The "Kappa" Legend.

A Comparative Ethnological Study on the Japanese Water-Spirit "Kappa"

and Its Habit of Trying to Lure Horses into the Water
Author(s): Ishida Eiichiro and 吉田健一
Source: Folklore Studies, Vol. 9, (1950), pp. i-11
Published by: Asian Folklore Studies, Nanzan University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1177401
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 THE KAPPA LEGEND
A Comparative Ethnological Study on the Japanese Water-Spirit
Kappa and Its Habit of Trying to Lure Horses into the Water

BY
Ishida Eiichiro

CONTENTS
FOREWORD
CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods
The Japanese Islands (1)-Kappa luring horses into the water (1)-Pastures
by the water-side (1)-Fine horses sired by dragons (1)-Fine horses appear out
of the water (2)-China and its borders (3)-Dragon-horses (3)-Dragons turn
into horses, and horses into dragons (4)-Dragons and celestial horses (7)-
Pasturing mares by the waterside so that they may bear fine steeds (7)-Divine
horses in the water (11)-Water-gods on horseback (13)-Horses and floods (14)
-White Horse Cave (15)-Underground water (15)-Water-horses of Central
Asia (16)-Ting Pu-ling of Annam (18)-River-gods seek to draw horses into the
water (19)-Sacrifice of horses to water-gods (20)-Importation of Chinese books
(21)-Western and northwestern parts of China (22)-Sea-stallion (23)-The
Thousand Nights and One Night (23)-Wild males and domesticated females
(24)-The Caucasus etc. (26)-Rashi, the winged horse (26)-Anahita (27)-
A Permian idol (27)-Islamic culture and sea-stallions (27)-Prows in the form
of horses' heads (28)-The god Varuna (28)-The Finnic peoples (28)-Nikki,
the water-spirit (29)-The Germanic peoples (29)-Hoofs pointing backward
(30)-Odin and the Nakki (31)-Scotland (32)-Kelpies (32)-The Boobrie etc.
(32)-Iron as a charm (33)-Charms against water-spirits (34)-Ireland (35)
-Manannan's white horse (35)-Fine steeds of Cichulainn (35)-St. Michael
and others (35)-The goddess Epona (36)-France (36)-The magical properties
of water (36)-Spain (37)-" Horses of the flood " (37)-Russia (37)-The mare
Rusalka (37)-Bohemia (38)-Misshapen forms and the nether world (38)-
Barks of trees have magic powers (38)-Lausitz (39)-Headless black horses (39)
-Hungary (40)-Southern Slavs (40)-The chariot of the sun (40)-The
Greeks and the Mediterranean (40)-Poseidon, the horse-god (40)-Areion
and Pegasus (40)-Poseidon on horseback (41)-Sacrifice of horses (41)-The
earth and Poseidon (42)-Poseidon the bull-man (42)-God of the blossoming
bough (42)-Great sea-bull (43)-Miss Harrison's theory (43)-The Minotaur,
the Cretan bull (43)-Minos, the priest and king-god (44)-Egypt, Crete and Greece
11 THE KAPPA LEGEND

(44)-Atlantis (44)-Bull hunting and bull-fights (45)-Sacred pillars and sacri-

ficial bulls (45)-Mycenaean culture and the worship of Poseidon (45)-The sun
and Poseidon (45)-Poseidon, the foreign god (46)-The coming of horses to
Crete (46)-Libyan origin (46)-Southward movement of the horse (47)-The
rearing and worship of oxen (49)
CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods
Eduard Hahn (50)-The mystery of the moon (51)-The moon and women (51)
-The cow and the horn (52)-Religious origin of domestic animals (52)-The
wheel and the plough (52)-Nomadic sphere of culture (53)-The ox and the
horse (54)-The female principle, the moon, the ox and agriculture (55)-Figurines
of the primitive All-mother (56)-The spiral, the serpent and the moon (56)-
The Mother Earth (57)-Lunar mythology (57)-Fertility and ox-worship (57)
-The moon and water (59)-The rain-cow (60)-The moon and the water of
life (61)-The horse and the moon (62)-Horses of the sun (62)-Worship of the
sky (63)-The replacing of the ox with the horse (63)-Poseidon as earth-god
and god of agriculture (64)-The corn-spirit and the horse (64)-Water and the
ox (66)-Courtship of a water-god (66)-Sacrifice of virgins (67)-Oxen and horses
offered to water-gods (68)-Horse-headed agricultural gods (68)-North and
South (72)-The Slavs (73)-The water-man (73)-The Turks (73)-The Finno-
Ugric peoples (74)-Water-festivals, oxen and horses (74)-Master of the water
(75)-Oxen kept by water-spirits (75)-Oxen of the earth-spirit and the oxen
of wells (76)-The Germanic peoples (77)-The water-bull (77)-The Celts
"
(77)-The Semites (78)-" Oxen's well " (78)-The bull which bears the " sea
(78)-Petsians (79)-White horses and river-gods (79)-Sacrifice of cows (79)
-Distribution of the water-horse legend and the Iranian peoples (80)-Sacred
urine of oxen (80)-India (81)-Pre-Aryan culture (81)-Sacrifices to the flood
demon (82)-Buffalo demon (82)-Varuna in the Asvamedha (83)-The horse and
the mysteries of Mrtyu-Prajapati-Asvamedha (84)-Aditi (84)-The Earth-Mother
and oxen (85)-Gods of thunder and rain, and oxen and horses (85)-Indra-
Adad type of thunder-god (86)-Moon, thunder and rain (86)-The thunder-
god mounted on the bull (87)-The thunder-god as the god of fertility (87)-
Susa-no-o-no-mikoto (89)-Thunder-gods in the form of serpents (89)-China
and her border regions (90)-Thunder and the dragon (90)-Wicked dragons
destroyed by thunder (90)-The chiao-dragon in the form of oxen (91)-Origin
of the domestication of oxen and horses (91)-The ox-headed Shen-nung (93)-
Water-horses and water-oxen in the Shan-hai-ching (93)-" Ox in the service
of the river-prince" (94)-An iron ox quells a river in flood (95)-Tree-spirit
in the form of a blue ox (96)-Single-horned oxen of the sacred tree (97)-Blue
oxen in the water (98)-Mongolian water-oxen (98)-Oxen and wind and rain (99)
-Golden ox and golden chain (100)-Golden ox in Annam (102)-Hsii Chen-chiin
imprisons an evil chiao-dragon (103)-Iron pillars and iron chains (103)-Chiao-
dragons fear iron (104)-Fights with oxen in the water (104)-Li Ping and the
river-god (104)-Bull-fight and fertility rites (106)-Clay oxen and ta-ch'un (107)
-Oxen, the she and the tsu (107)-Oxen and the megalithic culture (108)-Carp
turned into iron (108)-Stones in the earth (109)-Carp, chiao-dragons, and serpents
 CONTENTS iii

(110)-Stone oxen in the water (110)-Water-spirits quelled by stone rhinoceroses

(110)-Stone pillars and sacrificial oxen (111)-The earth, ancestors, sexual organs
and serpents (112)-Cutting off the heads of oxen with iron swords (112)-Dragon-
horses cum celestial horses versus river-oxen cum earth-oxen (112)-Heaven is
represented by the horse, and the earth by the ox (113)-White horse and blue
ox (113)-The Abasy of the Yakut (114)-The Japanese Islands (114)-Agri-
culture and the ox (114)-Divine oxen in the water (115)-The ox and the ceremo-
ny of praying for rain (115)-The Nakoshi festival etc. (115)-The riddle of the
kappa trying to lure horses into the water (116)

CHAPTER III Monkeys and Water-gods

Tortoises and snapping turtles (117)-Otters (118)-Boy water-gods (118)-
The wang-liang (119)-The shui-hu (120)-The ho-shui-kuei (120)-The shui-
yun (120)-Bowl on the head (120)-Monkeys (121)-Monkeys by the water-
side (122)-Monkeys are considered as the enemies of the kappa (122)-The
water-monster Wu Chih-ch'i (123)-Sung Wu-k'ung (125)-Monkeys, horses and
the kappa (126)-Visnu (126)-Gandharvas (127)-Monkeys kept in stables (128)
-Monkeys used to cure horses (128)-Monkeys are good for horses (129)-
Monkeys drive away disease (130)-Sun Wu-k'ung, the keeper of the celestial
stables (131)-The monkey ancestor of the Tibetans (131)-Chia-kuo or ma-
hua (131)-The Yang family and the Pai-ma Ti (132)-Yang Ch'ien-tu of Shu
(133)-A piece of jade carved in the form of monkeys with arms entwined (133)-
Monkeys on horseback (134)-Monkeys drawing horses (134)-Crocodiles and
the liver of monkeys (135)

CONCLUSION
Summary (135)-Fine steeds obtained by the waterside (136)-Water-gods in
the form of horses (136)-Oxen and water (136)-Ox-worship (137)-The moon,
the earth, the female principle, oxen, the power of fertility and water (137)-The
southward advance of the horse (137)-Oxen replaced by horses (138)-Western
Europe and Eastern Asia (138)-Oxen and agriculture (138)-Dragon-horses
cum celestial horses versus river-oxen cum earth-oxen (139)-Continuity of the
human culture (139)-God of thunder and rain (140)-Megalithic culture (141)
Taboo of iron (141)-The need of vision from the standpoint of world-history

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ILLUSTRATIONS
Varietiesof the Kappa. Facsimile of a colour-print of the late Tokugawa period.
Fig. 1 Kappa caught on the beach near Mito, Hitachi province.
Fig. 2 Horses and water combined in a Permian idol.
Fig. 3 Assyrian boat used about 700 B.C. and depicted in the palace of Sargon.
Fig. 4 Hippocampi depicted on the wall of Min-ui near Kizil, Chinese Turkestan.
Fig. 5 Celtic horse-goddess Epona, may originally b- a deity of springs or rivers,
conceived as a spirited steed.
a) From a bas-relief found at Bregenz, Tyrol.
iv THE KAPPA LEGEND

b) From a bronze statuette found in Wiltshire.

Fig. 6 Poseidon on horseback, on a fragment of 7th century B.C. Corinthian
pottery.
Fig. 7 Poseidon as bull-god, on a black figured amphora in the museum at
Wiirzburg.
Fig. 8 Spirals and serpents engraved on each side of a piece of mammoth tusk,
discovered at Malta near Irkutsk.
Fig. 9 Horse-headed Oshira-sama, Hirota village, Kise-gun, Iwate prefecture.
Fig. 10 Unicorns combined with a pipal tree. A sealing from Mohenjo-Daro.
Fig. 11 She-rain with the rainbow over her. A rock-painting by the Bushmen,
from a cave under the great precipice of Klein Aasvogelkop, Rouxville
District, Orange Free State.
Fig. 12 The rain-bull, with two sorcerers who own it, a snake called kanga wai.
A rock-painting by the Bushmen, from a small cave on the banks of
the Sand Spruit, Basutoland District.
Fig. 13 Monkey holding a horse. The oldest known picture in Japan re-
presenting the association of monkeys with horses, sketched on the
lower panel of a miniature tower containing some " bones of Buddha,"
in the temple Sh6my6-ji, Kanazawa, Sagami province, in A.D. 1296.
Preserved in the Kanazawa Bunko.
Fig. 14 Monkey drawing a horse, carved in relief on a votive picture dedicated
in A.D. 1589 to the Sanno Shrine, Hikita village, Musashi province.
Fig. 15 Charms to be pasted in a stable, issued by a shrine in Kiso province.
Fig. 16 Komahiki-sen or fancy coins bearing effigies of monkeys leading horses.
Fig. 17 A charm to be pasted in a stable, issued by the Oshiko shrine, Harima
province.
Fig. 18 Monkeys mounted on horseback found in designs of northern Eurasian
nomadic peoples.
a) Pendant drop from Minussinsk.
b) Pendant drop. Site unknown.
c) Pendant drop from Yekaterinovka.
Fig. 19 Kappa from the river Chikugo-gawa, Kyushu.
Fig. 20 Skull supposed to be that of the famous steed Surusumi, hung on a
pillar in the house of the family Kumagai, Izumitani village, Suruga
province, said to protect the house from fire, and heal or tame sick
or too high-spirited horses when tethered to the pillar.

Translated by Yoshida Kenichi (~/ 14-) from a revised version of

the Kappa Komahiki K6 (MfBjrJ 1) specially prepared by the author
 v

FOREWORD
This essay, the subject of which has so little to do with war and its turmoils,
was written nevertheless during the last stages of World War II. It was
originally begun as the author's contribution to a collection of studies in folklore
which was to be published in 1944 to commemorate the 70th birthday of Mr.
Yanagita Kunio, the foremost scholar and pioneer in the field of folklore in
Japan, but as work on the essay progressed, it became apparent that the nature
of the questions discussed in it made it too long for inclusion in the collection
of studies if the questions were to be treated at all adequately.
The author left for North China in 1944, and in the comparatively peaceful
atmosphere of Peking and Chang-chia-k'ou (Kalgan) where air-raids were
unknown, he was able to continue work on the essay more or less undisturbed.
About that time, an agreement was reached between the author and Dr.
M. Eder, the editor of Folklore Studies, published by the Catholic University
of Peking, for an English translation of the essay to appear in that journal.
The war ended, and after being repatriated with the greater number of
Japanese residents in China, the author was able somehow to give the essay
its present form during the difficult days which followed in Japan after the
war. The Japanese text was published by Chikuma Shob6 Ltd. in 1948
under the title, Kappa Komahiki Ko ("Kappa luring horses into the
water "). In 1949, Dr. Eder left Peking and came over to Japan. It
was then decided that he should continue to edit and publish Folklore
Studies in Tokyo, and arrangements were once more made for an English
translation of this essay to appear in its pages. The author abbreviated, or
suppressed altogether, passages in the original Japanese text which were
thought to have little importance to foreign readers, in addition to making
some necessary corrections, and entrusted the work of translation to Mr.
Yoshida Kenichi. Mr. Yoshida not being a specialist in the subject,
frequent
meetings were held between the two to determine the manner of translating
technical terms and phrases, for which part of the work the
responsibility
must rest with the author.
The essay having been written during the troubled days
preceding and
following the end of the war, much of the material employed in it could only
be obtained from indirect sources, with the exception of that
pertaining to
Eastern -Asia. Should the author be able at some later date to make use of
some of the great European and American libraries, he
hopes to add a con-
siderable amount of relevant material to that already given here.
A summary of the aim and content of the present essay is
given in the
concluding chapter. The questions discussed and the method of study em-
vi THE KAPPA LEGEND

ployed may seem a little remote from the problems which now hold the at-
tention of the anthropological world, but the author believes that there will
be some readers, at least, who will understand why he carried on the self-
appointed task of writing the essay during the most difficult days of the war
which proved to be fatal to the Japanese.
In conclusion, the author wishes to express his thanks to Mr. Yoshida
for undertaking the translation of the essay, to Dr. Eder for providing the
opportunity to have the translation published, and to Hosei University for
contributing its research fund to defray a part of the expenses of translation.

Tokyo, Sept. 1950

ISHIDA EIICHIR6

CHINESE DYNASTIES
Yin in ? 1788-1122B.C.
Chou J 1122- 249 ,
Ch'un-ch'iuu 770- 403 "
Chan-kuo F@ 403- 221,,
Ch'in 248- 207 //
Ch'ien Han HtI (Former Han) 206- 24 A.D.
Hou Han ~& (Later Han) 25- 220 /,
San-kuo @E (Three Kingdoms)
Wei i 220- 264 //

Wu M 229- 280 ,t
Shu M 220- 260 II

If
Chin ?
Western Chin WW 265- 316 I,

Eastern Chin -J: 317- 420

Pei Wei 4It (Northern Wei) 386- 436
Sung X (Liu-Sung ~iJ) 420- 479
,,
Ch'i 479- 502 /p

Liang P 502- 557

Ch'en 557- 589 f'
/t

Sui 581- 618

T'ang ) 618- 907
'I
Wu-tai I2 907- 960
Sung XK 960-1279
Liao X 916-1125
Chin i 1115-1234
Yuan X; 1280-1368
Ming 9) 1368-1644
Ch'ing f 1644-1911
 THE KAPPA LEGEND

CHAPTER I
Horses and Water-gods
The Japanese have all heard of the kappa. Legends about this little
monster, something half way between a child and a monkey, which lives in The JqP^^ese
d
rivers and ponds and plays tricks on people, are to be found everywhere in
Japan, from Okinawa in the south to Hokkaido in the north, and there are
very few Japanese who do not have memories of having been frightened in
childhood by stories about the kappa and its doings. The tricks played on Kappa
men by this monster usually follows a set pattern, among which, trying to luringhorsesinto
lure horses into the water is so common, that examples of this legend both the water
ancient and modern, collected by Mr. Yanagita Kunio in his paper Kappa
Komahiki (" Kappa luring horses into the water ") alone, cover the pro-
vinces of Iwashiro, Rikuchu, Echigo, Musashi, Sagami, Suruga, Mikawa,
Kai, Shinano, Hida, Mino, Noto, Yamashiro, Izumo, Harima, Nagato, Awa,
Tosa, Hizen and, in fact, nearly the whole of Japan. In most of these stories,
the kappa is described as failing in the attempt to draw the horse into the
water, and being made to apologize in one way or another, sometimes formally
in writing. Mr. Yanagita pays particular attention to the important part
played by horses in these kappa legends, and it is this that gave him the idea
Pasturesby the
of writing his Kappa Komahiki. A point to be noticed in connection with
water-side
these legends is that, in many of them, the horses are grazing in pastures
near a piece of water when the kappa appears and tries to lure them into it.
For instance, in Tsugu village, in Otsu district (gun), Nagato province, it used
to be a yearly custom to let the horses of the lord of the clan out to pasture
by the dykes round Sugitani pond,1) and in many of the legends from other
parts of Japan, the horses are also either tethered or grazing free by a river
or marsh when the kappa appears. The question arises then,
why such Fine horsessired
places near the water were chosen for pasturing horses. In his next paper, by dragons
Batei-seki (" Horse-shoe Stones "), Mr. Yanagita goes into this
exhaustively,
giving numerous examples from legends concerning such historically famous
horses as Ikezuki, Surusumi and Tayiuguro. For instance, a
dragon was said
to inhabit a pond on Mt. Nakui in Mutsu province, and one
night, a horse
1) Yanagita, 1912, p. 30 (ed. 1942, p. 38).
 2 THE KAPPA LEGEND

went up the mountain by moonlight and drank the water of the pond, changing
thereby immediately into an extremely fine horse, and so was named Ikezuki
(" Moon on the Pond,")2). Also, a dragon was said to live in Ryugaike
(" Dragon Pond ") near the village of Kiyokawa in Higashi-Tagawa district
in the province of Uzen, and when Sakai Tadazane was lord of those parts,
the dragon covered a mare which was grazing by the pond, and the mare
conceived, and bore a dapple colt which grew into such a fine horse, that the
owner of the mare, a farmer of Narizawa village called Choemon, presented
the horse to the lord3). It would seem to be beyond doubt that these legends
have some connection with the popular belief that fine horses are the off-
spring of dragons, or of water-gods of one sort or another, and so Mr. Yana-
gita writes on this point: " These facts, particularly when we remember that
there are many fine horses named Ikezuki that are supposed to have been born
near ponds, clearly show that the fact of many pastures throughout the land
being found near the sea, ever since the time of the compilation of the Engi-
shiki, was not merely due to considerations of economy in that such
places required the minimum of mud-walls and fences. If it had not been
for some well-established experience, or theory, that one obtained fine horses
by so doing, it is inconceivable that islands and capes should be so much
sought after as pasture land."4) He says further: "These considerations
must show that it is extremely difficult to establish the relationship between
the custom of bathing horses in rivers and marshes, known as uma-arai, the
ceremony of tethering horses and cattle near a piece of water on certain days
in the year, called Nogai or Nakoshi, and the superstition that water-gods may
be lured into covering mares, and making them conceive. Any of these facts
of any
may be the origin of the others, any of them may be a transformation
of the others, and it is not possible to reason about them from the standpoint
near
merely of a plausible evolution."5) From this idea of choosing land
Fine horses appear the water for the site of a pasture, so that mares might conceive from dragons,
out of the water it is surely only one step to the other idea that divine horses appear out of the
water. In each of the three provinces of Uzen, Ugo, and Iwashiro, there is
a village which is said to be the birthplace of the famous horse Ikezuki. But
whereas in the case of Ishisone hamlet, a part of Nishigo village in the district
of Minami-Murayama, Uzen province, the legend is that the site of the village
was once a great marsh inhabited by a dragon-serpent, and that Ikezuki was
sired by this monster,6) in Shimo-Kurokawa hamlet, a part of Nichigo village,
Okazaki district, Ugo province, it is said that once a dragon-horse appeared
out of an old pond in the village and neighed, and a mare belonging to a farmer
called Yohei heard it, and conceived, and bore Ikezuki,7) while in the village

2) ibid., p. 160 (p. 206). 5) ibid., p. 189 (p. 242).

