Dragons of the East and West

Dragons, both benevolent and wicked, appear in folklore, literature, and art all across the globe. On the origin of dragons, and the myths and legends they inspired.

Dragon medallion, artist unknown. Ming Dynasty, ca. 16th century. Via the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In a flash of crimson, the fisherman’s fly launches through the air and lands with a quiver on the surface of the lake. The man’s village rests not far up the road, and with any luck, he’ll return home with a feast. 

Ripples gently emerge, and the man waits patiently to reel in his prize. The air is unusually humid, even for late spring, but he blots his forehead with the handkerchief his wife lovingly engraved with his initials. Surely, it is the sun’s radiance, and nothing more. 

Growing impatient, the man moves further down the lakeshore and tries again. This time, he’s successful. 

It’s big. Whatever he’s caught is no ordinary fish. His arms ache as he furiously hauls in his prize. Sweat drips down his cheeks. His eyes narrow. 

Suddenly, with the force of a typhoon’s gale, the man is knocked off his feet. The fish drags him into the lake, and just when the man gains the sense to release his rod, the line snaps. 

The water breaks. 

A great beast soars from the depths. Its long, serpentine body glimmers with iridescent scales. It shakes the water from its crown and focuses its lizard eyes squarely on the fisherman. A dragon. 

The man’s reaction to this event will vary based on culture. After all, dragons mean different things to different people. To some, they are gods who bring rain and good fortune. To others, they are a symbol of the Devil himself.

While the most popular depictions of dragons come from East Asian and European folklore, the creature’s origins lie geographically in the middle. The earliest stories of draconic creatures come from Mesopotamian and Hindu legends, such as the three horned snakes of Akkadian mythology (Ušumgallu, Bašmu and Mušmaḫḫū), and Vritra, the draconic demon featured in the Rig Veda. In Vritra, we see aspects of both the Eastern and Western dragons that would follow—like the Chinese dragons, he is a serpentine creature associated with rain, but he is also a demon who hoards water like a European dragon might hoard gold. As Saint George would later defeat his dragon, Vritra also meets his end at the hands of a holy figure: Indra, the Hindu god of rain and king of the devas. 

Jade dragon from the Hongshan culture (4700 to 2900 B.C.), artist unknown. Via Wikimedia Commons.

In China, the earliest known depictions of draconic creatures come from the stone piles of the Xinglongwa culture (6200–5400 B.C.), though the famous jade dragons created by the Hongshan culture would arrive later (4700-2900 B.C.). Dragons became a mainstay in Chinese myths, in which they were generally portrayed as wise, benevolent deities who bestowed rain upon the people of China. To this day, Chinese dragons are symbols of good luck, and being born during the Year of the Dragon (such as this year, 2024) is an auspicious sign for one’s life. 

Stories of dragons abound among the diverse peoples of China, from the popular folklore of Short-Tailed Old Li (who in some versions has a short tail because his father cut part of it off), to the stories of dragon kings that emerged during the Eastern Han dynasty alongside the expansion of Buddhism in China. Some dragon myths explain the origins of humanity, such as a legend from the Miao people about a divine dragon whose breath transformed monkeys into humans. While Chinese dragons are generally on the side of good, this isn’t always the case—for example, the mother goddess Nüwa slays an evil dragon who had attacked and killed humans. But overall, Chinese dragons (as with Japanese and other East Asian dragons) possess a vastly different demeanor from the dragons of Abrahamic cultures. 

I grew interested in this topic after reading Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree, a fantasy epic set in a world where dragons are a fact of life. While Shannon’s work possesses influences from all different cultures (and she notes that the various peoples of Priory are not meant to be authentic representations of any historical groups), her novel takes inspiration from this distinction of Eastern and Western dragons. In the East, the dragons are benevolent water deities. Like the many dragons of East Asian myths, they do not possess wings, and they protect and fight alongside humans. 

Recovering the Stolen Jewel from the Palace of the Dragon King, Utagawa Kuniyoshi ca. 1853. Via the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But in the Western kingdoms, the “wyrms” are modeled on European dragons—evil fire-breathers who fly on bat-like wings and terrorize humans. Dragons also appear in Islamic folklore, particularly the Persian Shahnama or “Book of Kings,” whose characters sometimes battle dragons. The dragons of medieval Persian art are stylistically similar to Chinese dragons, thanks to the influence of trade between the two groups. But the Persian dragon is largely not the protagonist of its story, and this might be where the connection to the European dragon emerges. 

