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[history or textual resources] Differences between the Eastern and Western Dragons
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A little bit of background to give you some context: I teach at a uni in China and was having a discussion with my students about dragons. He was unsure as to whether there was a linguistic difference between Eastern and Western dragons because the looks, attitudes and attributes of the two seemed to be completely different. This got me thinking and I now have a million questions. I am looking for serious replies on this, please.
- Have Eastern dragons always been called dragons or was the parallelism created after the fact as the best way to describe the monster in a translated, Western context? In other words, do the Eastern languages suggest something different but we call it a dragon for translation/conceptual ease?
- What are the most notable distinctions between the two?
- When are some early instances of the concepts overlapping in text and literature?
- Is there any definitive source providing a correlation between what extinct (or living) animal that dragon mythos spurred from?
Any other comments or suggestions are welcomed. Thanks!
In other words, do the Eastern languages suggest something different but we call it a dragon for translation/conceptual ease?
Yes, I think so, although the difference is more obvious with the Eastern dragon's feminine partner, the phoenix. In China, they're often paired - feilong and fenghuang, the long being the masculine, airy dragon and the huang the feminine celestial bird (although there's a masculine side to the fenghuang, too) ...
The etymology of long (龍) seems to be a pictograph of flying serpent along with two characters - one that means "celibate" (which is entwined with dragon) and one that means "flesh" or "carcass".
"Dragon," on the other hand, comes from the Greek drakon, a reptilian sea monster, which appears to descend from derkesthai, to see clearly. The idea is probably that European dragons had that hypnotic gaze that would disarm or charm potential opponents.
The same word is used to translate the Hebrew tannin, one of many words describing sea monsters in the Bible (like Leviathan and Rahab).
What are the most notable distinctions between the two?
The Chinese ones are not, as far as I'm aware, all bad eggs, while the Greek (and biblical) ones are. They're there in stories so that heroes have something to kill, whether it's Perseus or St. George.
In Europe and the Bible, dragons can be ciphers for political power, but almost always represent mob rule or chaos, going back to the primal waters that existed before creation. That means (strictly biblically here) they're also in some ways beyond God, or anti-Yahweh, who's the law-giver who calms the waters to bring Earth into being.
I'm fairly sure both Greek and biblical conceptions of dragons-as-sea-monsters (although, need to note, at least Jeremiah talks about them living in the desert, too) descend from Babylonian myths about Tiamat, the mother of monsters in the Enuma Elish.