3) ibid., p. 174 (p. 223). 6) ibid., p. 161 (p. 207).
4) ibid., p. 174 (p. 224). 7) ibid., p. 161 (p. 207).
 CHAPTER I Horse and Water-gods 3

of Yachi, Kawanuma district, in the province of Iwashiro, the reigning spirit

of Kamado pond within the precincts of the village shrine of Haguro is said
to have been a yellow horse and that it became the father of Ikezuki.8) There
is also a legend that in Tsui on the eastern coast of the district of Suki in Oki
island, the white horse Ikezuki appeared out of the waters of the Male Pond
and the Female Pond there, and crossed the sea to the province of Izumo.9)
In J6dani, a stream in Hakusan in the province of Kaga, it is said that a
villager named Ishihei once saw a small horse with very long manes and tail
spring into the stream at dawn,10) and there is also a legend that Tayu-zaki
(Cape Tayu), forming a part of the village of Futomi in Awa province, was so
named on account of a rock-cave there, out of which appeared Tayuguro,
the favourite horse of Yoshitsune,1" while marks left on rocks by the water-
side, supposed to have been made by the hoofs of such legendary horses, are
to be found all over the country.
The legend of the kappa trying to lure horses into the water, and the
idea of setting up pastures by the waterside so that dragons or water-gods
might breed with mares, and the superstition that famous horses have ap-
peared either out of the water, or some place near the water, may all be con-
sidered to have some connection with each other, and to form a part of a
common folklore, and it is quite possible to suppose that they all spring from
some common origin. It is the purpose of the present writer to investigate
further in this direction the questions raised by Mr. Yanagita in his Santo
Mindan-shu (" Folk-tales of Mountains and Islands ") which contains the
above-mentioned two articles.
The first thing that rises. to one's mind in this connection is the legend China and its
concerning dragon-horses (lung-ma H,), which is found among the Chinese. borders
The belief that water-gods or water-spirits appear in the form of dragons, is
common to China and all countries of Eastern Asia, and ever since the days Dragon-horses
of remote antiquity when Fu-hsi (t4k), who is said to have had the
body of
a serpent with a human head, reigned over China, whose a
during reign dragon-
horse bearing a chart (t'u fJ) appeared out of the Huangho (Yellow
River) and
the diviners' symbols of the eight kua (AI) were formed after the
patterns
on the chart,12)the horse and the dragon have always been
closely associated
as manifestations of the water-spirit. Among the ancient records
giving
evidence of this combination, we may cite the
Shan-hai-ching, in which the
god of Min-shan (i jl) is described as having "the body of a horse with a
dragon's head," etc. But later writings also give detailed accounts of the
dragon-horse, as in the Shang-shu-chung-hou in which we read that "Yao
caused a precious stone to be thrown into the river, and a
dragon-horse ap-
8) ibid., p. 161 (p. 207). 9) ibid., p. 167 (p. 214)
10) ibid., p. 158 (p. 203). 11) ibid., p. 163 (p. 209).
12) Shang-shu-chung-hou,Wo-ho-chi (-Jgl).
 4 THE KAPPA LEGEND

peared holding a chia (Ep carapace) in its mouth. The colour of its body was
red with green markings. It went to the altar and released the chia-t'u ( If)
from its mouth."13) Again, Sung Jou-chih who lived under the Liang
dynasty says in his Jui-ying-t'u that " the dragon-horse loves the virtuous
government, and is a spirit of the rivers. It is 8 ch'ih (() and 5 ts'un (--) high
(ch'ih=approx. 1 ft., ts'un=approx. 1 inch) and has a long neck, the whole
body being covered with scales. It has wings above the bones, with hair
that hangs down growing by the side of the wings. It has nine kinds of cries,
and it steps out on the water without sinking. It appears when a good king
reigns over the country."'4) Thus, its colour, size, shape and even its cries
are given in these records, and we may surmise from them that the dragon-
horse was a kind of a fabulous beast that combined the qualities of a dragon
and a horse. It is also recorded that a dragon-horse which appeared in March
of the 5th year of the Wu-te (7iS) era during the reign of Kao-tsu of the T'ang
dynasty, in the river Hsi-shui (fi7<) in Ching-ku-hsien (j-,) to the west
of the present Chao-hua-hsien (fltRI ) in Ssuch'uan province, " was 8 or 9
ch'ih high, and had the form of a dragon, the body being covered with scales
as though sheathed in armour. Moreover, it was striped in five colours, and
while it had the body of a dragon, its head was that of a horse, white, with
two horns. It held something in its mouth 3 or 4 ch'ih long, andit rose above
the waves, walked about, and after taking over a hundred strides, disappeared
into the water."15) According to a report made to the Emperor during the
T'ien-pao (X ) era by Huang-fu Wei-ming (l 1ti]), Governor of Lung-
yu (Si&, Kansu), as recorded in the T'ang-shu, dragon-horse borne by a
a
mare belonging to one K'u-ti Hsiao-i (Jfk4g ), an inhabitant of Lung-
chih-hsien (RtA ,, to the south of the present Lo-tu-hsien Mlg3, in the
eastern part of Ch'inghai province), ninety-nine days after its birth, had its
body covered with scales, being quite hairless. " I [says the report] was ex-
amining it, when a cloud of good augury in five colours descended on it from
afar, and remained even after a considerable time had elapsed."16) There
Dragons turn into
are also many legends of dragons turning into horses, and horses into dragons.
horses, and horses For instance, an incident that occurred early in the 4th century is recorded
into dragons in the Chin-shu as follows: "During the T'ai-an (;k:) era, children sang,
'Five horses running about loose crossed the river, and one of them turned
into a dragon,' and soon afterwards, the middle part of the Empire fell into
great disorder, many great ruling families being destroyed."17) From this
one may conjecture that the idea of horses turning into dragons and vice versa

13) T'ai-ping-yu-lan, 893 (cit. Shang-shu-chung-hou).

14) T'ien-chung-chi, 55.
15) T'ai-ping-kuang-chi,435.
16) T'ai-ping-yii-lan,895; T'ien-chung-chi,55.
17) Chin-shu,28, Wu-hsing-chih(:I'ift).
 CHAPTER I Horse and Water-gods 5
was already prevalent enough at the time to be used in such every day meta-
phors. According to the local tradition, a dragon is said to have once ap-
peared out of the water of Lung-t'an (MI " Dragon Abyss "), a pond twenty
li to the east of T'ung-chiang-hsien (UJ_),), in the Chia-ling-tao (:RMt)
section of Ssiich'uan province, and turning into a horse, pranced about,
leaving marks of its hoofs on a stone which are still supposed to be visible
today.18) Again, two dragons were supposed to live in Chin-lung-chih (jFBft
"Golden Dragon Pond ") in Ma-i-hsien (,Ifg B), to the northeast of Shuo-
hsien (0J]fJ) in North Shansi, and these, ever since the of reign the Pei Wei
dynasty, transformed themselves from time to time into two horses, one black
and the other yellow, appearing when the sky was overcast, and mares meeting
them bore colts afterwards that grew into remarkably fine horses.19) The
'
Lung-ma-t'an (gFgjg "Dragon-horse Deep "), 20 lito Lu-chou (Sj)) in the
northeast of Ssiich'uan, is supposed to be the same into which a horse plunged
and became a dragon, this horse being the one on which Wang Ch'ang-yui
(: iB) of the T'ang dynasty was sent home by Lo-p'o-hsien ('A&{|l),
who had taught him Taoist magic. The horse carried Wang back to his home
in an instant, after which the horse leaped into the abyss.20) Contrary to
this, a dragon once appeared out of the Pai-ma-ch'iian (Sj~t "White
Horse Spring "), a 100 ii to the north of Ya-chou (^j) in the eastern part
of Sik'ang province near the Ssiich'uan border, and transformed itself
into a white horse.21) In the time of Emperor Hsiian-tsung of the T'ang
dynasty, a strange horse was captured-in the Yellow River and- sent to the
Emperor from Ling-ch'ang-chiin (-WgHI, to the southwest of the present
district Hua-hsien Mj in Honan Province), and this beast had a body covered
with dragon's scales, a tail like that of a serpent, hair with the thickness of
a man's fist, manes that were not of hair, but of flesh. When rebellion broke
out, and the Emperor fled west to Hsien-yang (&ffi), the horse went west-
wards also and entered the river Wei-shui (g7J), changed itself into a dragon
and swam away, no one knows where.22) Also during the T'ang dynasty, a
horse from the barbarous regions bought by one Hsu Hsi-yen (ti:;), having
been told to do so by a Taoist fortune-teller, turned out to be a dragon from
a cave in which dwelled the Taoist sage T'ai-i-yiian-chiin (2Z6G5 ), and
when the horse was taken as far as the Kuo-hsien (*J,, 50 li to the east of
the present Pao-ch'i-hsien _ J in Shensi province), and let loose near
the Wei River, it entered the river and became a dragon again, and went away.23)

18) Ta-mingI-t'ung-chih,68, Pao-ning-fu (fiJt) ; Ta-ch'ing I-t'ung-chih,297, Pao-ning-fu, 1.

19) Ta-mingI-t'ung-chih, 21, Ta-t'ung-fu (;]([ff).
20) ibid., 72, Lu-chou, Shan-ch'uan (I(Jlll) and Hsien-chih (fiIjI).
21) ibid., 72, Ya-chou.
22) Liu-wen, 19.
23) 6.
ru-hsing Lieh-hsien-ch'iian-chuan,
6 THE KAPPA LEGEND

In connection with these legends, passages in the Hsi-yu-chi which may be

regarded as a mine of Chinese folklore from the earliest times, are of even
greater interest. According to the story given in this book, Hsiian-chuang
(z~), on his way to India to obtain the sacred Buddhist sutras, comes to
the river Ying-ch'ou-chien (,Sfd1) in Mt. She-p'an (itSij), when a dragon
appears out of the water, eats up Hsiian-chuang's mount.24) This is no
ordinary dragon, but a son of the dragon-king of the Western Seas, that had
been sentenced to be suspended in the air for having burnt one of the precious
pearls in his father's palace. However, Kuan-yin, or Avalokitegvara-Bod-
hisattva, took pity on his plight, and freed him from his position, and after
saying to him, " Change yourself into a white horse and follow the one who
is going west to bring back the sacred writings, by which you shall gain merit,"
had sent him into the river.25) So, when Kuan-yin arrives from the Southern
Seas before Mt. She-p'an, at the instance of Sun Wu-k'ung (if't) and Chin-
t'ou Chieh-ti (fi:~i), and waves a willow branch over the dragon's body,
the dragon is immediately changed into a dragon-horse,26) and for over ten
years, faithfully shares all the hardships of the journey with the rest of Hsiian-
chuang's little group on their way to India, serving as Hsiian-chuang's mount,
and proving himself to be of great use to them in time of need. For instance,
when Hsiian-chuang is turned into a tiger by a demon in the kingdom of
Pao-tsang (Wj]), and shut up in an iron cage, the white dragon-horse turns
himself into a dragon again and fights the demon, but finding himself out-
matched by the enemy, plunges into the river Yii-shui (i7Jz), hides there for
a while, and becoming a white horse once more, returns to the stable. Chu
Pa-chieh ( \/-l) sees the horse covered with sweat and wounded in the
thigh, and wonders at it, when the horse speaks to him in human language,
and acquaints him with all that has happened to the priest.27) So, when
Hsiian-chuang finally reaches India and obtains the sutras, Buddha rewards
the white horse by appointing him Heavenly Dragon, and when Chin-t'ou
Chieh-ti, by Buddha's command, leads the horse to a pond at the back of Mt.
Lin (Mll), called Hua-lung-ch'ih (4kt|j), the hair instantly falls off from
the horse's body, the skin is cast, and in the place of the horse appears a golden
dragon.28) Such instances of physical relationship between horses and dragons
are to be found even as far as Annam, where, according to the legend connected
with the White Horse Shrine in Hanoi, in Tonkin, the spirit within a dragon's
body is once said to have come out of the temple in the form of a white horse,29)
while Dang Cao, an Annamese hero who was killed in leading a rebellion
against the Chinese, is supposed to have been given a golden collar to wear

24) Hsi-yu-chi, 15. 27) ibid., 30.

25) ibid., 8. 28) ibid., 100.
26) ibid., 15. 29) Matsumoto, p. 1016.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 7

as a charm, by a spirit half-dragon and half-horse.30)

Examples of the relationship between dragons and horses are by no means Dragonsand celes-
confined to those that have already been given. The emperor Wu-ti of the tial horses
Han dynasty says in his Ode on the Celestial Horse, supposed to be written
when a horse appeared out of the river Wu-wa (gij) in the 3rd year of the
Yiian-shou (j7f) era (120 B.C.), " Now who is there for me to consort with.
The dragons are my friends."31) In another of his compositions, the Ode
to the Celestial Horse from the Western Borders, said to be written when
General Li Kuang-li defeated the king of Ta-yuan (Fergana) and cut off his
head, and returned with horses of the breed which sweat blood in the spring
of the 4th year of the T'ai-ch'u (;Ti) era (101 B.C.), there occur the words:
" The coming of the celestial horse is brought about by the dragons,"32)and
Shih-ku (gitf), in his commentary on the first Ode, says, " It is here meant,
that there is now no one to consort with, unless it be the dragons," and Ying-
shao (~7j), in his commentary on the second, says, " Celestial horses are
kin to the divine dragons, so that the coming of the celestial horse foretells the
advent of the dragon." In the reign of the emperor Hsiian-ti, Feng Feng-
shih (i%t!f) also went to Ta-yuan, where he obtained a fine horse shaped
like a dragon and returned.33) At the same time, we find the following passage Pasturingmares by
in a book under the Ming dynasty: " The dragon by its nature is most lustful. the waterside so that
When it copulates with cows, the cows bear giraffes, when with sows, the they may bearfine
sows bear elephants, and when with mares, the mares bear dragon-horses." horses
The idea of dragon-horses being the product of dragons or water-gods copu-
lating with mares is also of considerable antiquity, further evidence of which
may be found in the numerous records of the superstition which made men
pasture mares by the waterside so that they may bear excellent horses. In
Pieh-kuo-tung-ming-chi, said to be written by Kuo Hsien (3[5,) of the Later
Han dynasty, we read: " In the country of Hsiu-mi were found many divine
horses. Mules and asses are 100 ch'ih high, pure white in colour, able to go
about on the water, and having wings, often fly over the sea. Whenever
they cover the mares of the inhabitants, the mares bear divine asses." The
lake Tien-ch'ih (Q4j), to the south of the present Hui-li-hsien (*3!,) in
Ssuich'uan province, has a circumference of about 300 li, and while at its

30) Langlet, p. 176.

31) Ch'ienHan-shu, 22, Li-lo-chih.
32) ibid., 6, Wu-ti-chi; 22, Li-lo-chih.
33) " Feng-shih at last reached Ta-yuan in the west. [The king of] Ta-yuan, having heard that
the king of Sha-ch'e ( , Yarkand) had paid an extraordinary respect to him, presented
him with a fine steed like a dragon [Shih-ku (1if') says that by this, a horse having a
shape resembling that of a dragon is meant] to take back with him. The Emperor was
very pleased when Feng-shih offered him the horse."-Ch'ien Han-shu 79, Feng Feng-shih-
chuan ( gffi g).
34) Wu-tsa-tsu, 9.
8 THE KAPPA LEGEND

source it is deep and wide, it narrows and becomes shallow towards the end,
so that its source has the appearance of being its end, and its end its source,
which is the reason why it has been named Tien-ch'ih (" inverted lake "). Ac-
cording to the popular belief, divine horses lived in the lake, and mares that
were covered by them bore fine steeds that could travel 500 li a day.35) At
the foot of Mt. Lung-ch'iian (%tU "Dragon Spring ") to the northwest of
Chien-yang-hsien (MMJ",) in Ssiich'uan province, is a lake called Ch'iu-
shui (:7.J), also known as Ch'ing-ch'ih (*ff) or Lung-ch'ih (Uf, " Dragon
Pond"). In times of drought, the inhabitants offered prayers by this
lake, which were always answered by rain, and when mares were pastured
beside it, many of them became mothers of fine horses.36 Concerning
Ma-ming-hsi (,%9M ) in the country of Shu (9, Ssuch'uan), we read:
"Once an inhabitant named Cheng (]g) pastured his horses near the
river, and one of his mares bore a dragon-horse which had hoofs that were as
sharp as claws, red manes and red hair. The beast stood 7 ch'ih high, and
shaking its manes, would give long cries, leaping about on the water, which is
the reason why the river was named Ma-ming-hsi (" the dell where the horse
cried ")."37) Two dragons living in Chin-lung-ch'ih (fti " Golden Dragon
Pond ") in Ma-i-hsien (,MEJS) in North Shansi, have already been mentioned,
which, ever since the time of the Pei Wei dynasty, occasionally took the form
of two horses, one black and the other yellow. These appeared when the
sky was overcast, and "mares that met them bore colts afterwards that turned
out to be divine horses, some of which had horns like antlers "38). In the
reign of the Emperor Hsiian-tsung of the T'ang dynasty, Li-i (&), the
governor of Lin-tzui (Wgj) in Shantung province, sought dragon-horses
in the part of the country comprised in the territory of the old kingdoms of
Ch'i (W) and Lu (,), following the advice of an old man he happened to meet,
and in the summer of the 29th year of the K'ai-yiian (MJjc) era (A.D. 741),
in the 5th month, he finally found one belonging to Ma Hui-en(,Gn ,),
an inhabitant of Pei-hai-chiin (4tgi , in the present I-tu-hsien /Jwf in
Shantung), and presented it to the Emperor. This beast had manes that
were of flesh, the breast of a giraffe, and its cries were not like those of a horse.
It could travel 300 li a day. Ma Hui-en had at first only one mare, but he had
always let her bathe in the River Tzf, until one day she conceived, and bore
the dragon-horse. For this reason, we read, the horse was named Lung-
tzu (1 -T "Dragon Child ").39) The regions round Ch'inghai (Kuku-
nor) have been known from ancient times for the fine horses bred there.

35) Hua-yang-kuo-chih,Nan-chung-chih(4ij,t) ; Shui-ching-chu,36, Wen-shui (Itk).

36) T'ai-ping-huan-yu-chi, 78, Chien-nan-hsi-tao (Vf{I). 7, Mao-chou
(-iJ1S),
37) P'in-i-shengma-chi, pt. 2.
38) Ta-ming I-t'ung-chih,21 Ta-t'ung-fu.
39) T'ai-ping-kuang-chi,435; T'ien-chung-chi,55; cf. T'ang-shu 36, Wu-hsing-chih.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 9

We read in the Sui-shu: " Ch'inghaihas a circumferenceof over 1,000 li, and
there is a small mountainin the middle of it. It is the custom in those parts
to graze mares by the water in winter, and it is said that they conceive and
bear horses sired by dragons. T'u-ku-hun (fEt X) once obtained a Persian
mare and let her loose into the lake, and she bore afterwardsa dapple. This
horse could travel 1,000 li a day with ease, and for this reason was known in
its days as Dapple of Ch'inghai (~:/t)."40) Yang-lung-k'eng (~fil),
to the north of Kuei-yang-hsien(jI/S) in Kueichouprovince,is a part of a
river which is extremely deep, and supernaturalbeings are said to live in it.
According to the popular belief:
" At the beginning of spring, the barbarianswho dwell in the region drive
willow stakes into the ground, and after caressing their mares, tether them
to the stakes. Thereupon the sky becomes overcast,indefinite forms appear
which coil round the mares and cover them, and after this, the mares always
bear horses sired by dragons."
A white horse which came from these regions towards the end of the
Yuan Dynasty, was 9 ch'ih high, over a chang (10 ch'ih) in length, and riding
it was like riding on a cloud. This was later presented to the Emperor,
and was given the name of Fei-yueh-feng (~fi2 " Leaper of Peaks ").41)
A similarlegend to this is found in Shantung,a regionfar removedfrom Kuei-
chou, during the reign of the Ming Dynasty:
"In the winter of the 18th year of the Yung-lo (7}C) era (A.D. 1420)
of the Ming dynasty in the 10th month, Ts'ui Yu-liang ([5^), an inhabit-
ant of Chu-ch'eng-hsien (1Jt~S) in Shantung, presented a dragon-horse
to the Emperor. It was bluish in colour, and had manes that were of flesh
and stood up. Its body was covered with curious markings which mingled
with each other, and seemed like a dragon'sscales. It had red manes, a tail
that was not of hair but of flesh, a breast which was like that of a giraffeand
that of a phoenix at the same time, a great deal of fat about its body, and
altogether, a very curious appearance. On questioning the inhabitants of
the district, it was found that the sea about there was so deep as to be quite
unfathomable,and that a supernaturalbeing sometimes appearedthere, whose
long form could be dimly discerned in the mist. There was a mare which
alwaysgrazedby this sea, and one evening, the wind suddenlyrose, rain came,
and the mare conceived and bore this beast."424
But it seems that supernatural beings that became fathers of fine
horses did not always live in the water. For example, a celestial horse lived
on a high mountain in the eastern part of Hui-wu-hsien (~!jl, now Hui-
40) Sui-shu,83, Hsi-yii-chuan
(jiAf), T'u-ku-hun Pei-shih,96, T'u-ku-hun-chuan;
T'ang-shu,
198, Hsi-jung-chuan,T'u-ku-hun.
55.
41) T'ien-chung-chi,
42) P'in-i-shn Ma-chi,pt 1.
10 THE KAPPA LEGEND

li-hsien ~Jl! in Ssfich'uan province) at the source of the Chfin-ma-ho

"River of Fleet Steeds "). The horse could travel 1,000 li a day,
(I0,%i
and its hoof-prints are supposed to remain to this day. The inhabitants of
the region grazed their mares at the foot of the mountain, and the mares bore
fine horses, which the inhabitants called the progeny of the celestial horse.43)
There is also the breed of horses which sweat blood, that were raised in the
kingdom of Ta-yuan (Fergana). We read in the Han-shu that " they are de-
scended from the celestial horse," and there is a commentary to the work
according to which, " it is said that there is a high mountain in Ta-yuan, on
which lives a horse, that may not be captured. This being so, a five-coloured
mare is placed at the foot of the mountain, and then the horse and the mare
come together and the mare foals. All the horses so born sweat blood, for
which reason, they are called the progeny of the celestial horse."44) There
is also a passage in the Sui-shu to the effect that a divine horse lives in a cave
on the southern face of the mountain P'o-li-shan (J3 j), in the kingdom
of Tokhara. Every year, the inhabitants graze their mares by the side of
the cave, and the mares become mothers of noble horses, all of which are
said to sweat blood.45) There is a legend similar to this which is still pre-
served among the Mongols today. It seems that in ancient times, the divine
horse Bosafabo, a red chestnut stallion with a white star on his forehead,
lived in Donran cave. Everyone, from the king to the common people,
brought mares to the cave where he lived, so that they might have foals sired
by Bosafabo, and even today, many fine horses are supposed by the Mongols
to be descended from him.46) Again, just as in Japan a horse grazing in
43) Hua-yang-kuo-chih,Shu-chih (itg) ; Shui-ching-chu,36, Jo-shui (7k).
44) Ch'ienHan-shu, 96, pt. 1, Hsi-yi-chuan, Meng K'ang's commentary.
45) Sui-shu,83, Hsi-yii-chuan,T'u-huo-lo; T'ang-shu,221, pt. 2, Hsi-yu-chuan; cf. note 353.
46) Larson, p. 159. Marco Polo says that the country of Badascian (Badakshan) produces a
breed of fine horses with remarkably hard hoofs, which can travel with great speed over
mountains that no other horse could possibly traverse, and that until not long before his
time, there were many horses in that country of the strain of Alexander's horse Bucephalus,
all of which had a hornor a particularmarkon theforehead like their famous ancestor, but that
they were now extinct.-Moule and Pelliot, vol. 1, pp. 137-138, ch. 47; Yule and Cordier,
vol. 1, p. 158, bk. 1, ch. 24, p. 162, note 4. The name Bosafabo also, which is clearly not
of Mongolian origin, may quite possibly be derived from Bucephalus, which gradually took
on that form in the course of ages during which the legend of the Macedonian horse was
handed down from generation to generation among the nomadic tribes of Inner Asia. On
the other hand, we read in the Hsi-ho-chiu-shih(jMji') concerning a supernatural
stallion living on the top of a high mountain in Ta-yuan, which became the ancestor of a
famous breed of horses through mares which the people brought to the mountain to be cov-
ered by the stallion, that " The Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, hearing that there lived a
celestial horse in Ta-yuan-kuo, sent Li Kuang-li (ElWIJ) to invade the country. The
horse being captured, it was found to have a horn on the forehead, which caused much
wonder. It was then that the Emperor composed the Ode on the Celestial Horse."-T'ien-
chung-chi,55. If we compare this with the legend of Bucephalus in Marco Polo, we begin
to see the possibility of a strong desire to improve the breed of horses by cross-breeding with
the superb Western horses underlying all these legends of modern Mongols, those about
Tokhara and T'u-ku-hun of the Sui and the T'ang dynasties, and about Ta-yiian of the
time of the Han dynasty.
 CHAPTER I Hroses and Water-gods 11