European dragons found their footing in ancient Greek and Roman myths, in which draconic creatures were not gods but monsters whom heroes like Hercules and Perseus had to defeat. Later, dragons became a common figure in medieval European bestiaries—texts that provided an overview of animals and mythological creatures through a Christian allegorical lens. The primary readers (and writers) of bestiaries were clerics, who were less concerned with scientific accuracy and more concerned with how the legends of various creatures could illuminate Christian virtues. Dragons were decidedly wicked creatures who attacked humans and carried disease, a detail that Shannon includes in The Priory of the Orange Tree, as the various kingdoms of its fantasy universe fear the spread of a draconic plague. 

Saint George and the Dragon, about 1450-1455, Master of Guillebert de Mets. Tempera colors, gold leaf, and ink, 7 5/8 × 5 1/2 in. Getty Museum, Ms. 2 (84.ML.67), fol. 18v

I find that people are prone to simplifying Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic faiths by fixating upon the Abrahamic distrust of magic, while lumping all non-Abrahamic religions into a sort of mystical, nature-loving, magic-accepting group. Neither is fully accurate, and sadly, persecution of accused witches did exist beyond the Western world (and witch trials remain a problem today). 

Furthermore, our understanding of anti-magical sentiment within Christianity is often warped by the Protestant Reformation. In reality, medieval Christians possessed far more ambivalent views regarding “occult sciences” and folk magical practices.* Catholic priests (as well as Muslim and Jewish writers) compiled grimoires with instructions on necromancy, divination, and demonology, and astrologers and magicians like John Dee served as advisers in royal courts.** Therefore, we cannot assume that the wickedness of the Abrahamic dragon and the benevolence of the Eastern dragon fall neatly into cultural stereotypes—the more you dig, the more you’ll find that the beliefs of the medieval world are far more complicated than you might assume. 

Why, then, is the European dragon associated with the Christian Devil? As Jonathan Evans writes in Medieval Folklore: A Guide to Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs, the evil of the European dragon, already established in Greek myths, could have been exacerbated by mistranslations of Hebrew: 

By a series of mistranslations, three Hebrew words for sea and land monsters hostile to God or the people of God were rendered into various Greek terms by the translators of the Greek Bible and later into Latin by St. Jerome, with the result that medieval readers and hearers of the Bible, particularly of the Psalms and the prophets, interpreted the dragon as a symbol of pride. A fourth term, the Hebrew word for “jackal,” was mistranslated as “dragon,” and this error is the origin of the long tradition, culminating in the medieval bestiaries, in which the dragon appears as an allegorical symbol for the sin of pride and thus for the original author of pride, Satan.

Saint George and the Dragon, Peter Paul Rubens ca. 1605-1607. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Like the rich legacy of dragon-stories in East Asian folklore, European myths have plenty of their own dragons to choose from. Dragon-slaying (or simply banishing) is a popular motif in both male and female saints’ lives, with the most famous example being the story of Saint George. Dragon myths also persisted in polytheistic communities, as we see in the Old English epic Beowulf. During the late Middle Ages, after the Church had succeeded in converting the peoples of Northern Europe, dragon stories found new inroads in chivalric romances. (King Arthur, anyone?)

This essay has focused on Eurasian dragons, but what’s mystifying about this creature is that its legends exist all over the world. In the Americas, there’s Unhcegila, the horned serpent of Lakota folklore, the Seneca lake serpent Gaasyendietha, the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl (whose earlier zoomorphic depictions portrayed him as a feathered serpent), the fiery Brazilian serpent Boitatá, and countless other giant serpents whose additional features, from horns to fire, give them a draconic edge.

Where do they all come from?

Theories range from our early human ancestors’ innate fear of snakes, memories of large crocodiles or exaggerations of lizards in the wild, and even the hypothesis that some ancient communities might have stumbled upon dinosaur fossils. As with much of folklore, the dragon is shrouded in smoke and mist, its origins burrowed deep in the caverns of our species’ fears and dreams. Like the unicorn and the fairy, dragons in the contemporary West have largely been de-fanged. But a sense of their ancient majesty can still be found across East Asian countries, from houses of worship to major festivals like Lunar New Year celebrations.   

Dragons traverse not only the boundaries of Eastern and Western myths, but they fly between our primordial fears and our lofty aspirations. Fire and water, brimstone and air. Perhaps that’s the secret to the dragon’s origins: in creating a mythical giant, humans found a way to reflect their rich complexities back upon themselves. 

*For more information on medieval European beliefs regarding magic, I would recommend Medieval Folklore: A Guide to Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs edited by Carl Lindahl, John McNamara, and John Lindow (Oxford University Press). 

**For a deeper exploration on magic and “occult sciences,” and their impact on medieval British politics, I would recommend Magic in Merlin’s Realm: A History of Occult Politics in Britain by Francis Young (Cambridge University Press).

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