Matriarchy of the Tribal Days had to go, and this was represented in the tales of Heroes like Perseus slaying Cetus to win Andromeda and such. Opening of new frontiers, virgin lands, or plain subjugation of old tribes, was described in parables and fables, such as Cadmus slaying the Ismenian Dragon to establish Thebes, or Apollo killing the Python and reestablishing the city of Pythia as Delphi.

This use of Dragons to describe some aspect to be conquered continued, when the Red and White Dragons of the Arthurian Legend, the Red of Welsh was defeated by the White of the English and hence were established as national icons. Further on, they became fables which ascribed thankful cities submitting to Christianity as Saints and Heroes slayed tyrant Dragons, the underlying deaths easily ascribed to the defeated evil.

So infatuated was Christianity with the Idea of the Evil Dragons, some later descriptions equate Lucifer with a Dragon, which on hindsight is not that great of a leap, with the already established trope of the Serpent of Evil. It’s one of the titles of the Satan that inspires the title of this article, The Great Beast that was called Dragon.

The Classical evil dragon, the Oriental divine dragon or the more Modern concept of Dragon-riders or the Draconic counterpart to the Wise-Man of the Mountain, each has been wildly popular in the imagination of the masses. So much so, that as far back as the 18th century noted authors had commented on the over-abundance of draconic fantasies in the literary circles.

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