Sumiyano plain at the foot of Mt. Nakui in Mutsu province, is said to have
climbed the mountain by moonlight, and having drunk the water of the pond
on the summit in which a dragon lived, became pregnant and bore the steed
Ikezuki,47' or just as a mare belonging to the wealthy Damburi of Azukizawa
in Kazuno-gun in Rikuchu province, drank the water of the pond on Mt.
Ryuba (" Dragon-horse ") and is supposed to have been changed into a
dragon-horse,48) so in China, in the time of the Sung dynasty, a white mare
once drank the water of the spring Ch'ii-ch'an-ch'uan (MlA7), 4 li to the
southeast of Shih-lou-hsien (;iWt ) in the western part of Shansi, and
bore a dragon-horse,49) while the water of Lung-ma-ch'iian (,i~ . "Spring
of a Dragon-horse ") in Hsi-ho-hsien (7iiA) in Kansu is said to have this
property that, " every spring, mares drink there at night, and become pregnant
and bear foals, which at first have no hair, and have to be wrapped in felt.
After a few months, hair begins to grow, and in less than three years, the horses
grow to be identical with those of Ta-yuan.50) Although actual intercourse
between mares and dragons, or divine horses, is not recorded, we read in
the Shu-i-chi of Jen Fang of the Liang dynasty:
"King Mu (WX-?) grazes his eight horses in Lung-ch'uan (fJlI)
in the island of the Eastern Sea. Grass grows on the island, of a particular
kind called lung-ch'u (tj " dragon-fodder "). When a horse eats of it, it
becomes capable of travelling 1,000 li a day, and it is written in an ancient
record that a tuft of this lung-ch'u grass once turned into a dragon-horse."51)
This, and other passages like: "Where Emperor Wu of the Han dy-
nasty used to graze his horses in the midst of a lake, the grass even to this day
retains the appearance of having been bitten. So this place in the midst of
the lake is today called Ma-tse (, W " Moor of Horses "),"52 would seem
to be further evidence of the idea of pasturing horses by the waterside, so that
mares might bear fine horses.
Once mares are supposed to bear noble horses through intercourse with Divinehorsesin
the water
47) Yanagita, 1912, p. 160 (ed. 1942, p. 206).
48) ibid., p. 173 (p. 222).
48, Ho-tung-tao (Xitg) 9, Hsi-chou (ia{).
49) T'ai-ping-huan-yii-chi, We read in this work
that, " A passagein the Ch'un-ch'iu
says that Hsien Kung (-!.'), with the ch'eng~ (chariots)
of Ch'ii-ch'an (0W) passed through Yu (g) and invaded Kuo (N). Ch'u-ch'an is
thought to producea breedof fine horses," and some people are of the opinion that Ch'u-
ch'an is the country of Ch'u-chih (r35) or Kuei-tzi (ffit), a countryknown for its breed
of fine horses. In a correspondingpassage in the T'ai-ping-huan-yi-chi, an explanation of
the Lung-ch'uan (]b "Dragon-spring") in Shih-lou-hsien(5SBS' ) is given as follows:
" Lung-ch'iianis a springat the foot of the mountain Tung-shan
([L)), 10 li to the south-
east of the hsien. Many fine horses are bred among those pasturedby this spring, whence
its name of Lung-ch'uan."
50) Ta-mihg I-t'ung-chih,35, Kung-ch'ang-fu (If/f).
51) Shu-i-chi,pt. 1.
52) ibid., pt. 2.
12 THE KAPPA LEGEND

divine beings in the water, it is quite natural that the divine beings themselves
should next come to be thought of, not only as dragons in the shape of serpents,
but as having the form of water-horses. The divine horses of Tien-ch'ih,
already mentioned, embody the same idea as the yellow horse of Kamado
Pond in Yachi village in the province of Iwashiro, which became the father
of Ikezuki. Four divine horses of Tien-ch'ih are supposed to have appeared
together, first during the reign of Emperor Chang of the Han dynasty,53)
and then again much later, during the Yuan-ho (;Cii) era of the T'ang dy-
nasty,54) at both times when the province of I-chou (IIH) was being ruled
by a particularly beneficent governor. In the 14th year of the T'ai-yuan (;
;7) era of the Chin dynasty (A.D. 389) also, two such horses, one white and
the other black, are supposed to have appeared over the water of the lake, as
though engaged in play.55) The idea of these divine horses coming out of the
water is in itself an ancient one. The passage in the Hsiao-ching-wei yiian-
shen-ch'i which says, " When virtue reaches the mountains, . .. divine horses
shall appear out of the lake,"56) expresses the same idea as that of the dragon-
horse emerging with a chart out of the river, and we also read in the records
of the time that in the summer of the 2nd year of the Yiian-shou (i7dc ) era (121
B.C.), during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, a horse appeared
out of the water of the river Yu-wo-shui (.-7J'., to the north of Shu-fang-
chiin AJ)lifISin Ordos in Inner Mongolia), and again in the autumn of the
4th year of the Yiian-ting (xiJth) era (113 B.C.), out of the river Wu-wa-
shui (Sj7k<, said to be a tributary of the river Tang-ho |if in An-hsi-
hsien ]fg,. in Kansu).57) A pond on the mountain Shen-ma-shan (ji
M,tj "Mt. Divine Horse," the present Mt. Nan-po-chung |l~fdil) in
Kansu has been known from old to be the abode of dragon-horses, and
once a horse was captured there with a head 3 ch'ih long.58) In the time of
53) "During the reign of the emperor Chang-ti of the Han dynasty, Wang Fu (3E.) of
Shu-chun (.S) was made governor of I-chou (]I'). He ruled over the people so well that
four celestial horses appeared out of the river Tien-ch'ih."-T'ai-ping-kuang-chi, 435. A pas-
sage in the Hua-yang-kuo-chih which also says that, " Four celestial horses appeared out o
the river Tien-ch'ih," is quoted in the T'ai-ping-yii-lan, 897, and again, as in the following
note, in the P'in-i-sheng Ma-chih.
54) "It says in the Hua-yang-kuo-chihthat, four celestial horses appeared out of the river Tien-
ch'ih. It says in the Nan-man-chuan(jUp) also, that during the Yuan-ho (5G[) era under
the T'ang dynasty, Wang Tsao (3ET) became governor of I-chou, and he ruled so well that
four celestial horses appeared out of the river Tien-ch'ih."-P'in-i-sheng Ma-chih, pt. 1.
55) Shui-ching-chu,36, Wen-shui.
56) Hsiao-ching-weiyiian-shen-ch'i,pt. 2; T'ai-ping-yii-lan,893.
57) Ch'ienHan-shu, 6, Wu-ti-pen-chi(fg,l:2). But in the Li-lo-chih (gl,t ) of the same work,
the above Ode is described as having been " composed when a horse was produced from
the water of Wu-wa in the 3rd year of the Yuan-shu (Jxi-) era." Cf. Izushi, p. 225, note 39.
58) " The Ma-ch'ih-shui (,i/{rC) flows by the foot of Mount Po-chung and joins the River Hsi-
han-shui (jNi7JX) further south. It says in the K'ai-shan-tu (Tun-chia-k'ai-shan-tu)that there
is a pool in the Mount Sh6n-ma (" Divine Horse ") in Lung-hsi (Kansu) which is sup-
posed to produce dragon-horses, for'which reason it is called also Lung-yuan-shui (%J7jf
" Dragon Pool River "). A horse was captured here in ancient times whose skull measured
3 ch'ih in length."-Ta-ming I-t'ung-chih, 35, Kung-ch'ang-fu.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 13

the Han dynasty, a tributary of the river Mien-shui (i7]c, the present river
Han-shui), which flows through Hupei province, constantly produced several
hundreds of horses, and the hole out of which they appeared was named for
that reason Ma-hsiieh (,X/t "Horse-hole "). When Lu Hsiin (|) of
the kingdom of Wu, during the period of the Three Kingdoms, attacked
Hsiang-yang (1ik), he too is said to have captured ten horses there.59) At
the beginning of the Chia-p'ing (/zp) era, during the reign of the king
Ch'i-wang of Wei, a strange horse is said to have appeared out of the Pai-
ma-ho (N AMi "River ( of White Horse "), to the south of Yao-yang-hsien
(ffi ,) in Hopei province, and passing by the royal pasture at night, emitted
cries to which all the horses neighed in response. When its footprints were
examined the next day, they were seen to be as large as a hu (f, a ten shih
measure), and after going for a few li, were seen to return to the river.60)
Among other ancient records, the name t'ao-tu (Ni) is mentioned in the
following passage in the.Shan-hai-ching : " In the Northern Seas lives a beast
which is shaped like a horse, and this beast is called t'ao-tu. There is another
beast, which is called chiao (./). This is shaped like a white horse, it has
great teeth with which it eats tigers and leopards. There is another white
beast, shaped like a horse. This is called k'ung-k'ung(l) .. ."6) This t'ao-tu,
too, later came to be regarded as a supernatural beast which appeared when
an enlightened ruler governed the country, as we may see from such des-
criptions as: " The t'ao-tu is a mystic beast, which appears when an enlightened
king is on the throne. It sometimes averts disasters, and comes when virtue
fills the land,"62) and the name was also applied to all fine horses in general.
Such legends as King Mu staying at Ch'ii-lo (MljB) when he visited Huang-
tse (ji "Yellow Moor'.'), and making the court musicians sing: "In
the Yellow Pond, sand flows from the horses' mouths. In the Yellow Moor,
jewels flow from the horses' mouths,"63) would also seem to derive from the
idea of divine horses appearing out of the water.
Legends about water-gods, or the messengers of water-gods, appearing Water-gods on
mounted on horses, particularly white horses, must also be considered to have horseback
some connection with this idea. The " chief of fishes," who is a
species of
water-gods, has a human form, goes on horseback with numerous fishes in
his train, and has the power to cause floods. A man saw the
god by the side
of a river towards the end of the Han dynasty, and the
god was mounted on
a horse, his body, shaped like that of a great carp, was covered with
scales,
and only his hands and feet, ears and nose were like those of human
beings.
59) T'ai-ping-kuang-chi,435.
60) Sou-shen-chi,6.
61) Shan-hai-ching,8, Hai-wai-pei-ching (js4.i).
62) Jui-ying-t'u.
5.
63) Mu-t'ien-tzu-chuan,
 14 THE KAPPA LEGEND

After the man had been looking for some time, the god entered the river.64)
In the Shen-i-ching we read:
" There is one in the Western Seas who rides a white horse with red
manes, wearing a white garment and a black crown, and followed by twelve
boys. The horse goes over the waters of the Western Seas as swift as the
wind, and men call its rider the messenger of the river-prince. Sometimes
he comes on land, water following wherever the horse goes, so that the countries
he visits are inundated with rain. At nightfall, he returns to the river."65
Horses and floods The coming of this white horse with red manes is also supposed to be
connected with the presence of enlightened rulers, and the appointment of
wise men to important government posts.66) But the point to be noticed
about this passage is the inundation by rain wherever the horse goes. In
the 6th month of the 23rd year of the Yiian-chia (jii) era (A.D. 446), under
the (Liu-)Sung dynasty, in P'ing-tu-hsien (ZF-,I), An-ch'eng, (9a), to
the southeast of the present An-fu-hsien ( 3iTSj,) in Kiangsi province,
a son of the family Yin (X-) aged thirteen was at home by himself, when a
young man riding a white horse, with an umbrella spread over him, and
followed by a man in a yellow garment, came from the east and entered the
house. The boy looked at the young man's dress and saw that it had no
stitches, the horse was dappled in five colours which resembled the scales
of a fish, although the skin was covered with hair, and after a while, when it
seemed about to rain, the party left the house and went west, gradually rising
into the air and walking on it. The next day, the rivers flooded, the mountain
valleys seethed, hills were covered with water, and a great chiao-dragon (dragon
of the species which inhabit the earth, as opposed to the lung-dragons which
inhabit the heavens) over 30 ch'ih long appeared, and was seen to cover the
house of the family Yin, as though sheltering it.67) In the summer of the 1st
year of the T'ien-chiian (X5 ) era (A.D. 1138), during the reign of Emperor
Hsi-tsung of the Chin dynasty, a dragon appeared out of the river Ya-
shui (f7JK<)in Hsi-chou (I^j), and remained three days, sometimes playing
with a little child. A boy mounted on a white horse, and wearing a red dress
and a band studded with precious stones, also appeared. A toad went before
the horse, and the party vanished after about 3 hours. The people of the
district flocked to see these sights. In the 7th month, the rivers flooded,
and many houses were destroyed.68' There was also a horse in E-mei-hsien
(JMf,) in Ssuch'uan province which was so swift that it seemed to fly.
The inhabitants of the village where the horse lived, caught it and wounded

64) pt. 2, Shui-chu (7Jg).

Chung-hua-ku-chin-chu,
65) Shen-i-ching,Hsi-huang-ching(#j,).
66) Jui-ying-t'u.
67) Sou-shen-hou-chi,10; T'ai-ping-yi-lan, 930.
68) MadenokojiMS. (cites Ts'un-hsin-lu 2b-).
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 15

it in the leg, and threw it into a pond, when one evening, it thundered and rain
came down in great quantities, causing a gap to open in a mountain, after
which the thunderstorm ceased.69) In Japan, too, it used to be a custom,
when praying for rain, to cut off a horse's head and throw it into a deep part
of a river, or to present black horses to various shrines. There is also an
ancient legend connected with the river Uma-kawa (" Horse River ") in
the district of Asai in Omi province, according to which a white horse was
said to appear in time of flood and cause havoc among the people who passed
by.70) All these stories seem to show that there is some connection between
horses and water-gods, floods, wind and rain, and the ritual of praying for
rain, and it is the present writer's purpose to treat of this question again in
the following chapter on oxen and water-gods.
As we may see from such examples as a divine horse living in a cave on White Horse Cave
the south face of Mt. Po-li in the kingdom of Tokhara in Central Asia, and
Yoshitsune's favourite steed, Usuzumi, or Tayuguro, appearing out of a cave
at Tayuzaki, in the village of Futomi in Awa province,71) it is not uncommon
for fabulous horses to go in and out of underground caves, as well as through
water. There is a stone cave 30 li to the north of the ancient I-ling-hsien
(AMJ,S), now I-ch'ang-hsien (-FJT ) in Hupei province. This cave is
called Pai-ma-ch'uan (J1t,[ "White Horse Cave "), and about this cave
we read in the Shui-ching-chu:
" Once a white horse appeared out of the cave and began to graze. A
man pursued the horse into the cave, and going underground, found himself
on coming out of it in Han-chung (AFt). A man in Han-chung once lost a
horse, and going after it, came out of the mouth of this cave. The two places
are several thousands of li apart."72)
There is a legend similar to this in Japan. An ox is once said to have
entered a large cave in Mt. Shiranuka, near the village of Higashi-dori in the
district of Shimokita in Mutsu province, and having vanished for a while,
appeared in the village of Yokohama in Kamikita district, at a great distance
from the first village, for which reason the place where the ox appeared is
called Ushinozawa (" Ox Swamp This particular form of superstition,
").73) Undergroundwater
known in Japan as ushi-kukuri (" ox-burrowing-underground "), is also to
be found in the Malay peninsula,74) while there is a story in the
Konjaku-
monogatari-shu, in the section of stories about India, which tells how an ox
once entered a stone cave and reached the abode of celestial beings.75 In
69) T'a-ming I-t'ung-chih,72, Chia-ting-chou (GJj).
70) Omi rochishiryaku,85, Asai-gun 2, Nakano-mura, pt. 2, p. 269.
71) Yanagita, 1912, p. 163 (ed. 1942, p. 209).
72) Shui-ching-chu,34, Chiang-shui (lt7k); cf. T'ai-ping-kuang-chi,435.
73) Yanagita, 1912, p. 55 (ed. 1942, p. 209).
74) Skeat, p. 250.
75) Konjaku-monogatari-shu, Tenjiku-Shintan-no-bu,5, no. 31; Uji-shui-monogatari,13.
 16 THE KAPPA LEGEND

this connection, it should be remembered that, according to the old Chinese

conception of the universe, these underground caves were themselves, as
the fact of their being called ti-mo (f19i&t "veins in the earth ") shows,
considered as being in communication with the world of water underneath,
for according to this Chinese conception, the earth is thought to be a large
mass floating on the ocean, like an iceberg, as we may see from such words
as Fu-chou (?'ii "floating continent") and Fu-shan (ilfi "floating
mountain "), and where the earth has crumbled in places, we have lakes, as
well as what were known as hai-yen (iBH; " eyes of the sea "), or wells and
so forth that led finally to the ocean.76) This idea of underground water
communicating with the sea is also to be found everywhere in Japan, and
Mr. Yanagita and Mr. Orikuchi have both pointed out the transition of the
supposed seat of water-gods to rock caves. In the island of Iki, there is a
legend about a beautiful woman from the water world who married one of
the inhabitants, and who one day threw herself into a well in the grounds of
the house where she lived, and so returned to the sea. The ceremony of
mizu-tori (" drawing water "), annually performed at the Nigatsudo temple
in Nara, is supposed to bring up the water of a pond in far-off Wakasa province,
and traces of this form of superstition are to be found in all parts of Japan.77
Where water welled up from rocks in the depths of a valley, the spring was
said to lead to Ryiugu, or Dragon Palace, beneath the sea and there seems to
have been a tendency to regard such springs as something more mystic than
water flowing along the surface of the earths, and to imagine them as being
in communication with the seat of water divinities.78) The widespread saying
in Japan that, water filling the foot-print of a horse is enough to serve as a home
for innumerable kappa, is surely best understood when we connect it with
this ancient belief concerning underground water.79)
Returning to the question of divine horses in the water, materials for the
study of the subject are to be found in places as far away as Central Asia and
Water-horses of Indo-China, Among the remains of Buddhist art at Min-ui (" Thousand
Central Asia
Buddhas ") near Kizil to the west of Kucha in Sinkiang province, paintings
on the walls of a cave show sea-horses with wings and double tails, and the
lower half of their bodies shaped like serpents, leaping out of the water de-

76) "The Chinese have a peculiar idea concerning the earth. We read in Kuo P'o's (OtJ)
commentary on the Shan-hai-chingthat, 'The lake Tung-t'ing is a hole in the earth in Pa-
ling, Ch'ang-sha. There is at the present time Mount P'ao ([114) in the midst of the
lake T'ai-hu (;kj) to the south of Wu-hsien (JA)), at the foot of which is Tung-t'ing-hsueh
there is
(QJj~a " Hole of Tung-t'ing"). It is said that, going beneath the water there,
no point on earth which one may not reach. These subterranean passages are called ti-mo
(" earth veins ").' "-Huang Chih-kang, pp. 140-141.
77) Orikuchi, 1930, pp. 1012-1015.
78) Yanagita, 1942, p. 70.
79) Orikuchi, 1930, p. 1010.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 17

picted in blue (Fig. 4).80) Their forms and the manner of their repre-
sentation, found in the Buddhist art of Central Asia and far away from the
seas, clearly show them to be the Greek hippocampi. The hippocampi will
be dealt with later in this book. Hsiian-chuang (t1), who passed through
southern Sinkiang in the 7th century, has recorded among his writings a
legend concerning a white water-horse which was then told among the people
of that section of the country now called Khotan, According to his Ta-
t'ang hsi-yii-chi, there was a large river to the southeast of the capital of the
kingdom of Ch'ii-sa-tan-na (j BLR), the water of which was enough to
irrigate the fields of the whole kingdom. Once the river suddenly ceased
flowing at a certain point in its course, and on the king's questioning a monk
as to the reason of this, the monk answered that it had been caused by a dragon.
The king then offered prayers to the dragon of the river, when a woman ap-
peared out of the water and bowed and said to the king, "My husband died
prematurely, and I have no one to serve as my master, which is the reason
why the river has ceased to flow, so causing distress to the farmers. If I
may have your minister of state for my husband, the river will begin to flow
again as before." So the king's minister put on a white dress, mounted a white
horse and went into the river, and found that he did not sink though he was
on the water. In midstream, he raised his whip and drew a line in the water,
and the water parted, and he discended into the river-bed from there. After
a while, the white horse reappeared, carrying a drum of candana-wood and
a casket containing a letter. The letter said, " Hang this drum on the south-
eastern side of the citadel, and when enemies approach-to attack the city, the
drum will sound by itself." The river then began to flow again, greatly to
the benefit of the inhabitants of the country.81) There is also a legend about
a Zoroastrian temple that stood in the middle of the River Oxus
(Amu Daria).
The god of this temple had arrived in those parts from Persia by means of
his supernatural powers, and having shown many other signs of those
powers,
had had this temple erected to him. There was no image placed inside, the
temple faced west, and the people worshipped facing east. There was also
a bronze horse, which was supposed to have descended from heaven, and this
horse, though its front legs were bent down in a kneeling position, still stood
high enough in the air to face the god, while its hind legs, which were not
bent, were buried deep in the ground. They stretched downward to a dis-
tance of several hundred ch'ih, and though many had tried
digging round them
from ancient times, no one had been able to reach the hoofs. There was
also a golden-coloured horse which lived in the River Oxus, and this horse
appeared out of the river once every year, and neighed in unison with the
bronze horse, after which it promptly vanished into the water.
Later, the
80) Griinwedel, S. 107, Fig. 237 b; S. 108, Fig. 238 b.
81) Ta-t'ang hsi-yi-chi, 12.
 18 THE KAPPA LEGEND

King of the Saracens tried to destroy the temple, but fire came and burnt
the soldiers, and so the king was forced to abandon the attempt.82' The
Ting Pu-ling of
legend concerning the hero Ting Pu-ling (T-jtS), who conquered the
Annam
twelve monarchs of Annam in the middle of the 10th century, has also much
to do with beasts whose supernatural powers are traditionally connected with
water, such as beavers, horses and dragons. Ting Pu-ling's mother had borne
him after having intercourse with a giant otter by the side of a river. Some-
time afterwards, the otter was caught by others and stewed, and its bones
thrown away, but the woman secretly gathered them together and placed them
above the oven in her house, and used to tell her son that his father was there.
The child grew up to be most agile in his movements, and a great swimmer
and diver, and called himself Ting Pu-ling. One day, a Chinese astrologer
came from the north to Annam, and following a vein in the earth proper to
dragons, arrived at the place where Ting Pu-ling lived. He consulted the
heavens, and saw a crimson light which rose from the river, reaching up to
the constellation of the Celestial Horse like a roll of silk. He knew from this
sign that some divine being lived in the water, and sought good swimmers
to search the bottom of the river. There was a spot in the river which had
always been held sacred, and which no one dared to approach. Ting Pu-
ling undertook to carry out the search, and reached the bottom of the river
at that spot, where he found by groping something shaped like a horse standing
on the river-bed. He returned to the surface, and reported his find to the
astrologer, who told him to go down once more and place a bundle of grass
in the horse's mouth. He did so, and on his coming up and telling him
that it was done, the astrologer said, " It is as I thought. There is a hole,"
and promising to reward Ting Pu-ling richly later on, went away, nor did
he come back for a long time. In the meantime, Ting Pu-ling who was
naturally sagacious took down the bones above the oven and wrapped them
with grass, and going down into the water, pushed them into the horse's
mouth. The horse instantly ate them, and after this, people flocked to him
and made him their leader. He was defeated in a battle with one of his uncles,
and in his flight, became caught in a bog. His uncle approached to kill him,
but saw two yellow dragons suddenly make their appearance as though to
defend him, and so losing courage, the uncle fled in his turn. This served
to increase the hero's prestige, and his army swelled in proportion. After
a few years, the Chinese astrologer.came back with his own father's bones,
to put into the mouth of the horse in the river, so that he might gain honour
and riches, but confronted with Ting Pu-ling's fame, and hearing what he
had done to obtain it, the astrologer was filled with rage and spite, and told
Ting Pu-ling that, if he should go into the water and place a sword on the
horse's neck, he would come to conquer the whole kingdom. Ting Pu-ling
82) Tu-yang-tsa-tsu,10, I-wu (At).
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gads 19

believed this, and dived down and placed a sword on the horse's neck and
returned. After this, he won every battle, assumed the title of the Ever
Victorious King, and finally conquering all Annam, made himself emperor.
But after a reign of 12 years, he was assassinated by his court servant Tu
Shih (f#_), and this was believed to be due to the horse's curse, incurred
through placing a sword on its neck as the astrologer had deceitfully told him
to do.83' This legend forms the subject of an article by Mr. Matsumoto
Nobuhiro, entitled, An Annamese variant of the legend of No-tal-ch'i. It
should be noticed that, whereas in the Annamese legend, the bones of the
otter are put into the mouth of a horse under the water, in the Korean legend
of No-tal-ch'i (5ffI ), the otter, the father of No-tal-ch'i, who was the father
of the Chinese Emperor T'ai-tsu of the Ch'ing dynasty, has his bones hung
by No-tal-ch'i on the left horn of a stone shaped like a crouching dragon
at the bottom of a deep pool.84' We may see here an example of the horse
motif taking the place of that of the dragon in folklore.
The material already cited, mainly from Chinese sources, clearly indicates River-gods seek to
a remarkable affinity between Chinese and Japanese folklore in regard to the draw horses into
idea of pasturing mares by the waterside to obtain fine horses, and in the the water
matter of legends concerning divine horses which live in the water. If we
turn back once more to the legend of the kappa trying to draw horses into the
water, it is true that the kappa itself is a water-monster, the conception of which
has developed along lines peculiar to Japan, but tales of supernatural
beings
in the water making similar attempts on horses, are to be found in China also.
For instance, in the Wu-yiieh-ch'un-ch'iu attributed to Chao Hua
(|g{g) of
the Han dynasty, we read, " Tzfi-hsi (+-HW)says, Chiao Ch'iu-su
($KEf)
was a superior man from Tung-hai. He went on an for the
embassy King
of Ch'i (*) to the kingdom of Wu (A), and crossed a ford in the River Huai.
His horse was about to drink the water of the river, but the official in
charge
of the place said, ' There is a god in the water who, whenever he sees a
horse,
comes out to cause harm to it. So you must not let your horse drink here.'
Su said, 'In the presence of a brave man, what god would dare to do such a
thing,' and commanded his servant to let the horse drink. The water-god
appeared, as the official said he would, seized the horse, and the horse vanished
into the water. Chiao Ch'iu was filled with rage,
stripped and, with his sword
drawn, entered the water, sought out the water-god and a combat ensued be-
tween them. It went on for several days, after which Chiao Ch'iu came
out,
having been wounded in one eye. He then continued his journey to Wu,
where he attended the funeral of one of his friends."85)
The same story is given in the
Han-shih-wai-chuan, where the water-
83) Matsurnoto, pp. 1012-1013 (cites Kung-yii-chieh-chi .[|f, 5).
84) Imanishi, pp. 728, 731.
85) Wu-yiiehch'un-ch'iu,2, Ho-lii-nei-chuan(MICafgi), 4.
 20 THE KAPPA LEGEND

god is described as a chiao-dragon, and we read, " (the hero) killed three chiao.
dragons and one lung-dragon, and came out of the water. Thunder and light-
ning followed him for ten days and ten nights, and blinded his left eye."8s6
The story is also recorded in more or less the same form in the Po-wu-chih.87'
The extraordinary legend that the Choryong-t'ae (5S{J~ " Dragon Fishing
Terrace ") on the Paekma-kang (10,%[ a "White Horse River "), the present
Kum-kang (,fl[) in Puy6-hy6n (5j!, ) in Korea, is the place where,
during the expedition to Paekche (tj) under Su Ting-fang (jt5') of the
T'ang dynasty, a monster was seen to cause storms over the river, and to put
an end to this, a dragon was fished up from it with a white horse for bait, is
found in the Tongkuk-ybchi-siungnam,written during the Li dynasty in
Korea.88' The legend is of interest in that it shows the close relationship
which exists between dragons and horses. During the reign of Emperor
Ming of the Chin dynasty in China, a man was on his way to present a horse
to the Emperor, when he dreamed that the god of the Huangho came to him
and asked for the horse. He arrived at the capital, when it was found that
both he and the Emperor had the same dream, and so the horse was thrown
Sacrifice of horses into the Huangho as a gift to the god.89) Here it is no longer a question of
to water-gods close association merely, but of actual sacrifice of horses to water-gods,
King Mu of the Chou dynasty caused oxen, horses, pigs and sheep to be
thrown into a river as a sacrifice to the river-god.90) The Second Emperor
of the Ch'in dynasty, having dreamed of a white tiger killing the left one of
the three horses that drew his chariot, was alarmed, and ordered astrologers
to study the dream, when it was found that the river Ching-shui (f7rJ) was
offended with the Emperor, and so prayers were offered to the River Ching
at the palace Wang-i-kung (-g' ), and four white horses were thrown into
the river.91) When Wang Tsun (3:E ) was governor of Tung-chun (3iS)
under the Han dynasty, the Huangho flooded, submerging the Chin dyke
(:R, in the northern part of Honan province), and those who dwelled along
it, both young and old, ran about in fear of the dyke being pierced and the
damage that this would occasion. Wang Tsun led the people in person in

86) Han-shih-wai-chuan,10.
87) Po-wu-chih,7, I-wen ($?).
88) Tongkuk-yochi-singnam, 18, p. 174; Yanagita, 1912, p. 92 (ed. 1942, p. 118).
89) " A man was on his way to present a horse to the Emperor Ming of the Chin dynasty, and
had a dream in which the god of the Yellow River appeared and asked the man to give him
the horse. On arriving at the Imperial Palace, the man found that the Emperor also had
had the same dream, and so the horse was thrown into the Yellow River as an offering to
the god. Ch'u Pao (;*I), the Grand Tutor to the Heir-Apparent, wished to have the
horse, too, but was told by the Emperor that it had already been offered to the river-god.
After Ch'u's death, soldiers saw him mounted on the horse."-I-yiian; T'ien-chung-chih,55.
90) Mu-Fien-tz.-chuan, 1.
91) Shih-chi, 6, Ch'in-shih-huangpen-chi (~^* ).
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 21

the fight against the water, sacrificed a white horse to the river-god and other
water-gods, and slept on the Chin dyke, praying to the gods that he himself
might be taken in return for the safety of the dyke being assured.92) In
Huai-an-fu, Kiangsu Province, we read in the Yiian-shih that during the
Chih-yiian (Si:) era under the Yuan dynasty, when the Huangho pierced
its dykes, T'ai Pu-hua (fg), at the command of the emperor, offered
prayers to the river god, and sacrificed precious stones and white horses.93'
We shall see later that the custom of sacrificing horses, particularly white
horses, to water-gods and river-gods existed widely over the marginal
portions of the old continent from ancient times, and a more recent example
of this is reported to be found among the natives of Patagonia in South
America.94) This custom might be regarded as a variation of the habit of
sacrificing white horses to heaven, which was characteristic of the nomadic
races that dwelled in the steppes of Inner Asia, and which took this new form
when the horse made its appearance among the agricultural peoples. As
Mr. Yanagita has pointed out, the legend of the kappa trying to lure horses
into the water may also be regarded as having its remote origin in some ancient
sacrificial custom. But such a change in the cultural history of mankind
contains other questions which are not easily to be disposed of, and it is the
present writer's purpose to postpone the solution of the problem until after
more material from other parts of the world has been examined, and to proceed
first to study the question of how it came about that there should exist such
a close resemblance between the folklore of China and other countries along
its borders, and that of Japan, in all that concerns horses and water-gods.
The first question that rises to one's mind is, whether the resemblance Importation
of
is due to the writings of the Chinese which were brought over to Japan. That Chinese books
such names as Ryu-ga-ike, Ryu-ga-zawa, Ryufme-ishi, and Rhyume-ga-mine
(" Dragon Pond," "Dragon Marsh," "Dragon-horse Stone," "Dragon-
horse Mount ") should be found all over the country in conjunction with
the legends already mentioned, as well as the popular belief that fine horses
are sired by dragons, would seem to confirm the idea to a certain extent. Words
like ryu (dragon) and ryu-me (dragon-horse) were certainly imported from
China (ryi<lung, ryuz-me<lung-ma). But books such as those from which
passages have been quoted above, were only read by the court nobles living
in and round Kyoto, the capital, and it is doubtful whether they were read
at all before the Ashikaga period (A.D. 1336-1573). It is hard to think that
a group of ideas, having their origin in the reading of a limited class of people
living round Kyoto, at a comparatively late period in the history of the country,
should be so widely diffused as to be found in the identical form in the remotest
92) Ch'ien Han-shu, 76, Chao-TinHan-Changliang-wang-chuan(?-?r ]ijE ).
93) riian-shih, 143, T'ai Pu-hua-chuan(H4TJf-); Huai-an-fu-chih,1884, 40.
94) GB, pt. 1, vol. 2, p. 16.
 22 THE KAPPA LEGEND

parts of the Japanese Islands. It would seem more likely that, besides this
limited intercourse between the intellectual classes, communication was kept
up between the people of the two countries in a more general form, such as
trading, and that this had the attendant effect of bringing about an interming-
ling of the two cultures. Or perhaps, the peculiar relationship between horses
and water-gods might already have had its place in the popular beliefs of the
Japanese people, as forming a part of a basic culture stratum common to the
two countries, prior to our acquaintance with the Chinese civilization, and it
is for this very reason that conceptions imported from China like that of the
dragon-horse were easily assimilated by the Japanese, and gave birth to such
place-names as have already been mentioned. To obtain the solution to
this problem, we must now extend the field of our inquiry to zones beyond
that of Chinese culture.
Western and north- The present writer, in quoting the material obtained from Chinese sources,
western parts of has endeavoured to give, so far as it was possible, not only the period in which
China the works in question were composed, but also the localities where the legends
given originated. The reader must have noticed that the group of ideas con-
cerning horses and water-gods often occurs in such provinces as Kueichou,
Ssiich'uan, Ch'inghai, Kansu, Shensi, Shansi, Suiyiian, Sinkiang, or the
western parts and northwestern borders of China, and the area stretching
still further west to Central Asia. The two rivers of Yu-wu and Wu-wa,
out of which celestial horses made their appearance during the reign of
Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, are supposed to have been then located in
Ordos and Kansu respectively,95) and today, by the side of the Yiieh-ya-
ch'iian (J47t "Moon-bud-spring"), to the north of Tun-huang (an,),
there even stands a stone monument bearing the characters Wu-wa-ch'ih
(ch'ih=pond). T'u-ku-hun (EV6fi) of the time of Sui and T'ang dynasties
in China, where a mare was let loose into the lake Ch'inghai and bore the
Dapple of Ch'inghai, is situated near the present Ch'inghai or Kuku-
nor. Tien-ch'ih, out of which divine horses are said to have appeared from
ancient times to cover the mares of the inhabitants, siring foals that grew into
fine horses, has been shown to be either the present lake K'un-ming-hu in
Yunnan, or a river in Huai-li-hsien in Ssich'uan province.96) The kingdom
of Ch'ii-sa-tan-na, about which Hsiian-chuang records the legend that a white
horse bearing a drum of candana-wood once came out of a river there, is thought
to be the present Khotan region in southern Sinkiang. This makes it
all the more interesting that to the northeast of the place, in a cave near Kizil
in the Tarim basin, there should be found depicted the Greek hippocampi,
borne on the tide of hellenistic culture into such a remote part of the Asiatic
continent. Again, the story of the horse which appeared out of the River
95) Cf. note 57.
96) Cf. Chung-kuoku-chin ti-ming ta-tz'u-tien.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 23

Oxus every year to neigh in unison with the bronze horse before the fire-god
temple, takes place in Western Turkestan, while the kingdom of Tokhara
in which was situated Mt. Po-li, where noble horse that sweated blood
were sired by a divine horse living in a cave, is located on the northeastern
border of Persia. In this connection it is of interest to find that in the Sea-stallion
regions of Kashmir, on the eastern border of the then kingdom of Tokhara, the
motif of a water-horse covering a mare, and the mare bearing a magic horse
in consequence, is preserved even today among the inhabitants in the follow-
ing story:
Once, a fakir who had a wise parrot, was forced by his wife to go out and
sell it. He came to the sea-shore, and there, letting loose the parrot and the
mare he was riding, he lay down for the night. While the fakir slept, an
animal that looked like a zalgur (" horse of the river ") appeared out of the
water, covered the mare, and returned to the sea. The parrot saw all this,
but told no one. The fakir meanwhile arrived at the capital, and the king
agreed to buy the parrot from him for 10,000 rupees. Before parting from
his old master, the parrot makes the fakir promise to present to the king the
first foal borne by the mare. After a while the parrot incurs the displeasure
of the king's favourite mistress, and is about to be killed, but the parrot asks
for a delay of six days, and flies to an island in the sea where he becomes the
pet of a beautiful princess, whom he persuades the king to marry on his return.
The king asks the parrot the way to the island, and the parrot causes the first
foal borne by the fakir's mare to be sought for, mounted on which, the king
arrives at the sea-shore. The horse then gallops over the water as easily as
on land, and carries the king without mishap to the island, where the king
marries the princess. On their way back, the king goes to sleep on a desert
island against the advice of the parrot, as a result of which the king has both
the princess and the horse taken away from him. But the parrot is equal
to the occasion, and through his ingenuity, the king recovers the princess
and the horse, and so all return safely to the capital.97'
It is interesting to note that a motif very similar to this is found in the The Thousand
Thousand Nights and One Night, that vast repository of folklore of the NightsandOne
Saracen civilization which extended its influence to the regions of Tokhara, Night
a work comparable for its scope and richness with the Chinese novel, the
Hsi-yu-chi. The story in question occurs in the 1st voyage of Sindbad, when,
mistaking the back of a gigantic fish for an island, he lands on it and lights
a fire, which causes him to be thrown off the back of the fish into the sea. He
is then cast up on King Mihrjan's island, and while he stands wondering at
a mare tethered by the sea-shore, a groom of the royal stables appears and
takes Sindbad to an underground hiding-place, where he tells Sindbad the
following story:
97) Knowles, pp. 312-320.
 24 THE KAPPA LEGEND

"Every month, about new-moon tide we bring hither our best mares
which have never been covered, and picket them on the sea-shore and hide
ourselves in this place under the ground, so that none may espy us. Presently
the stallions of the sea scent the mares and come up out of the water and seeing
no one, leap the mares and do the will of them. When they have covered
them, they try to drag them away with them, but cannot, by reason of the
leg-ropes; so they cry out at them and butt at them and kick them, which we
hearing, know that the stallions have dismounted; so we run out and shout
at them, whereupon they are startled and return in fear to the sea. Then
the mares conceive by them and bear colts and fillies worth a mint of money,
nor is their like to be found on earth's face.'
When the groom has proceeded so far with his story, the stallion appears
out of the sea, and springing on the mare, covers her. Then, just as the groom
had told Sindbad, the stallion tries to take the mare with him into the water,
and being prevented from doing so by the leg-rope attached to the mare, begins
butting and crying at her. Hearing the noise, the groom rushes out of the
hiding-place, taking a sword and buckler with him, and striking the buckler
with his sword, calls to his comrades, who also appear making great cries and
Wild males and brandishing their spears. This frightens the stallion, causing him to plunge
domesticated into the sea, and disappear under the waves " like a buffalo."98) Burton com-
females
menting on this story says that the myth of the " sea-stallion " may have
" arisen from the Arab practice of picketing mare asses to be covered by the
wild ass."99) According to Colonel J. D. Watson of the Bombay Army, it
seems that the wild ass, Equus onager, still breeds among the islands formed
during the rainy season at the mouth of the River Kachch (or Cutch), on the
west coast of India, and Colonel Watson suggests that Sindbad may have been
cast up on one of those islands.100) It is a fact that the practice of picketing
domesticated female animals to be covered by wild males so as to strengthen
the breed, is not confined to asses, and prevails also among the nomadic races
who keep reindeer in Northern Asia, like the Chukchi, Yakut and the Northern
Tungus.101) By the shores of Kuku-nor, famous from of old for the legend
of keeping mares to bear foals sired by dragon-horses, great herds of wild
asses, called by the natives yeh-ma (" wild horses "), are to be seen even
today,'02) while the district of Fergana or the kingdom of Ta-yuan
where it

98) Burton, vol. 6, pp. 8-9.

99) ibid., p. 9, note 3.
100) ibid., p. 9, note 3.
101) Koppers, 1932, S. 185 f.
102) Dr. W. Filchner who has made frequent trips to these regions says, in a recent record of his
travels, that he saw great herds of these " wild horses " there (Filchner, 1938), and Dr. Anders-
son who, on a journey undertaken a little earlier, came as far as Ch'inghai (Kuku-nor) and
there saw these animals for the first time, describes his experiences as follows:
" On July 28th (1923) we left our first camp at the Kuku-nor in order to begin our pro-
jected journey round the lake. In the morning we already had a glimpse of the principal
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 25

big game of the Kuku-nor area, the wild ass or kiang, called yeh ma by the Chinese. To call
this animal a wild ass is somewhat misleading, for it is very much larger, reminding us rather
of a wild mule. Neither is it really a wild horse, for its head is undeniably asinine."-Anders-
son, 1934, p. 228.
But perhaps both Filchner and Andersson overlooked a passage in the authoritative re-
cord of the travels of Prejevalsky, the zoologist who explored these regions during the second
half of the last century. Prejevalsky says in his work that, " The most remarkable animal of
the steppes of Kuku-nor is the wild ass or kulan, called djang by the Tangutans (Equuskiang),
in size and external appearance closely resembling the mule," and proceeds to give a detailed
description of the shape, colour, size, habits and the area of distribution of the animal.-
Prejevalsky, vol. 2, p. 146 ff. Haslund also wrote in 1927 of the wild ass, kiulan, he met
while traversing the Khara Gobi on his way from Etsingol to Hami that, " In size and build
they reminded one of big ponies, but their ears and tails were those of the ass " (Haslund, p.
152), and the question of size stressed by Andersson cannot serve as a zoological standard in
distinguishing between horses and asses. However, although Prejevalsky considers the kulan
and the djang (kiang) to be the same animal, some scholars distinguish between, them (Brehm,
Bd. 12 [Sdugetiere,Bd. 3], S. 669), and it is now usual to classify them respectively as Equus
hemionushemionusand Equus hemionuskiang as belonging to two different sub-species. The
latter inhabits the Trans-Himalayan regions, whereas the animals found near Kuku-nor are
supposed to belong to the former sub-species. The word kiang is the equivalent to the
Tangutan djang mentioned by Prejevalsky, and according to Yule, kulan'seems to be a word
of Eastern Turkish origin. Pallas was the first to classify the kulan scientifically, and it was
he who gave it the name Equus hemionus. The sub-species, then, of the genus Equus which
are known to exist in Central Asia today are:
1) Equus caballusprzewalskii
2) Equus hemionushemionus
3) Equus hemionuskiang
Of these 1 is a horse, and 2 and 3 are asses belonging to different sub-species, the kulan
living in herds in Ch'inghai today being asses of the 2nd sub-species. During Prejevalsky's
journey, great herds of the Equusprzewalskiiseem to have been met with in the steppes near
Lop-nor in Southern Sinkiang, but rare in Western Tsaidam in Ch'inghai.-Prejevalsky,
vol. 2, p. 170. There are some records which describe the kulan as being even larger than
the Equusprzewalskii, and the Mongols, regarding these animals as a kind of horse, consider
it a sin to hunt them (Haslund, p. 193), while it seems that sometimes, horses kept by
the Mongols run away from the herd and join the wild kulan.-ibid., p. 192. But according
to Prejevalsky's observation, the kulan live in more or less clearly defined harem groups,
each centring round a stallion, so that it is a question whether a strange mare from the herds
of domesticated horses would be so easily admitted into such a group. (The greater part
of the above note was written mainly through the assistance of Mr. Umesao Tadao).
Cf. J. G. Andersson, 1932, for further information concerning the wild horses and wild
asses of Central Asia. It has also been shown by Prof. Egami Namio that the ancient no-
madic peoples like the Hsiung-nu may quite possibly have captured wild horses and wild
asses and added them to their herds of cattle.-Egami, pp. 193-217. In Li Fei's
commentary
on the passage about a horse appearing out of the River Wu-wa in the autumn of the 4th
year of Yuan-ting era, in the Ch'ienHan-shu, 6, we read: " Pao Li-ch'ang (S8IJ:) lived in
Nan-yang Hsin-yeh (lggfi). He was sent as a colonist to Tun-huang for an offence
during the reign of the Emperor Wu. He saw herds of wild horses by this river, among
which was one that differed from the rest, and which came to drink in
company with other
horses of the common variety. Li-ch'ang sent men with a halter to the
riverside, and made
them practise throwing it at the horse from behind for a long time. He then took the halter
himself and captured the horse, and sent it as a present to the Emperor. He wished to give the
impression that the horse was of a divine nature, and said that it had appeared out of the water."
This may indicate that wild horses were at one time actually
captured in this manner,
and that the best among them were so much prized that
they were considered as being of
mystic origin. During the ages in which wild horses were found in great numbers in the
steppes of the Asiatic continent, crossing domesticated mares with them may also have been
widely practised.
 26 THE KAPPA LEGEND

is said that five-coloured mares were placed at the foot of a mountain to bear
afterwards foals sired by the divine horse that sweated blood is a region known
for its breed of fine horses that has played an important part in the improve-
ment in the stock of Chinese horses. These facts would seem to show that
these legends of water-horses and foals sired by divine stallions, to be found
over a wide area stretching from Eastern to Southwestern Asia, owe at least a
part of their origin to such customs of nomadic tribes as have already been
described. But we must next seek for the reason why in this type of legends,
either the stallions live in the water, or it is the water-spirits who play the part
of stallions. Even if it is true that these legends arose simply from the custom
of pasturing horses by the water-side, there is nothing to deny the possibility
of there being something more than the actual technical advantages to be
gained from such a procedure, some magical or religious significance, to be
sought for behind the custom itself. To solve this question, we must extend
the field of our investigation, and consider in general the close relationship
which exists between horses and water.
The Caucasus The mountainous regions of the Caucasus, lying between the Caspian
etc. Sea on the east and the Black Sea on the west, so forming a boundary between
the two cultural spheres of Europe and the Orient, have early attracted the
attention of scholars as the place where ancient races, languages and cultures
have intermingled, and been preserved in that state. It also happens to be
a region where horses are more loved and esteemed than anywhere else in
the world, and perhaps also owing to the fact of the place being near the sea,
there are many legends concerning divine horses of the sea to be formed there.
For instance, in Georgia, there is a legend about a hero who goes through all
kinds of trials in his quest of a divine horse which lives on the summit of a
mountain that rises above the sea, another in which the hero mounted on a
water-horse he obtained at the bottom of the sea, fights with a dragon and
Rashi, the winged rescues the " Beautiful Golden Maiden," and another of Rashi, the winged
horse horse, and how he helps the hero bring from the bottom of the sea some of
the fine horses that live in the sea. Rashi is a horse that appears often in
Georgian folklore, usually serving as the mount for the hero of the St. George
type who kills serpents to obtain a magic apple-tree, or rescues a princess who
is about to be sacrificed to a dragon. In the legend just mentioned of the
capture of horses living in the sea, Rashi tells the hero, who is about to under-
take a journey to the bottom of the sea, to empty a pail of oil into the water.
If this causes the sea to become covered with foam, it is a sign that the horse
from above has joined the horses of the sea, and will succeed in bringing
them up to the shore. The sign is seen; and one of his horses, a red steed
that had been bred by demons, becomes invisible and succeeds in carrying
the hero down to the kingdom of the subterranean world. In another of
these legends, the only spring of water in a subterranean kingdom is in the
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 27

possession of a dragon, who will not permit anyone to draw water from the
spring unless a beautiful maiden is sacrificed to it every day. The hero
mounted on Rashi, who in this legend is a red horse, penetrates to the kingdom,
kills the dragon, and rescues the king's daughter whose turn it was to be sacri-
ficed that day.'03? In this type of legend the water-god represented by the
dragon is placed in opposition to the horse, a theme which is often encountered
in the folklore of the Indo-European peoples and elsewhere,104)and which in
itself offers many interesting problems.
Among the Scythians, that ancient race of horsemen who dominated the Anahita
plains of South Russia immediately to the north of the Caucasus, a deity called
Anahita after the manner of the Iranians, and having a fish for its symbol,
presided over water and also horses. As a charm against the evil eye, the
Scythians hung oblong strips of gold in the form of sturgeons on the foreheads
of their horses. These gold effigies of fishes have been excavated over a wild
area, from the banks of the Oxus in Turkestan in the east to Ukraine and
Bulgaria in the west, the oldest of them dating back to the 5th century B.C.
Those that have been so far discovered are ten in number, of which three
were found on the heads of buried horses.105) A bronze pendant discovered
in Perm to the west of the Urals, on the upper stream of the River Kama in
East Russia, represents in a debased form the motif of the gold effigies of
fish, and it is estimated that a period of from 2 to 5 centuries separates these
effigies from their degenerate copies.106) But among the Permian finds which A Permianidol
show more clearly the characteristics of the local culture before it received
the influence of Scythio-Sarmatian art, we find a curiously-shaped idol(?)
also in the form of a pendant, which seems to represent the union of horses
and water.107) From either shoulder of the central figure, a horse's head
curves upward in an arc, so that the horse's heads face each other, while water
falls in waves from the arms held rigidly akimbo (Fig. 2). Such symbols of
flowing water often accompany images of deities in Mexico and the Orient,
and this Permian idol, and the Anahita deity of the Scythians also, probably
show the influence of Oriental mythology coming up from the south.
In Armenia in the Caucasus, too, there exists a legend of Iranian origin Islamiccultureand
sea-stallions
103) Phalipau, p. 176-177.
104) Negelein, 1903, S. 347.
105) Tallgren, 1928, pp. 75-76, Fig. 2-4.
106) ibid., pp. 77-79, Fig. 6, 7. " This divergence of time has not yet been satisfactorily ac-
counted for: the difference in time between the models and their descendants is about 200-
500 years. Either the Permian group is older than we now believe, or else the
'fish,' for
instance, has lived on the Siberian steppes longer than our present-information shows. In
any case, the genetic connection is beyond all doubt. It is left to students of folklore and
mythology to show whether in the Ob-Ugrian area conceptions exist which bear some relation
to the Iranian water-deity."-ibid., pp. 80-82.
107) ibid., p. 68, Fig. 10; p. 69.
 28 THE KAPPA LEGEND

in which the hero, Burzi, in his struggle with the "flame-horse " who appears
out of the sea and kills all the horses in the royal pasture, overcomes the horse
by means of the bridle of his dead horse, marries the king's daughter, and
becomes his heir,108) while the Kurds, a semi-nomadic race who inhabits
Southern Kurdistan, also have a legend among them in which a magic stallion
appears out of the sea. In this legend, as told in the epic poem of Sotch
Osman, his steed is a sea-stallion whose speed is such that eagles and wild
ducks in their flight cannot compete with him, and the Sultan wishes so much
to obtain possession of the horse, that he causes the hero to be beheaded in
the end. As we have seen in the Kashmir story of the parrot, and the tale
of Sindbad in the Thousand Nights and One Night, legends of sea stallions
abound in Islamic folklore, and the theme of this epic poem too, as well as
many other legends of the Kurds, must have been received from the Arabs,
Prows in the form or at any rate, the Islamic peoples to the south.109) But the fact that the
of horses' heads association of horses with water in Southwestern Asia dates back to a far
older period than the rise of Islamic civilization, may be gathered from a
picture of a boat used by the ancient Assyrians, with the prow shaped like
a horse's head and the stern in the form of the tail of a fish, which was dis-
covered in the palace of Sargon of approximately 700 B.C. (Fig. 3).110) A
boat with the prow shaped like a horse's head appears in ancient Roman
sculpture also,1l) but it is of still greater interest to note that large, flat-
bottomed ferry-boats used on the River Tsangpo in Tibet carry even today
a wooden beam carved in the likeness of a horse's head fixed on the prow,
and that these boats are called by the natives "wooden horses."'1l) Coinci-
dences of this nature found in regions so far apart, leave us no room for
doubt as to their being due to some deep-rooted idea concerning the relation-
ship between horses and water. Descending south from Tibet to the fertile
plains of India, there is an account in the Visnu Pur.na of how, at the wedding
The god Varuna of the sage Richika, Varuna, the god of the water-world, supplied the bride's
father with the thousand fleet white horses which the latter had demanded.1l3
This story is not unconnected with the Greek and Roman legends of Poseidon-
shift
Neptunus, with which we shall deal later, and we are now obliged to
the field of our inquiry from Asia to Europe.
The Finnic An oriental saying compares the rapid passing of time to a white horse
steam
peoples leaping, seen through a cleft in a wall, and prior to the invention of the
available
engine, horses must have certainly been the fastest means of travel

108) Chalatianz, S. 152.

109) Phalipau, p. 177.
110) Howey, p. 148.
111) ibid., p. 147.
112) Waddel, p. 310.
113) Dowson, p. 338.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 29
to man. That being the case, the present writer now proposes, like the mounted
nomads of ancient times, to urge his steed in one momentous rush from one
extremity of the Eurasian continent to the other, and to appear by the shores
of the Baltic Sea, whence he will descend gradually southwards and explore
the continent's western borders.
In Finland, first of all, a country rich in folklore occupying the north-
western corner of the European continent, knights of old, in order to obtain
a fine steed and gain the necessary qualifications for becoming its master,
had to bathe three times, once in a spring, then in the dew on the fields, and
the third time in the dew lying on pastures."l4 Here again we see a relation-
ship established between divine horses and the power of water. The sea,
rivers, lakes and marshes of this country are the domain of a water-spirit
called the Nikki. He is usually seen in human form, but sometimes assumes Nikki, the water-
the shape of a man with the legs of a horse, and drags men and beasts, particu- spirit
larly horses, as in the case of the Japanese kappa, into the water.l5) At other
times, he appears in the form of a dog with a long beard, or a gigantic he-goat
with a bag of netting hanging from the horns, or a tree-trunk, or a log of wood,
only the tree-trunk or log of wood differs from others in that it has an eye as
large as a plate, manes growing along the back. It may also assume the ap-
pearance of a tree that has fallen into the water, and as soon as someone climbs
on it, it disappears under water, carrying the person with it.116) Among the
Esthonians, the Niikki, besides taking the form of a human being, is also said
to appear in the form of a white or grey foal. The foal runs about the water-
side and entices children to get on its back, and when they do, immediately
rushes back into the sea."") Among the Livonians, a people who are found
living today only in twelve villages at the extremity of Cape Kurland (Kuolka)
in Lithuania, we also find legends of the Nakki taking the form of a horse and
luring children into the water, and of sea-horses appearing on the beach and
chasing people who struck or otherwise annoyed them, besides stories of people
who have seen these horses swimming about in the sea.ls8
Although the Nakki legend is found over a wide area stretching from The Germanic
Finland and Esthonia to Karelia, the spirit itself often occupying a prominent peoples
position among the water-deities, the original water-god of the Finno-Ugric
peoples seems to have been of human form, the horse-shaped Nikki being,
together with the name, an importation from the Germanic peoples of Scandina-
via.19) The origin of the names, Neck, N6kke, Nikur, Nennir, Hnikur, etc.,

114) Phalipau, p. 257.

115) Holmberg, 1913, S. 197.
116) ibid., S. 194.
117) ibid., S. 161 f.; Holmberg, 1927, p. 202.
118) Loorits, p. 42.
119) Holmberg, 1913, S. 191 f.
 30 THE KAPPA LEGEND

by which this water-god is called among the Germanic peoples, is not clear.
Some consider them to be derived from an ancient Norse word for river-horse,
while others connect them with Nanna, the name of a goddess,120) or with
Nicholas, the Christian saint.l21) This water-spirit appears by the sea-shore
in the form of a beautiful dapple-grey stallion, but one can recognize the spirit
by the fact that the hoofs all point backwards towards the tail. Should anyone
place himself on its back, it at once dives into the water and drowns him. But
it seems that it was also possible to capture the horse and set it to work for
a while by certain means, and in Morlanda, in Bahus in Southern Sweden,
a wise man once made the horse plough all his fields by employing a special
kind of bridle, but by chance the bridle came off, and it is said that the Nikki
at once rushed back into the lake, drawing the plough with it. There is a
similar legend in Germany, according to which a great black horse once ap-
peared out of the sea, which a farmer caught and attached to his plough. The
horse started to draw along the plough with vigour, when in the next instant,
both the plough and the farmer were dragged headlong into the sea.122'
Hoofs pointing The fact that the Nakki, as many demons in the Indo-European countries,
backward has hoofs pointing backward is of special interest in that it has its counterpart
in Chinese legends, the monster shan-ts'ao (iih, tLhj), shan-shao (tjij), or
shan-ching (jptp), half-ape and half-man, which lives in the mountains being
described as "having one foot pointing backward," or "one foot with the
heel in front."123) This conception seems to be of considerable antiquity,
since already in the Shan-hai-ching there occur such passages as:
" The country of Hsiao-yang (!iH) lies to the west of the Pei-chii (IJTb)-
The inhabitants of this country have human faces with long lips. They have
black bodies covered with hair, and their heels are placed in front of their feet.
When they see a human being laugh, they laugh also. They wield a tube in
their left hand."-10, Hai-nei-nan-ching (%j9 _if).
" In the south live the giants of Kan (X). They have human faces with

120) Grimm, 1876, Bd. 1, S. 405.

121 Anichkof, pp. 115-116. Anichkof says: " In Germany millers throw different things into
the water on the 6th of December, St. Nicolas' Day, as an offering to the water-deity. In
Northern countries millers are particularly afraid of a certain deity Neck. Besides Nicor
and Neck, who remind us of St. Nicolas as a sea-monster, the very name of Nicolas is used
in a similar signification, but only in its diminutives. For instance, in Germany the sea-
a name
deity is sometimes called Nickel or Nickelmann, and in England Old Nick is familiar
of Evil Spirit....
" Artemis of Ephesos, as most sea-deities, is sometimes represented on horseback; so
is also sometimes St. Nicolas, he being a patron of horses.
" After all that has been said, we may, I think, draw the conclusion that the Christian
cult of St. Nicolas has, as a whole, replaced that of Artemis of Ephesos."
122) Grimm, 1876, Bd. 1, S. 405 f.; Keightley, p. 162.
Hsu (g), 5.
123) T'ai-ping-kuang-chi,428; Pen-ts'ao-kang-mu,51; Hjin-ch'i-hsieh,
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 31

long lips, and black bodies covered with hair. Their heels are placed in front
of their feet. They laugh when they see a human being laugh, so that their
faces become completely covered by their lips, and this makes it possible to
run away from them."-18, Hai-nan-ching (aj-pf).
The Nakki is sometimes thought to assume the form of a horse when Odin and the
beneath water, and that of a beautiful boy or young man when above, and is Nakki
also said to be seen at times sitting on the cliffs in the shape of an old man,
wringing the water out of his long beard. But it is in this last form that the
chief deity himself, Odin or Wodan, is often represented in the Icelandic
sagas,124)and when we think of the relationship already mentioned as being
supposed to exist between Nikur, the water-spirit, and St. Nicholas, and that
Hnikur is one of the appellations of Odin in the Eddas,l25) it would seem that
we have a series of new problems hitherto overlooked.126) Again, the con-
ception of Odin or his Valkyries speeding across the sky on horseback, has
that in it which makes one think of the terrifying aspect of rain-clouds rushing
on in a storm, and perhaps has something to do with the belief among the
inhabitants of Amstetten in Lower Austria, that sometimes they see a giant
astride on a white horse on the summits of mountains, and that it never fails
to rain afterwards.127) This question will be discussed further in the next
chapter, together with kindred Chinese legends of someone appearing mounted
on a white horse, causing abundant rain to follow.
Apart from the examples already given, legends of water-spirits appearing
in the form of horses are to be found in various parts of Germany such as
Silesia, Pomerania, Westphalia, and Bavaria, besides Austria, Switzerland,
England and France.1258 When a band of soldiers were sent out to seize the
Lorelei, she cast a spell on them so that they found themselves unable to move,
and causing the waves to rise as high as the rock on which she was sitting, she
called up a sea-green chariot drawn by horses with white manes from the
bottom of the river, and taking her place in this, vanished underneath the waves,

124) Keightley, p. 148.

125) ibid., p. 162.
126) From the ethnological point of view, Odin and St. Nicolas both possess characteristics that
remind us strongly of secret societies, and if a common link can be found between these two
and Nakk, the water-horse, as to their names and other characteristics, it
may serve as a
clue to the study of the nature of water-spirits in the form of horses, as well as of the
complex
of beliefs associating the horse with wind and rain, spirits of the
dead, the nether regions,
etc., and we hope to take some other opportunity to enter into a detailed discussion of the
question.
127) Jahns, 1872, Bd. 1, S. 277 (cit. by Negelein, 1902, S. 24). Wodan and the Valkyries both
have the power to carry away the spirits of the dead. The
harpy, the female monster in
the form of a horse in Greek mythology, who rules over
tempests, has points of similarity
with the Valkyries.-Negelein, loc. cit.
128) Steller, S. 1635; Panzer, S. 131.
 32 THE KAPPA LEGEND

never again to appear in human sight.129) The black horse which carried
Dietrich von Bern, the hero of a mediaeval German legend, to hell, is also said
to have appeared out of the sea.130) The idea of a black horse in this case, and
that of hell, both contain much matter that calls for inquiry, while legends of
dapple grey horses appearing out of the water and covering mares belonging to
the inhabitants,l31 form a significant counterpart to Oriental legends of divine
Scotland horses coming out of the water to cover mares. Turning now to Scotland,
the sombre lochs of that country harbour a species of water-horse known
Kelpies widely as kelpies. Men can tell the approach of a kelpie by the terrible sound
of its neighing, and those who have seen one cannot escape the fate of drowning
soon after. The kelpies themselves drag men into the water, break up boats,
and indulge in all kinds of other mischief.l32) Sometimes the kelpie assumes
the form of a beautiful young man and wins the love of mortal maidens, but
as soon as any doubt arises in the mind of the maiden as to the identity of her
lover, the kelpie reveals itself in its true form and drowns her in a marsh, river
The Boobrie, etc. or well.133) In the Scotch Highlands also lives a monster called the Boobrie.
This monster has its abode underneath the water like the kelpie, and has the
power to change itself into three different forms, horse, bull, and bird. About
this water-monster is told the following legend, of the same type as those just
cited from Swedish and German folklore:
On the banks of Loch Freisa in the northern part of the island of Mull,
on the west coast of Scotland, a tenant and his son were ploughing some land
so hard that they had to use four horses. Early one morning, one of the
horses cast a shoe. They were nine miles from a smithy, and the nature of
the ground made it impossible for a horse to draw the plough with one hoof
unshod. Just then, they saw a horse grazing by the loch, and at the suggestion
of the son, they decided to enlist its services for the time being, and caught
it and attached it to the plough. The horse seemed to be quite used to the
work, drawing first uphill, then down again without mishap, until they came
to the end of the furrow close to the loch. Here the tenant tried to turn the
horses again, upon which the borrowed one became a little restive, causing
the farmer to use the whip, though only lightly. But as soon as the thong
touched the horse, it changed itself into a monstrous bird, for this horse was
in fact the Boobrie, and uttering a cry that appeared to shake the earth, plunged
into the loch, carrying the other three horses and the plough with it.134)
In the same Highlands, we find another legend of the water-horse, with

129) Howey, p. 146.

130) Steller, S. 1634.
131) Simrock, S. 469.
132) Grimm, Bd. 3 (Nachtr.), S. 142.
133) Howey, p. 145.
134) ibid., pp. 145-146 (Campbellof Islay MSS.).
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 33
a motif of the swan-maiden system:
A beautiful black water-horse once lived in the pond of Poll nan Craobhan,
by the banks of the River Spey, appearing from time to time to cover mares
grazing by the pond, and whenever it succeeded in decoying anyone to mount
on its saddled back, immediately leaping into the pond and so drowning him.
A daring man, following the instructions of a witch, once covered himself
with the skin of a dappled cow and approached the water-horse after nightfall,
and suddenly springing up, took off its bridle. In this way, the horse being
deprived of its power, was forced to work for the man, who in a short time
became exceedingly rich. After some years, while the man and his wife were
out, their only daughter came across the bridle and saddle hidden in a corner
of the kitchen, upon which, wishing to go out riding, she put them on the
black horse. . The horse neighed with joy, and no sooner was the girl in the
saddle than it galloped away, to disappear into the deepest part of a lochan
which was said to be bottomless.135)
There is also a story in Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with
Samuel Johnson, told by an old man living on the island of Raasay, according
to which a water-horse that dwelled in the lochs once caught a man's daughter
and devoured her. So then the man lighted a great fire and put a spit in it,
and hid himself nearby, leaving a sow to roast on the fire. The smell attracted
the monster, and on its approaching the fire, the man took up the red-hot spit
and destroyed the monster.136)
A point of special interest in this story is the use of a spit to overcome the Iron as a charm
monster. The practice of putting into the water pieces of metal, particularly
iron, and various objects made of metal while bathing, as a charm against
the Niikki, is found widely in Finland, Esthonia and Sweden, where also, people
often bathe with a knife in their mouths, or leave a knife on the shore with its
edge turned towards the water, during the time they are in it. When horses, the
favourite prey of the Nakki, are being bathed, metal objects are also thrown
into the water, or a fire-steel is attached to the tail, or a bell hung on the horse's
neck. This is particularly so in the case of unshod horses, since shod onps are
believed by some to be safe from the attacks of the Nakki.137) The Scandinavians
place a knife at the bottom of the boat when they go out to sea, or set a nail
in a reed. The following incantation is used against the Nakki in Norway;
Nyk, Nyk, nail in water!
The Virgin Mary casteth steel in water!
Do you sink, I flit !138)
135) MacDougall and Calder, pp. 308-319.
136) Boswell, pp. 153-154.
137) Holmberg, 1913, pp. 197-198; 1927, pp. 205-206.
138) Keightley, pp. 148-149; Holmberg, 1913, p. 199. In Finland, when one is entering the
water, the words, " The Nakk is as heavy as iron, I am as light as a leaf," are added after
reciting the wordsof the charm againstthe Nikk, and the opposite, " I am as heavy as iron,
the Nakkis as light as a leaf," recited while drawingout knivesetc. planted in the water, on
coming up to land.-Holmberg, S. 198.
 34 THE KAPPA LEGEND

One is reminded here of the fact that the kappa and other Japanese water-
spirits also hold anything made of iron in abhorrence. There is a legend of
a kappa who failed in an attempt to lure a horse into the water, and being
spared its life by the man who caught it trying to lure the horse, promised to
bring river-fish in return every morning, only begging him not to have any
cutlery lying about as it could not abide such things, and how after a time the
tribute of fish ceased, because the kappa's injunctions were forgotten and sickles
and knives left about the house. The legend is to be found in the provinces
of Hida and Awa, and at Oni-fuchi, in the village of Kiyomi in the district
of Ono, Hida province, where this legend exists, it is said that even today there
is a tabu on all metal articles.139) There must surely be some relationship
between this and the theme of another group of Japanese legends of the
Miwayama type, in which a serpent assumes human form and becomes
a girl's lover, only to lose his life through the poisonous action of a needle
the girl attaches to the hem of his gown,140) as also the Chinese custom of
throwing great quantities of iron utensils, from cauldrons to hoes and spades,
into the water when building a dyke, from the idea that the chiao-dragon, the
Chinese water-spirit, is frightened away by anything made of iron.141) The
Malays, when they are about to drink from a river that is not familiar to them,
plant knives into the river-bed with the edge towards the source,142) while
the Tobelo in Halmahera have a custom of boiling iron in their drinking-
water.143) But not only water-gods are frightened away by anything made
of iron. The popular belief that iron may be used as a charm against
wizards and evil spirits is to be found all over the world, from Europe and
India to the Pacific, so that E. Tylor is of the opinion that it reflects the idea
of the superiority of iron utensils entertained by men in the period of
transition from the stone age to the iron.144'
Charms against As charms against the Nakki in Finland and the other Scandinavian
water-spirits countries, besides the forms already mentioned, there are various others in
usage such as scooping up the mud and sand at the bottom of a lake with an
oar, throwing stones and slag into the water behind a horse, carving crosses
on the hoofs of horses and cattle, and pronouncing the names of the people
who have been drowned,'45~while it is also considered efficacious to call the
Nikki by its name and to speak to it. When a water-spirit hears its own name
called, or finds that its presence has been discovered by human beings, it is

139) Yanagita, 1912, pp. 21-22 (ed. 1942, p. 27), p. 25 (p. 32).
140) Takagi, pp. 181-184; Seki, pp. 440-471. Cf. Kojiki, pt. 2, p. 65.
141) T'aiping-yu-lan, 73.
142) Skeat, p. 274; Kruijt., blz. 161.
143) Kruijt, blz. 163.
144) Tylor, vol. 1, p. 140.
145) Holmberg, 1913, S.201.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 35

said to disappear into the water.146) This again must derive from the same
kind of idea as the belief in China, that if a mountain-spirit is called by its
name, it will do no harm,'47) and the custom still prevailing in Japan, in Nishi-
Kawazu of the village of Kawazu, Yasaka-gun, Izumo province, of saying,
in connection with the legend of a mishap which overtook a kappa of the same
district, "Un-shu (i.e. Izumo province) Nishi-Kawazu," when bathing, as
a charm against these creatures.l48)
Returning to the main subject of this essay, if we now shift our ground Ireland
to Ireland, we find an even closer relationship between horses and water-
gods in the Celtic mythology of this island. Among the gods whose names
are preserved in records of ancient Erin, the sea-god corresponding to Poseidon
of the Greeks, is Ler, and his son, Manannan mac Ler, performs many deeds Manannan's white
of prowess among the gods, mounted on a splendid horse. He also is a sea- horse
god, and a special patron of sailors, and is supposed to have journeyed back
and forth between Ireland and the Celtic Elysium in the West, in a chariot
drawn by horses that ran along the surface of the sea. A horse he had, which
he lent to the Sun-god Lug, is called Enbarr, or Splendid Mane. This horse
could travel " swifter than the wind of spring " both on land and sea, and its
bridle, said to have been obtained from a water-horse, had the power of causing
the image of a worker of evil magic to appear in water contained in a special
kind of pail. When a storm is raging over the sea, the Irish call the breaking
waves "the white horses of Manannan mac Ler."149)
Cuchulainn, the hero of old Irish legends, is a being that might be ranked Fine steeds of
with the thunder-god Th6r of Northern Europe and Indra of the Indians, Cdchulainn
and the steeds he captured also came from the water-world. One of them,
the Grey of Macha, appeared out of the Grey Lake. Cuichulainn approached
it from behind, and wrestled with it all round Erin before it was mastered, and
when it was wounded at his death, it went back into the lake to be healed.150'
Even after the advent of Christianity, St. Michael of the White Steeds took St. Michaeland
the place of Brian, a divinity of old Irish mythology that is thought to have others
been partly a sea-god, and the saint became a sort of Neptune, while St. Bairre
of Cork, called Find-bharr or White Mane, also assumed a Neptunic character,
roaming over the seas round Ireland on a steed lent him by St. David.151) In
the 7th century, St. Fechin of Fore, another Irish saint, is supposed to have
compelled a water-horse to take the place of one of the horses that were drawing
146) ibid., S. 197.
147) " The mountain-spiritis shaped like a little child, with one foot pointing backwards. It
does harm to people during night, and is called mei (g, ](). If its name is called, it loses
its power to do harm."-Pao-p'u-tzi, Nei-p'ien (Nt), 17, T'eng-she (M).
148) Yanagita, 1912, p. 29 (ed. 1942, p. 37).
149) Howey, pp. 142-143; MacCulloch, 1918, p. 128.
150) MacCulloch, 1918, p. 128.
151) Howey, pp. 143-144.
 36 THE KAPPA LEGEND

his chariot, and that had died on a journey, allowing it afterwards to return
to the water.152)
The goddess Epona The Celtic goddess Epona may originally have been a goddess of a river
or a spring, while she is clearly also a goddess of horses, as in the case of the
goddess Anahita of the Scythians. In a bas-relief discovered in Bregenz,
in Vorarlberg, she is shown feeding five horses, while a bronze statuette found
in Wiltshire, in the southwestern part of England, represents her sitting be-
tween two colts, and holding a cornucopia in her left hand (Fig. 5).153) The
cornucopia is worthy of particular attention as indicating that Epona is a goddess
of plenty, as well as a goddess of horses.
France Legends exist, not only in Scotland but in France also, of water-horses
that can assume whatever form they please, causing harm to travellers, or ap-
pearing as human beings to lead their lovers to destruction,154) and sometimes
this takes place at some distance from the water, so that it is not easy to know
them for what they are. In Plouguenast, in the department of C6te-du-Nord,
a horse appeared before some children and caused its back to stretch, until
four or five of them were mounted on it, after which it plunged into a pond
and drowned them. There is another legend in Jugon of the fairy Mourioche
taking the form of a horse, and drowning anyone who gets on its back. In
Guernesey, a beautiful white horse made its back stretch until twelve children
found they could mount it with ease, when suddenly it started to leap over
hedges and ditches, and at midnight, after having galloped across the
country at an incredible speed, throw the children into a marsh. In Albret, a
red horse with a short tail took nine men on its back and galloped away.
Eight of them were flung down on the way, and the ninth, who was clinging
to the horse's manes, disappeared with it into a marsh. In lower Normandy,
spirits, usually of the feminine sex, are said to assume the form of mares and
carry anyone who has got on its back for long distances, and then dissolve in a
pond, causing the rider to be thrown into it, laughing greatly at his discomfi-
ture. In Bocage, spirits of this type appear as beautiful black horses, in Poitou,
as white horses already saddled and bridled, and when they have succeeded
in enticing men to get on them, are said to throw them into rivers and marshes,
assume their original form, and laugh at the unfortunate people. We find a
The magical pro- similar legend in Sologne.'55) On the other hand, streams are supposed to
perties of water have the power of giving health and strength to horses. In Brittany, there
used to be a custom in the old days of sturdy boys mounting bare-back on
horses that had not yet been broken in, and making them leap across a wide
stream that flowed round the chapel of St. Eloi, on the feast-day of the saint.

152) MacCulloch, 1918, p. 129.

153) ibid., pl. 15.
154) ibid., p. 129.
155) Sebillot, tome 2, pp. 441-442.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 37
Horses that went through this trial successfully were supposed to possess
more strength than others. A stream in the neighbourhood of Morlaix is
thought to have the power of assuring the fecundity of fillies that forded it,
while there is a custom in Ploudalmezeau of bringing fillies after mass on
the indulgence-day of Saint Herbot, and making them leap three times
across a stream that flows near the chapel.156) Not only streams, but
stagnant pieces of water also seem to possess the same power, for in Brittany,
there are often ponds near chapels dedicated to St. Eloi, in which it is the
custom to bathe horses so that they might receive the patronage of the saint.
St. Eloi has apparently taken the place of some earlier local deity, and many
make pilgrimages to chapels dedicated to him, in the hope of obtaining as-
sistance from him as the patron-god of horses.'57) We are naturally reminded
by these French customs of such Japanese customs as the uma-arai (" horse-
washing ") and Nakoshi (" passing the summer ").
Going south into Spain we find records of a century ago of " horses of Spain
the flood," horses of monstrous shape which lived in deep pools and lakes "Horses of the
among the Caballero mountains, and appeared sometimes among men to do flood"
great damage.158) All this shows that there is no country on the west coast
of Europe that does not have its legends and myths concerning water-horses.
But before we carry our inquiry into this world of magic to Southern Europe
and the Mediterranean, we must turn our attention next to the northeast,
to the villages of Russia, and so, threading our way through the Slavic and
Finno-Ugric peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, give a glance at the in-
terior regions of the continent.
The horse appears in all ancient Slav festivals for celebrating the Russia
coming of spring or summer, and in Russia, on the festival of the saints
Peter and Paul on June 29, a mare called Rusalka representing the spirit The mare Rusalka
of water formed a part of the procession.159' It is worthy of notice that a
mare should be chosen as a symbol of water in this festival for bringing
in the summer. In the legends collected by V. Wollner and others, there
are many instances of divine horses appearing out of the water. In one
of these legends, the Tsar had a field into which came a herd of horses
out of the water and ravaged the crops, and one of these had the mark
of a star on its forehead, another that of the moon, and another that of the
sun.160) These marks of celestial bodies on the foreheads of horses should
be compared with the white star borne by the divine horse Bosafabo of the
Mongols, already mentioned, the custom of attaching rosette signs on the

156) ibid., p. 381.

157) ibid., p. 462.
158) Howey, p. 147 (George Borrow, The Bible in Spain, 1842).
159) Phalipau, p. 257.
160) ibid., p. 257.
 38 THE KAPPA LEGEND

foreheads of horses offered in sacrifice at the ceremony of Asvamedha, as given

in the sacred texts of ancient India, and the star which appears again on the
foreheads of the divine oxen--the celestial cows-of ancient Egypt and
Mycenae.'61 It is possible that the idea originated with the nomadic peoples
of the steppes, who, in their worship of the sky, gave to the sun, moon, stars,
wind and rain, thunder and lightning, and other phenomena connected with
the sky, the forms of the beasts they kept.162)
Bohemia Coming next to Czecho-Slovakia in Central Europe, water-spirits in that
country often appear in the form of horses, particularly white horses. But
in this instance, the horses lack the lower jaw, while the spirits sometimes
Misshapen forms also take the form of carp without tails. Being misshapen in one way or
and the nether another, other examples of which are seen in headless horses and horses pro-
world vided with a horn that we shall mention later, and the Nakk with its hoofs
pointing backwards, already cited, is a condition which often accompany
spirits, especially spirits of the nether world. This Czech water-horse ravages
pastures, and scatters heaps of fodder with its hoofs. A farmer of Novy
Bydzov near Zachrastany once saw a herd of beautiful white horses grazing
by a pond. He was on the point of getting astride one of them, when he noticed
that it had no lower jaw, and stopped. Then the horse laughed and said:
" You are lucky, for if you had got on my back, I would have drowned you,"
and the whole herd leaped into the pond. This legend differs a little according
to districts. In some places, the water-horse is supposed to appear in the
form of a black horse foaming at the mouth, and sending forth sparks of fire
from its eyes. If anyone hits the horse, his fields are sure to be ruined by it
Barks of trees have a few days later, but by using a kind of rope made of the barks of trees, it is
magic powers possible to capture these horses and put them to work. A single water-horse
can do as much work as several ordinary horses, but in time it becomes
terribly thin. This is because it is never fed, nor given water to drink, for
if water is given, it recovers its former strength in an instant and disappears
for ever in the nearest river or pond. In the Drahonicko district lived a
water-horse named Uskocny (" cunning "), and this, indicating that it came
from the nether world, had a horn growing on its head.163'
Krolmus, the well-known folklorist, has collected a great quantity of
Eastern Bohemian legends of this type, while A. Danek has made a similar
collection of legends of Western Bohemia told in districts round Sumava and
161) Koppers, 1936, S. 383.
162) In the Rgveda, the word Aditi, which meant originally the infinite heavens with their
illimitable stores of riches, gradually came to be used at the same time for the heavenly cow,
so that, the clouds were called cows, and the wind either the calf or the bull, and Indra, the
supreme god, having both the attributes of the sun and of thunder and rain, " the bull among
bulls." In the world of night, the moon and starswere also represented as cows (VII. 36, 1).-
Gubernatis, vol. 1, pp. 5-8, 17, 18.
163) Phalipau, p. 258; Panzer, S. 131.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 39

Chodsko. To give one or two examples of these legends:

A farmer of Volenice noticed that someone scattered about the fodder
in his pasture night by night, so he hid himself behind a handmill and lay in
wait for the intruder, when at midnight, a white horse appeared and began
kicking the fodder about. The farmer sprang up and caught the horse, and
finding that it was a water-horse, released it after making it promise that it
would never do harm to his pasture again, and the horse vanished into a nearby
pond called the Rabsky pond.164) This story reminds us of the Japanese tale
of the kappa who was forced to give a written apology for its misdemeanours.
In Ptakovice near Strakonice, a labourer was ploughing a field with his old
mare, when a fine white horse made its appearance. The labourer wanted to
use this unknown horse for ploughing and so give his old mare a rest. The
horse was easily caught, and the ploughing finished in no time, when, looking
back, he found the field in the same condition as it had been when he had started
ploughing. The labourer went home and spoke of his adventure to his employer,
and his employer then told him that the horse was a water-horse, and that a
halter made of bark would subjugate it. In this way, the horse was caught
again, and taking care not to give it any water, the people of the farm used it
this time to carry bricks to build a wall in the farm. The wall was soon built,
but came down again in a heap immediately afterwards. In the end the horse
was released, and it disappeared into a pond near the farm.165)
The Slavs of Lausitz, to the north of Bohemia, were protected by their Lausitz
geographical position from the inroads of the Scythians, Avars, and other
mounted nomadic races from the east, and they had no knights who would
have joined the crusades. This explains why the horse seldom plays the
principal role in their legends, but even among these people, water-monsters
sometimes assume the form of horses, and when a water-spirit takes to the
water on seeing a human being, it is said to " neigh like a horse." Among
the old legendary kings of Lausitz, there is one who belongs to the water-
world and always goes on horseback. To throw off those who might pursue
him, his horse is shod with the shoes pointing backwards, a detail which may
have originated from the same group of ideas as the hoof pointing backwards
of the N'ikk. There is another legend of Lausitz about a carriage which ap-
pears out of the water. This is drawn by headless black horses, and anyone Headlessblack
who has the misfortune to see it is bound to die. This legend, which reminds horses
us of the Japanese story of the headless horse of Awa, is to be found in the dis-
tricts of G6ritz, Wtschau and Stradow, but its origin is not clear. Perhaps
it is a reminiscence of the black horse of Triglav, the hero and sun-god of
the Western Slavs, which no one except the priest was allowed to mount.'66"

164) Phalipau, p. 258.

165) ibid., p. 259.
166) ibid., pp. 259, 70.
 40 THE KAPPA LEGEND

Hungary With the Hungarians also, water-spirits sometimes appear as horses.

Horses lacking the lower jaw, as in the case of the water-horses of Bohemia,
often come out of the River Perecz and thrust into the water anyone who has
not had the time to flee from them. And, as in the case of Finland, the water-
spirits of this country sometimes appear in a form half-human and half horse.
According to a popular belief, an old man, half of whose body is that of a horse,
lives in the H6viz pond near Sajo-Vamos in Borsod, and throws out toys and
other objects from the bank to entice people into the water. In Hungary,
too, water-spirits are frightened away by anything made of iron, and to clear
wells of spirits who would otherwise try to draw men into them, iron nails
and locks are thrown into the wells.'671
Southern Slavs Lastly, we come to Yugoslavia. We have already mentioned the legend
of the Western Slavs about headless black horses that come out of the water,
and the possible connection between these black horses and the sun-god.
Among the Southern Slavs, we come across a legend of the sun speeding across
The chariot of the the sky on a chariot drawn by white horses. Whenever the horses shake their
sun
caparisons, rain falls and the wind rises. From being the representatives
of the mysterious power of water, the divine horses now have their share in
controlling celestial bodies and the wind and the rain.168) At this point, Slav
The Greeks land
mythology is seen to draw very near to that of the Greeks.
the Mediterra-
We have now reached the shores of the Mediterranean, and are about to
nean enter the world of the Greek civilization. The first figure to meet our eyes
here is that of Poseidon, and there is nothing that is known to us about the
Poseidon, the
connection between horses and water-gods in Greek and Roman mythology
horse-god
which does not have something to do with this god. We read in the Homeric
Hymn: " Twofold, Shaker of the Earth, is the meed of honour the gods have
allotted thee, to be the 'Tamer of horses ' and the ' Succour of ships.' "169)
In the same way, Poseidon is called " Giver of horses and of ships with
spread sails " in the most ancient hymn composed for the Athenians.l70?
When Zeus proclaimed that he would make anyone who created the most
useful thing for mankind the patron of the newly built town of Athens, and
name the town after him, Poseidon struck the earth with his trident and caused
a splendid horse to leap out of there.'71 Poseidon became enamoured of
Demeter and pursued her, and when she turned herself into a mare in her
flight, he also turned himself into a horse and had his will of her, the fruit of
Areion and Pegasus the union being the divine horse Areion.1721 Pegasus, too, was created by
167) Holmberg, 1913, S. 259 f.
168) Phalipau, p. 257.
169) HomericHymns, XXII: Evelyn-White (tr.), p. 449; Harrison, p. 17.
170) Pausanias, VII, 21, 9: Frazer, 1913, vol. 1, p. 360; Harrison, p. 17.
171) Virgil, Georgics,I, 12-14: Fairclough (tr.), p. 81; cf. Apollodorus: Frazer (tr.), vol. 2,
p. 79, note 1; Howey, p. 133.
172) Pausanias, VIII, 25, 4: Frazer, 1913, vol. 1, p. 405.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 41
Poseidon out of the blood that dropped into the foaming sea from the head of
Medusa Gorgon.173) At the wedding feast of Peleus, king of Thessaly, and
Thetis, the Nereides, Poseidon gave them as gifts two immortal horses, Xanthus
and Balius.174) On a fragment of Corinthian pottery of 7th century B.C., Poseidonon
Poseidon is depicted astride a horse with the reins in his left hand and the horseback
trident in his right (Fig. 6),175)while in Atlantis, the lost kingdom imagined
by Plato, a gigantic statue of Poseidon in gold stands on a chariot drawn by
six winged horses in the temple of the god.176) In later times, Neptunus is
seen in a mural painting at Pompeii riding on a car drawn by hippocampi,
the fore halves of whose bodies have the form of horses, and the hind halves,
of dolphins,177) and at the games of the Consualia held in his honour, horses
and mules were decked with garlands of flowers.17) Moreover, to this god
who himself assumed sometimes the form of a horse, and was represented
in painting and sculpture as having the head of a horse and the body of a fish,
horses were offered in solemn sacrifice. According to Pausanias, the Argives Sacrifice of horses
in ancient times threw horses, bitted and bridled, into the fountain of Dione
in honour of Poseidon,179)and Festus says that in Illyria a yoke of four horses
was sunk in the water every nine years.180) It is said that even the people
of Pontus, on the far-off coast of the Black Sea, had a custom of sacrificing to
Poseidon a chariot drawn by four white horses which they drove into the sea.181)
There can be no doubt at least that the sea-god Poseidon holding in his
hand the "trident fishing-spear " was a god of the fishing folk. There is
as little doubt that this god who was called the " Succour of Ships," and was
supposed to calm the roughest sea merely by appearing on it, was a god
of sailors also. But then the question arises, why he should also be the god
of horses, with which animals sailing and fishing have very little to do. Where
should we look for the origin of such of his epithets as Hippius (" horse-god ")
and Hyppodromus (" horse-tamer ")? It is sometimes said in explanation
of these names, that they arose from the resemblance of sea-waves to the manes
of galloping white horses, which causes them to be called "white horses "

173) Apollodorus, II, 4, 2: Frazer (tr.), vol. 1, p. 159; Howey, p. 139. "But on one monu-
ment, a Boeotian stamped amphora in the Louvre, Medusa herself has the body of a horse,
though the face of a woman. She is a horse goddess and as such the fitting bride of the
horse-Poseidon. The Boeotian horse-Medusa recalls the horse-headed Demeter worshipped
at Phigaleia in Arcadia."-Harrison, pp. 42-43. Perhaps we may see a combination of
the horse and the dragon-serpent in Medusa also.
174) Apollodorus, III, 13, 5: Frazer (tr.), vol. 2, p. 69; Howey, p. 142.
175) Harrison, p. 19, Fig. 2.
176) Plato, Critias, 116: Bury (tr.), p. 291.
177) Howey, pp. 134-135. 178) ibid., p. 13.4.
179) Pausanias, VIII, 7, 2: Frazer, 1913, vol. 1, p. 381; Harrison, pp. 19-20.
180) Festus, Lib. VIII: vol. 1, p. 307, Hippius; Harrison, p. 19.
181) Howey, p. 141.
 42 THE KAPPA LEGEND

or " sea-horses,"'s2) or the fact is recalled that when horses were first brought
to the Peloponessus by sea in the time of Adrastus in the middle of 14th
century B.C., the Argives were so struck by the novelty of these animals, that
they held them to be sacred and as having come from Poseidon, the sea-god.l83'
But neither of these explanations would seem to be adequate. Indeed, as
Miss Jane Ellen Harrison has pointed out, the fountain of Dione already
The earth and mentioned as having been the place where horses were sacrificed to Poseidon,
Poseidon is a fresh-water spring near Genethlium in Argolis,184 while Onchestus, "the
bright grove of Poseidon," which was a great religious centre in the time of
Homer and where, we read in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, fine chariots
drawn by young horses were dedicated to Poseidon the King (Anax), is a town
in Boeotia far removed from the sea.l85 And why is it that his pursuing
Demeter, the earth-goddess and the goddess of cereals, and the subsequent
birth of the divine horse Areion, or his producing the horse out of the earth
in his contest with Athene, does not seem to have much to do with the sea
or its white horses, the waves ? Perhaps it will be possible to find in the
answer to this query the clue to the whole question of horses and water-gods
which form the subject of this chapter. It is now our purpose to introduce
here the theory advanced by Miss Harrison, the eminent mythologist already
cited, and, in doing so, to take a further step towards the solution of the que-
stion.
Poseidon the " Poseidon then so far is fisherman and horseman," says Miss Harrison,
bull-man "strange and incompatible enough are the two functions, but a stranger fact
still remains to be faced. He is not only fisherman and horseman; he is bull-
man."'86) The figure of Poseidon on a black figured amphora in the
museum at Wiirzburg, given in Miss Harrison's book, is of greatest interest.
The lord of the " unharvested " sea is shown riding on a bull, and holding
God of the in his right hand, with similar irrelevance, a great blossoming bough, while
blossoming bough in his left hand he grasps a fish and behind him vaguely unattached is his
trident. He is a bundle of incongruities (Fig. 7).187) We must remember
that one of the epithets friquently given to Poseidon was Taureus (" who
is a bull"). Festivals held in his honour were called Tauria, and in
Ephesus, boys whose role it was to pour wine at the festival of Poseidon
were called tauroi (bulls).188) In the story of the death of Hippolytus, the
"
182) ibid.,p. 134. The breakersare called sometimes" white horses" or " sea.horses." The
mariner who rides the white horses (or waves) is thence called Hippion. For this reason
too, the ship Argo was known as Hippodameia,that is 'the Horse-tamer,'becauseshe rode
over the billows."-loc. cit.
183) ibid, p. 141.
184) Harrison,p. 20.
185) ibid., pp. 20-21; HomericHymns,III, 229-238: Evelyn-White (tr.), p. 341.
186) Harrison, p. 21.
187) ibid.,p. 21; 22, Fig. 3.
188) ibid., p. 23; ERE, vol. 1, p. 501.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 43

grandson of Poseidon, the sea-bull sent by the god plays, together with horses, Great sea-bull
a decisive role. Theseus, the father of Hippolytus, cursing his innocent son,
says, "Poseidon, reverencing my prayers, shall slay and speed him unto
Hades' halls." So, while Hippolytus is driving his chariot by Saronis Golf,
a wild sea-bull makes its appearance out of an enormous wave, and the
frightened horses dash Hippolytus to death against the rocks.189)
Miss Harrison's theory in regard to this difficult question is as follows: Miss Harrison's.
"The animal on which a god stands or rides or whose head he wears is, it is theory
now accepted, the primitive animal form of the god. Poseidon then had once
for his animal form a horse and also it would seem a bull. The bull was in
the fullest sense his vehicle, his carrier. As the god has himself no actuality,
as there is no god, his worshippers choose something, some plant or animal
or man to be the vehicle of their desires, to represent the god they have pro-
jected. Now a bull is often thus chosen by a people of agriculturists, he is
a splendid symbol and vehicle of that intense and vigorous life they feel without
and within them; so is the horse to a people of horse-rearers .. .190) Poseidon
then is fisherman-god, horse-god, bull-god. Finally we must never forget
that though he is not the sea-incarnate, he is not elemental, he is ruler
of the sea, pontomedon as the Greeks called him, thalassocrat as we should say
today. These various and contradictory aspects so puzzling to the old method
of mythology are clear enough once we adopt the new, once we state the god
in terms of his worshippers: Poseidon fisher-god, horse-god, god of the
blossoming bough, bull-god. Finally we must never forget that imagined
idolon of a people of fishermen, traders, horsemen, agriculturists, bull-rearers,
thalassocrats..."
Then, did there really exist in antiquity a people who were at the same
time, fishermen, agriculturist, horse-rearers, thalassocrats and who actually
worshipped the bull ?
" The word thalassocrat, ruler of the sea, instantly reminds us that the
Cretan Minos was the first of the thalassocrats. His god was the Minotaur,
The Minotaur, the
the Minos-Bull. The god Poseidon was primarily and in essence none other Cretan bull
than the Cretan Minotaur...
" The Minotaur is not identical with Poseidon, rather he is the point de
repere about which the complex of Poseidon slowly crystallizes. Beginning
as an island holy bull, worshipped by a population of fishermen, agriculturists,
and herdsmen, he developed with his people. As Minotaur he spread his
dominion across the islands and the sea to Greece proper. There
shedding
his horns and hooves, he climbed at last to the snow-clad heights of
Olympus.
Where and when he got his new name Poseidon, which in all
probability
189) Euripides, Hippolytus, 895-896, 1198-1249: Way (tr.), pp. 233, 257-259; Harrison, pp.
24-26.
190) ibid., pp. 23-24.
 44 THE KAPPA LEGEND

means Lord of Moisture, we can not certainly say."191)

It cannot be denied that the bull forms the centre of all religious and
political life in the ancient kingdom of Crete. " The Palace of Cnossus is
full of the Holy Bull; his Horns of Consecration are everywhere, the whole
palace is his Labyrinth." In the Greek legend of the king-god Minotaur,
calling every seventh year for his toll of victims, Athenian youths and maidens,
and in ancient Cretan coins and innumerable designs on amphorae, Minotaur
Minos, the priest is always represented as a man with the head and hoofs of an ox. On the
and king-god Cretan sealing discovered by Sir Arthur Evans, the head of the Minotaur has
become irrecognizable, but a bull's tail is clearly seen curling up behind the
throne.'92) The explanation given by Miss Harrison to this is that the Minotaur,
half-bull and half-man, is the king-god Minos wearing a ritual mask, the
bull's head and horns and possibly a bull's hide in his priestly capacity.
" In Egypt, Diodorus tells us, it was the custom in the ruling house to
put on the head the foreparts of lions, bulls and snakes as tokens of the royal
dominion. Sir Arthur Evans kindly tells me that the ritual form of the Mino-
taur, as bull-headed man, can, he believes, be traced right back to the hiero-
glyphs of Egypt. The Minotaur is but King Minos masking as a bull. The
object is, of course, that the royal functionary as representative of the whole
state may get for it the force, the mana of the holy animal, that like Hannah
his 'horn may be exalted.' "193)

Egypt, Crete and Intercourse existed between the Minoan culture and that of ancient Egypt
Greece since the earliest times, and all historians agree that the Minoan culture
played an important part in furnishing the background to the formation of
the classic culture of Greece. Now, in all Greek records concerning the
kingdom of Crete and its bull, the sea-god Poseidon, strangely enough, always
makes his appearance. King Minos wishes for a kingdom and prays to
Poseidon to send him a bull, whereupon Poseidon sends him a magnificent
bull out of the depths of the sea, and so enables the king to obtain his king-
Atlantis dom.l94) Again, the island of Atlantis described in Plato's Critias is thought
to be the kingdom of Crete which, after a period of unparalleled splendour,
sank into complete oblivion, and this Atlantis according to Plato's work is
ruled by Poseidon. When the gods divided the world among,themselves,
the island of Atlantis fell to Poseidon's lot, and the god having had children
born to him on the island, made them settle in a part of it.194a) In Greek
legend, Minos became the first lawgiver and as lawgiver he lived on, " uttering
dooms " to the dead in Hades, and in Plato, Poseidon is shown giving laws to

191) ibid., pp. 26-28.

192) ibid., p. 28.
193) ibid., pp. 29-30; Diodorus, I, 62, 4: Oldfather (tr.), vol. 1, p. 213; I Samuel, II, 10.
194) Apollodorus, III, 1, 3: Frazer (tr.), vol. 1, p. 305; Harrison, p. 32.
194a) Critias, 113: Bury (tr.), pp. 279-281; Harrison, pp. 32-33.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 45
the first men in Atlantis, who swore to uphold these laws which were in-
scribed on pillars in the god's precincts. In many frescoes and gems dis-
covered at Cnossus, we find scenes of bull-hunting and bull-fights, and at Bull-hunting and
the ceremony of giving oaths to keep the laws in Atlantis, the kings chase and bull-fights
capture with staves and nooses the bulls that are kept at large in the sanctuary
of Poseidon. After a bull has been caught, it is led up to the column and its
blood was shed over the inscription. The blood is mixed with wine and
drunk by all, who then invoke curses on those who shall disobey the laws.l95~
" The remarkable analogy here," Miss Harrison continues, "is not the Sacredpillarsand
mere sacrifice of the bull but the conjunction of bull and pillar in Atlantis sacrificialbulls
and the conjunction of bull and pillar in Crete. On the frescoed shrines of
Cnossus the holy pillar rises straight out of the 'horns of consecration.' On
the famous Hagia Triada Sarcophagus we have indeed no direct certainty
that the blood of the sacrificed bull is actually applied to the pillar but the
close conjunction of the two, sacrificed bull and pillar, make it highly probable.
Anyhow one main point is clear. Plato could hardly have imagined a
ritual so strange and complex. It must be traditional and its origin is to be
sought in the ritual of the bull-Poseidon in Crete."'96)
The Cretans colonized Greece during the 3rd and 2nd millenium B.C. Mycenaeanculture
and it is a fact of great interest to us that, wherever one finds traces of the and the worshipof
worship of Poseidon on the mainland, there one is sure to come across relics Poseidon
of the Mycenaean (Later Minoan) culture. Miss Harrison enumerates ex-
amples of this and concludes that " the sites of Poseidon-worship are the landing
places of immigrant Minoans," and expresses the opinion that this is another
irrefutable evidence of the Poseidon-Minotaur theory.197)
An additional fact to be noted is that, both the Cretan Minotaur and Poseidon, The sun and
who may be regarded as a later form of the Minotaur, are connected in one
way Poseidon
or another with the sun. When Odysseus did mischief to the kine of the Sun-
god, it was Poseidon who punished him. The bull of Crete had another name
than that of Minotaur, he was also known by the name of Talos. Talos is
usually taken to be the brazen man who kept watch over the island of Crete by
circling it three times a day. According to Apollodorus, when Minos married
Pasiphae, the All Shining One, the fire-god Hephaestus made a present
to him of the brazen man Talos. But Apollodorus also
says that, " Talos was a
brazen man, but some say he was a bull."198) Talos is shown on ancient
Cretan coins as a butting bull, but at the same time, Talos, like the
Minotaur,
is sometimes represented as a man
holding in his hand a stone, the symbol of
the sun, and Hesychius of Alexandria says that Talos means the sun.199)
195) Harrison, p. 33; Critias, 119-120: Bury (tr.), pp. 299-303.
196) Harrison, pp. 33-34.
197) ibid., pp. 47-57.
198) ibid., p. 34; Apollodorus, I, 9, 26: Frazer (tr.), vol. 1, p. 119.
199) Harrison, pp. 34-35.
 46 THE KAPPA LEGEND

Poseidon, the The bull-god Poseidon's Cretan origin explains a great deal. "In
foreign god Homer, Poseidon claims equality with Zeus. He was obliged to yield to his
brother's supremacy but he is always a malcontent and often in open rebellion,
persistently vindictive. He is connected always with the impious and out-
rageous giants; the Cyklopes, a godless race, are his children."200) More-
over, Poseidon is nearly always being beaten in his struggles with the other
gods on the mainland.20) W.E. Gladstone, in his great work, Juventus Mundi,
considered Poseidon to be a foreign deity from the fact of the god's antipathy
to Zeus, and his aloofness from the Olympian assembly,2021 and the knowledge
gained by subsequent archaeological excavations in Crete would seem to
confirm Miss Harrison's opinion that the origin of this foreign deity is to be
traced to the Cretan Minotaur.
The coming of But the riddle of the horse-god Poseidon still remains to be solved. It
horses to Crete is the bull that forms the centre of religious and political life in the kingdom
of Crete, and in the Crete of the period we are discussing, we can find no trace
of horse-worship. But it is possible to ascertain from archaeological remains
the date at which the horse was first imported into Crete, and the route by
which it came. In the early part of the Later Minoan period, which coincides
with the Eighteenth Dynasty in Egypt, that is to say, about 1500 B.C., horses
and chariots make their appearance on Minoan monuments as well as on the
tombstones and late frescoes of Mycenae. In a curious seal-impression of
the period discovered at Cnossus, we see an enormous horse standing upon
a single-masted ship with several rowers in a line beneath, and Evans takes
this to be a record of the first coming of the horse to Crete. The horse's
mane, as with the manes of horses in the fresco of the megaron at Mycenae,
is bound up in a series of tufts, and although this is contrary to the custom
Libyan origin in Europe and Asia, it coincides with the practice in Libya in Africa. What
is more, the fan-shaped tail of the horse depicted is a characteristic of Libyan
thoroughbred.203' In Libya we have the steady tradition of a breed of horses
that were the wonder of antiquity.204) Here at least we have the clue to the
meaning of Herodotus' statement that Poseidon came to the Greeks from the
Libyans. He says, " Of him they got their knowledge from the Libyans, by
whom he has been always honoured, and who were anciently the only people
that had a god of the name."205) Furthermore, Herodotus says that it was
the Libyans who taught the Greeks how to yoke four horses to a chariot.206'
Again, we read in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (2-3 c. B.C.), that when
200) ibid., p. 35.
201) ibid., p. 37.
202) Gladstone, pp. 241-251; Harrison, p. 36.
203) Harrison, pp. 38-39.
204) ibid., p. 41.
205) Herodotus, II, 50: Rawlinson (tr.), vol. 2, p. 93; Harrison, pp. 39-40.
206) Herodotus, IV, 189: Rawlinson (tr.), vol. 3, p. 164; Harrison, p. 40.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 47

the Argonauts ran aground on the shifting shallows of the Syrtes in Libya, and
Peleus who was one of their leaders had become well-nigh desperate, a huge
horse sprang out of the sea, and with its mane flowing in the wind, spurned
the salt sea-foam and made swiftly for the shore, the sight of which gladdened
Peleus who understood that Poseidon himself was about to lift the ship and
free her from the sandbank.207) We have already mentioned the fact that
Gorgon Medusa, who gave birth to the celestial horse Pegasus by Poseidon,
is sometimes represented as having the form of a horse, and to this we might
add that the phrase " race of the Libyan Gorgons " appears in the Bacchoe
of Euripides.' The kibisis or leather wallet in which Perseus puts the head of
Medusa is the primitive bag in which the Libyans used to carry stones which
were his principal weapons, and on a Corinthian vase we see Perseus represented
as attacking the monster with stones.208) On the strength of these facts, Miss
Harrison concludes that the story of the winged horse Pegasus also has its
origin in Libya, and that it was brought from there to Greece by the peoples
who were worshippers of Poseidon.209)
Mainly availing ourselves of the theory advanced by Miss Harrison, we Southward move-
have so far managed to trace the origin of the bull-god Poseidon to Crete, ment of the horse
and that of the horse-god Poseidon to Libya. But as far as we know, the date at
which the horse first made its appearance in Crete cannot, as we have point-
ed out, be earlier than the end of 16th century B.C., nor can the history of
the horse in North Africa go back beyond the invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos
in 18th century B.C.210) The invasion of the Punjab by the Aryans already
employing horses begins a little later, and it is fairly certain that the horse
was unknown in the Indus civilization of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa and in
the ancient Indian culture of the pre-Aryan period.211) In Mesopotamia,

207) Harrison, pp. 40-41; Apollonius Rhodius, IV, 1363-1379: Seaton (tr.), pp. 387-389.
208) Harrison, p. 41; Euripides, Bacchao,989-990: Way (tr.), p. 85.
209) Harrison,, p. 41,
210) However, figures of what are believed to be domesticated camelideshave been discovered
among remains of the Neolithic Age in Egypt. Prof. Menghin, S. 308-310, connects this
fact and the discovery of equidefigures at Ur with the appearance in these regions after a
certain period in the Neolithic Age of elements pertaining to the Upper Paleolithic bone
culture in the north, elements which until then were unknown in these parts; and he con-
cludes that one may see here traces of the southward advance of the riding animal rearing
culture of Inner Asia. But for some reason that has not yet been explained, with the ex-
ception of asses which may have become domesticated in Africa, the rearing of riding aniimals
does not seem to have existed in the civilization of the ancient Orient until long after the
beginning of the historical age.
211) Some doubts remain however in regard to this question. The bones of the Equuscaballus,
probably of the same stock as the modern country-bred of Western India and closely akin to the
Anau horse, have been discovered either on or near the surface of the earth at Mohenjo-daro,
and taking into account the denundation that has taken place, we cannot be certain whether
the bones belong to prehistoric or later times. But the complete absence of the horse in
the numerous representations of animals among the remains of the period, points strongly
to these bones near the surface of being of more recent origin.-Marshall, vol. 1,
pp. 27-28.
48 THE KAPPA LEGEND

the question is a little more complicated. It was thought until quite recently
that since there was no mention of horses in Hammurabi's Code of ca 2000
B.C., horses were not yet reared in that part of the world at that period. Then
C.E. Woolley found, in the course of excavations he carried out at Ur, the capital
of ancient Sumeria, a remarkably fine representation of a horse-like figure
on a rein-ring, and representations of animals drawing chariots on the mosaic
" Standard " and on stone reliefs, and while Woolley himself maintains that
the animals represented are asses, M. Hilzheimer, who with B. Meissner and
others had pointed out previously that what may be recognized as the figures
of mules or horses are to be found among Sumerian remains of the 3rd milleni-
um B.C., believes that the animals in question are mules, and consequently,
that horses existed in those parts before 3000 B.C.212) Following on the exca-
vations by Woolley, R. de Mecqenem discovered in 1930, between the first
and second strata of Susa (end of the 4th millenium B.C.) at Elam, the world's
most ancient figure of a man mounted on a horse engraved on a piece of bone,
as well as what would seem to be a record of the pedigree of horses, showing
that the rearing of horses, asses and mules must have already reached a high
stage of development in Elam of that period.213) If we are to consider these
facts together with such theories as that the first traces of domesticated horses
found in the Anau Culture I in Western Turkestan date back to the latter part
of the 4th millenium B.C.,214) and that the term "ass of the mountains "
which was used for a horse in Mesopotamia, first appears in some Sumerian
documents of the end of the 4th millenium B.C.,215)we are led to the conclusion
that the horse must have come into these parts from Central Asia and the
Iranian plateau to the northeast sometime towards the end of that millenium.
However, we are still left with the question why such an important domestic
animal as the horse should have practically disappeared from Mesopotamian
records from the time of the fall of the ancient Sumerian kingdom until the
first half of the 2nd millenium B.C., a question that must wait for further
researches for its solution, and the fact remains that it was only after the
supremacy of the Kassites had been established towards the middle of the 18th
century B.C. that the use of the horse became general over Southwestern

212) Woolley, 1934, text, pp. 271-273, pls. 90-93, 166, 181 b; Hilzheimer, 1931, S. 13 ff.;
Hilzheimer, 1932, S. 140.
213) Amschler, 1934, S. 298-299; 1936 (Ddldgation en Perse, Memoires,tome 17).
8000-
214) Pumpelly, vol. 1, p. 41. According to Pumpelly's calculation, they date back to
6000 B.C., but the theory is not adopted here. We are following Christian and others in
assigning the date to the second half of the 4th millenium B.C.-Christian, S. 39.
215) Hilzheimer, 1932, S. 140 (cites Langdon, 1929. It is a question whether the word Ansu-
kur," the ass of the mountains," already signified " horse" or whetherit meant what it
says, and the phrasewas revived a good many centurieslater to describean animal then
introducedfor the firsttime by people who did not know anythingof its nature.-Woolley,
1934, p. 271.
 CHAPTER I Horses and Water-gods 49

Asia, and Media and Armenia became known for their breeds of fine horses.216)
In a word, the establishment of the horse as a domestic animal in South-
western Asia, a region which has for its centre the Tigris-Euphrates agricultur-
al area, probably only took place after a powerful wave of horse-culture swept
across the ancient Orient from Inner Asia, just about the time of the invasion
of Egypt by the Hyksos, and that of the Punjab by the Aryans. And since
the horse was first introduced for fighting purposes, the period when it became
a part of agricultural activities which form the basis of all ancient Oriental
culture, and thence made its appearance in the world of religion and mythology
must belong to a later epoch still.
The rearing for agricultural purposes and the religious worship of oxen, The rearingand
on the contrary, had developed inseparably with the culture, not only of Crete, worshipofoxen
but of pre-Aryan India and the ancient Orient in general, including Egypt,
Mesopotamia and Asia Minor.217) In Egypt and Mesopotamia, the domestic-
ation of oxen had been completed in the prehistoric era, and the uses to which
these animals were put during that era must have differed little from later
periods.218' Furthermore, among the sacred images of prehistoric Egypt,
the worship of which was forgotten in later ages, we already find one of
two bulls symmetrically joined together at the middle of their bodies,219)
and of the bulls that were sacred to the gods of successive dynasties, Apis
of Memphis and Mnevis of Heliopolis are known to all.220) The mother-
goddess Hathor who was regarded from the earliest times as being on the
same footing as the goddesses Nut and Isis, was sometimes represented
as a cow, or as a goddess with the head or the horns of one.221) The bull-
headed Cretan Minotaur must surely also derive its origin from the sacred
bulls of Egypt. The copper figure of a bull, the bas-relief of bulls shown
lying down on a sculptured belt, and the mosaics representing a milking scene,
discovered among the ruins of a temple of the 1st Ur dynasty in 1923, indicate
that at the close of the 4th millenium in Mesopotamia, oxen were already
regarded in some way as being sacred.222) The figures of bulls called lamassi,
placed at the entrance to Babylonian temples, houses and gardens to ward
off evil spirits, must have their origin in these sacred oxen of the Sumerians.
The lamassi sometimes had wings, and the Assyrians gave them human faces.223'
At Anau in Western Turkestan, as evidence of the most ancient domesticated
216) Meissner, 1920, S. 218; 1926, S. 221 a.
217) Malten, S. 90-139 (cit. by Koppers, 1936, S. 373).
218) Ranke, 1926, 220 a; Meissner, 1926, S. 220 b; Ranke, 1927/28, S. 142 a.
219) Muller, p. 22, Fig. 2, c, d, e.
220) ibid., pp. 162, 163, Fig. 167; Ranke, 1927/28, S. 142 b.
221) Muller, pp. 37-38, Fig. 25, 26; Ranke, 1927/28, S. 142 b.
222) Woolley, 1927, pls. 26-32, 38, pp. 15 ff., 86, 110, 116-117 etc.; 1929, pp. 99-100,
pl. 8, a, b.
223) Sayce, pp. 887-888.
 50 THE KAPPA LEGEND

animal we find traces of the domestication of the Asiatic urus, Bos nomadicus,
in the Culture I of North Kurgan (latter half of the 4th millenium B.C.),224)
and terra-cotta figures of bulls or cows, together with crude female figurines
also in terra-cotta, thought to represent the All-Mother, have been unearthed
from the Culture III of South Kurgan (middle of the 3rd millenium B.C. ?).225)
As for remains of the Indus civilization, numerous terra-cotta figures of bulls
have been discovered among the ruins of the period from Mohenjo-daro and
Harappa to North and South Baluchistan, and many more figures of bulls
are found represented on earthen vessels, while on a great number of seals
are engraven single-horned beasts shaped like oxen, wild bisons, buffaloes
and zebus, and the fact that a censer-like vessel is placed before each of the
single-horned oxen which are by far the most numerous, places it beyond
a doubt that they were animals with some religious significance.226) What is
more, these examples date from a period anterior to the introduction, popu-
larization and firm establishment of the horse along the agricultural regions
stretching from the River Indus to the Mediterranean, from which we can
only conclude that, long before the god who ultimately became the sea-god
Poseidon on Mt. Olympus was first represented as a horse-god, he was con-
ceived and represented as a bull-god.

CHAPTER II
Oxen and Water-gods

We have now to consider a fresh problem, that of oxen and water-gods.

Before we enter into this question, we must first, following the conclusions
of the last chapter, make clear the religio-mythological environment and
character of the agricultural society which came to regard the ox as a sacred
animal. This in turn will serve as a basis in elucidating the question before
us as a whole.
Eduard Hahn Eduard Hahn, who from the close of the last century to the beginning
of the present won a unique place for himself by his study of enonomic history
from the ethnological point of view, has sought for the origin of the domesti-
cation of animals in the religious need felt by the agricultural peoples of South-
western Asia for the constant supply of oxen, to be held ready for sacrifice
to the god to whom they were held to be sacred. According to his theory,
three separate elements which until then bore no relation to each other-
corn, oxen and the plough-were henceforth inextricably combined together
224) Pumpelley, vol. 1, p. 41.
225) ibid., pp. 46-48, pls. 46, 47.
226) Marshall, vol. 1, pp. 69, 72; vol. 2, pp. 382, 385, 386; vol. 3,. pls. 102-111 etc.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 51

as a result of this domestication of oxen, and so gave to agriculture the form

under which we conceive it today, i.e. that of " plough-culture." The present
writer now proposes to give a synopsis of those parts of Hahn's historical
work that have direct bearing on the subject before us, following the line of
reasoning pursued by Hahn himself:
" The transition to the most primitive form of agriculture, the hoe-culture,
freed men in Western Asia also from the crude, economically unstable con-
dition in which people who live by hunting are placed, and thus the ground
was prepared for cultural development on a far wider scale than hitherto. At
this point, a group of ideas sprang up in a certain region of the Near East.
These ideas at first (and this is quite possible) may have grown up in separate
regions independently of each other, but were later fused together, and came
to form an internally combined and organically interrelated system of religious
and economic concepts which was to play a most important part in the develop-
ment of the entire culture of Western Asia and Europe.
"To this group of concepts which constantly made their appearance in The mystery of
the lives of peoples belongs the idea that the moon exerts a profound influence the moon
on the growth and propagation of all organic bodies. This idea, which sees
in the moon the great principle of all growth and propagation, is not difficult
to explain. The transition from the invisible new moon to the full moon
in her splendour, the manner in which her light waxes and wanes, these aspects
of the moon must have excited the curiosity and the wish for a knowledge
of their workings in mankind at a far earlier date than those of the sun. Par-
ticularly in regions of low latitude, the motion of the sun shows little change
over long periods, so that it did not occasion any desire in men to attempt to
study the changes. But in regard to the moon, mankind was forced from the
earliest times to take the greatest interest in her transformations. It was
particularly in the moon as a measure of time that men felt this interest, and
it must have been for this reason that the moon came to be considered as the
outstanding embodiment of the female principle. Whether a woman has The moon and
conceived or not, whether a man has become a father or not, these were important women
questions which affected mankind even in its earliest stages. The cessation
of menstruation as a sign that a woman has become pregnant, must have
been among the first things known by mankind, and this question of pregnancy,
even in the oldest times, could only be answered with the help of the moon.
Thus, if a woman said that menstruation usually occufed five days, or six days,
after the new moon, or full moon, and since it had not occurred this time, she
must have become pregnant, men were bound to recognize some sort of re-
lationship which existed between these facts and to attribute the widest powers
over such matters to the moon. If man had to recognize the possession
by
the moon of such powers over the propagation of his species, and if, to peoples
who lived by agriculture, the moon played a decisive part in the
measuring
 52 THE KAPPA LEGEND

of time, it was only natural that the moon should come to be regarded as the
all-powerful principle in all matters connected with growth, propagation and
plenty. As everyone knows, the system is still being actively applied even
in our own days. The cutting down of trees, the cutting of men's hair, bleed-
ing, in other words, in all that pertains to the sowing and planting, growth
and propagation, the moon still remains for us at the present time the deter-
emining factor. Obviously, this does not apply to all peoples and to all
times. But it must be assented that for one great circle of peoples, and one
in which the European culture has its roots, the foregoing holds true.
The cow ard the "But at the same time as the moon, in this sphere of culture, became
horn identified with the female principle, this principle tended more and more in this
particular sphere to be represented by the cow. It is sufficient here to remind
ourselves of the cow's horns of the Babylonian Ishtar and the Syrian Ashtoreth,
and the forms in which Isis, Europa, Io and Pasiphae are represented to us.
These all show that the great goddess hidden behind these names has in each
case something to do with cows. The origin of this relationship should pro-
bably also be sought for in the moon. The sickle-shaped new moon must
have suggested to our ancestors, besides such things as a little boat, the idea
of the horns of an ox, particularly the straight horns growing apart of the wild
ox, Bos primigenius. In this way, the ox became the animal sacred to the
goddess, and not the Bison europaeus. The horns of the latter species curve
inwards and downwards from the forehead.
Religious origin of " The ox thus became the animal sacred to the greatest among the deities,
domestic animals but for a long time, this still did not mean that the ox had become domesti-
cated. But its domestication was in itself an outcome of religious ceremonies.
The goddess requires offerings, and man must have in readiness these offerings,
especially held sacred to her, for sacrifice at all times. There was a reason
for men to be compelled to do this. If the moon was regarded by a 'hoe-
culture' people as something by which time could be measured, and if, by
analogy with events in the human world, the moon was held to be the great
principle governing growth, propagation and prosperity, it followed that
religious ceremonies, accompanied by sacrifices as in all other religious ceremo-
nies, became necessary. Often the moon-goddess threatened her worshippers
with signs of anger or her decline. The great nocturnal light would approach
the point of extinction. This was the eclipse of the moon. On such occasions,
man had to help her, or strive to appease her anger. And to do this, it was
necessary to sacrifice to her the animal that stood in the closest relationship
to her, a cow or a bull. Eclipses of the moon came without warning, so that
men could not rely on the booty of the chase to furnish them with the animals
for sacrifice. Rather, sacrificial animals had to be kept ready at hand all time,
and this object was attained by herding a small number of animals in pens,
or rounding them up in these pens. The idea was not a new one. Even
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 53

peoples in the earliest stages of their development, have made use on a large
scale of these pens. And in the same regions, we find in later ages vast parks
for animals. These were the so-called 'paradises' of the Persian kings and
their predecessors.
" More or less under such conditions, the ox must have become domesti-
cated and multiplied in these pens. The transition from a free existence in the
wilds to a life of slavery under men must in this way have been.unconsciously
got over, and the productive faculty of the animals could not have been impaired
so much as in the case of a restricted existence in smaller pens. And in course
of time, the process gave rise to new important factors. First, white animals,
sacred to the silver moon, began to make their appearance. Then men turned
their attention to the milk produced by the animals. The product of these
sacred animals first gained a religious significance, and then ultimately came
to be utilized economically in everyday life..."227)
Hahn then goes on to say that, when next the oxen sacred to the goddess The wheel and
were made to draw the plough, which was also a sacred implement, the foun- the plough
dation of present-day agriculture (Ackerbau) was then laid, and supposes
as an intermediate process the invention of the wheel, and the innovation of
making the sacred oxen draw the chariots of the gods in procession of the
temples in Mesopotamia.228'
Hahn's authority made his theory accepted for a long time by all who
were engaged in the same field of research. In consequence, many scholars
believed that cattle-breeding was a practice which grew out of an agricultural
society and that such domestic animals as goats, sheep, horses, camels and
reindeer were gradually made known to the inhabitants of Central and
Northern Asia through a process following the prototype set by the domestica-
tion of oxen. But in the meantime, rapidly accumulating materials had caused
culture historical ethnology to make great strides, and voices, which could not
be ignored, began to be raised in that circle against Hahn's theory. As early
as in 1909, Fritz Grabner pointed out that the close relationship seen in Europe
and the Near East between plough-agriculture and milking economy did not
arise in the manner imagined by Hahn, but was the product of cultures of
different origins touching and mixing with each other, and asserted that cattle-
breeding was not started by agricultural peoples but took its rise from a kind
of symbiosis between men and the animals they hunted.229)
Then Father Wilhelm Schmidt, who developed the sphere of culture Nomadic sphere of
theory on a still greater scale, advanced the theory of the existence of a nomadic- culture
patriarchal sphere of culture centring round the steppes of Inner Asia, isolated
from the agricultural peoples of the south, and rather carrying on an inde-
227) Hahn, 1896, S. 90-93.
228) ibid., S. 93 ff.; Hahn, 1926, S. 218 b.
229) Grabner, S. 1030 u. Anm. 2.
 54 THE KAPPA LEGEND

pendent growth of its own derived from a hunting culture which had once
stretched across the northern regions of the Eurasian continent. In this
nomadic-patriarchal sphere of culture he placed the origin and main stream
of cattle-breeding.230 Following this hypothesis, the domestication of such
animals as the reindeer and the horse would have to be dated back to a period
of great antiquity. Unfortunately, the difficulties which beset researches
in prehistoric. archaeology in regions named have made it impossible up to
the present for Schmidt's theory to be verified in detail by actual excavation,
but it still remains none the less true that, from the ethnological material at our
disposal today, various marked characteristics are to be noticed in the nomadic
culture which is seen to stretch across the Eurasian continent from the north-
east to the southwest, reaching as far as North and East Africa, characteristics
which show a difference in their origin from the agricultural culture along the
southern part of the Old Continent.
The ox and the It is obviously outside the scope of this paper to deal with these questions
horse in detail. All that the present writer wishes to say here is that the two conflict-
ing views presented above have to do with the origin of the culture in which
the development of cattle-breeding in general took its rise, and that as regards
each domestic animal in particular, no one can deny the truth of such facts
as the close relationship between oxen and agriculture existing in the ancient
Orient which has been pointed out by Hahn. In the case of the horse,
even if we confine ourselves to the facts already given at the end of the last
chapter, it is clear that the circumstances attending the horse were quite dif-
ferent from those under which the ox was placed, and that the horse-breeding
must be traced to the steppes of Central Asia. For this reason, Schmidt him-
self, as well as Prof. Wilhelm Koppers, thinks that the domestication of the
ox most likely took place on the southernmost edge of the nomadic zone of
the Old Continent, the animal early becoming a part of the life of the agri-
cultural society, and indeed, even admits the possibility of some magico-
religious motive arising out of a matriarchal culture in the formation of domestic
animals of a secondary order like the ox and the pig.231) Furthermore, Prof.
Oswald Menghin, who achieved an epoch-making synthesis by applying to
the field of prehistory the concept of spheres of culture, divides the cultures
of what he calls the Protoneolithic Age into three large spheres of the culture
of pig-rearers, the culture of horned animal rearers, and the culture of riding
animal rearers, and sees a further development of each of these respectively in
the village culture, the urban culture, and the steppe culture of the Mixoneo-
lithic Age which succeeded the Protoneolithic. That is to say, the agri-
cultural zone of culture stretching from the Eastern Mediterranean to India,
which has been shown to be inseparably bound up with the ox at the end of
230) Schmidt und Koppers, S. 194-224, 502-538.
231) ibid., S. 196, 518-519, 507.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 55

the last chapter, is, in Menghin's terminology, a zone of the Mixoneolithic

urban culture or development of that culture, which in its turn was derived
from the culture of horned animal rearers in the age which preceded it. Against
this, the horse which made its appearance at a much later period in this world
of kings and lords of cities had been originally bred by the peoples of the steppe
culture-the culture of herdsmen-warriors, the Hirtenkriegerkultur, which in
itself was a development of the culture of riding animal rearers. In this way,
the authority on the history of the Stone Age had assumed that the ox and
the horse had each pursued its own course in different cultural milieus in the
process of becoming the companions of mankind,232)and we for our part also
must refrain from passing hasty judgment on Hahn's theory merely on the
ground that it is outmoded, and endeavour rather to examine it from the point
of view of modern ethnology in order to determine what part of it is still tenable
today.
We had set out to study the religio-mythological milieu of the agricultural The female prin-
society which had come to regard the ox as an animal sacred to the gods. What ciple, the moon,
had caused the ox to be linked up with agriculture ? Hahn's perspicacity the ox and agri-
culture
had seen the origin of this to lie in the moon and women. But the idea was
not necessarily a new one. As early as 1861, J.J. Bachofen in his great work
Das Mutterrecht had touched again and again on the theme of the moon
and the cow as the symbols of the female principle in the classical world, and
drawing examples from primitive peoples, had stressed the fact that it was
the females whose duty it was originally to till the ground, and to harvest
the fruits of the earth.233' Ethnological research since then has led many
scholars to think that the matriarchal society owes its origin to the fact that
the development from food-collecting economy to primitive agriculture was
accomplished by females who had until then been engaged in gathering vegeta-
ble food. And, while it is equally clear that, in this matriarchal-agricultural
culture, the moon, the woman and the earth become combined with various
232) Menghin, S. 273-477. However, Menghin recognizes, in accordance with the findings of
ethnological research, that in the steppe culture of the Mixoneolithic Age, in contrast to the
riding animal rearing culture of the preceding period, the rearing of horned animals already
occupied an essentially important position.-ibid., S. 517, 528. On the otherand, whereas
in the urban culture of Southwestern Asia and Northeastern Africa, both horned animals
and riding animals existed at one time, the horse, the camel etc. disappeared later from
some undiscovered cause, leaving only the domesticated ass in Africa.-ibid., S. 308-309.
Cf. note 210. It is necessary to recognize the fact that the two spheres of culture, one
northern and the other southern, represented respectively by the horse and the ox, had al-
ready mingled to a considerable extent towards the end of the Neolithic Age, and what is
known as the civilization of the ancient Orient itself is based on such an intricate mixture.
In spite of this, however, the characteristics of each sphere of culture, centred respectively
round the ox and the horse, were retained in the mixed culture which was derived from
them. This is what we have endeavoured to show in the rest of the present chapter.
233) Bachofen, SS. 26, 258, 417, 38-39, etc.
 56 THE KAPPA LEGEND

ideas and symbols of fertility and growth to form a group of religio-mytho-

logical concepts, we must not overlook the possibility that the source of these
concepts lies far beyond Hahn's interpretation of the facts, in some palaeolithic
sphere of culture which existed before agriculture and cattle-breeding, and
contained in it germs which were later to develop into plant-growing culture.
From this point of view, the nude figure of a woman holding a horn-like
vessel in her hand belonging to the middle Aurignacian culture, discovered at
Laussel in Dordogne, and the rectangular piece of mammoth tusk carved
on one side with the figures of three serpents and on the other side with a
peculiar spiral ornament, discovered by Gerasimov among the remains of
Aurignacian culture at Malta near Irkutsk in Siberia (Fig. 8),234) are thought
to furnish us with valuable clues to the mentality of the people of the Old
Figurines of the Stone Age. To consider the former as the oldest figure so far discovered of
primitive All- a goddess holding in her hand a crescent-shaped cup made of the horn of a
mother
wild ox-a kind of cornucopia-cannot be far wrong in view of many ex-
amples showing the close relationship between the earth-goddess and the ox
to be found later among the remains of the agricultural culture in the Neolithic
Orient. The figure has a further importance in that it has served to enlighten
us on the religious significance of over two dozens of so-called "Venuses"
of the Aurignacian culture-statuettes and bas-reliefs of nude women with
exaggerated sexual characteristics-found over a wide area stretching from
Southern France to Russia.235) As for the piece of mammoth tusk discovered
at Malta, the spiral ornament carved on it, particularly, as in this case, that
of two spirals taking opposite directions and facing each other in the form of
The spiral, the an S, is shown to have been distributed all over the world from the Palaeolithic
serpent and the Age to the beginning of historic times as a symbol of the waxing and waning
moon of the moon, and the wave-like serpents carved on the back are also important
in that serpents as creatures most closely connected with the moon appear
almost in every lunar mythology of the world.236' What is more, the fact that
11 female figurines like those of the European Aurignacian culture, and almost
identical with those discovered at Brassempouy in France, should have
been found together with the mammoth tusk237',would seem to confirm the
magico-religious significance of the spiral ornament just mentioned. In a word,
it appears to us permissible to think that, even among the hunting and gathering
peoples of the Palaeolithic Age, their anxious concern for their own lives and
the prolificness of their progeny, and the desire for the abundance and fertility
of animals and plants which they hunted or gathered, had caused them to
connect the unending death and rebirth of all natural phenomena with the
- 1.
234) Salmony, 1931, S. 2, Tafel I, 4, 5; Hentze, p. 84, Fig. 59, 60; HK^cr, Tat. 5,
235) Menghin, S. 148; Har .Cr,.5-,s56.
m

236) Hentze, Ch. 2-4.

237) Salmony, 1931, S. 3-4, Tafel II; Burkitt, p. 119, Fig. 4, Nos. 6-7; Hentze, p. 84.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 57

perpetual waxing and waning of the moon, and that in this way, the idea of
seeking for magic powers to induce fertility among their own kind and among
animals in the moon as a symbol of maternity already existed in germ in their
primitive minds.238'
When the germs of a plant-growing culture latent in the plant-gathering The Mother Earth
economy supported by females developed into the earliest primitive hoe-agri-
culture, the characteristics of lunar mythology already mentioned took complete
and definite shape, while at the same time new elements were added to them.
The most important of these was the idea of the fertility of the Mother Earth,
and it was then that the ideas of the moon, the female principle, the earth and
fertility became united at last to form a single complex.239) The present writer
would content himself here with pointing out that among the various other Lunar mythology
elements which go to make up this complex, sexual organs, fish, serpents and
spirals, whether examined from the point of view of prehistoric remains, or
from that of the ethnological distribution of these symbols, date back, together
with the belief in the moon, the female principle, and the lunar progenitor of
mankind, which form the nuclei of this mythological complex, to a period
of great antiquity, that since the beginning of the plant-growing culture at
the latest, yet new elements such as the worship of the great All-Mother, be-
lief in the world of the dead, worship of skulls, human sacrifices and sanguine
sacrifices were added, and that popular beliefs and customs connected with
dogs, bears, hares, ravens and toads, as well as various forms of religious
worship like tree-worship and shamanism, are found distributed over the
sphere of this complex, with more or less local variations.
It is hoped that the foreging has shown with sufficient clearness that
the religio-mythological milieu in which the ox, having become combined
with the moon, the female principle and the earth, emerged as the animal
sacred to the gods, forms what we call here the sphere of lunar mythology.
This being granted, we must next deal with the question, in what relationship
of time and space, and in what manner functionally, the ox and water-gods,
which form the principal theme of this chapter, stood to each other and to
the other elements of this mythological sphere. A part of this question has
already been answered. But the example mentioned above of a nude figurine
belonging to the Aurignacian culture does not necessarily imply that wild
238) Hentze, p. 241 (Nachwort von Herbert Kuhn). In this connection, we might point out
that many hunting and gathering peoples today possess means of reckoning the days after
the lunar calendar.-Hirschberg, 1931, S. 462-463. Neither must we forget that the word
"moon " is considered to be the oldest among words in the Indo-European languages
signifying some celestial body. Sanskrit-mas, Avesta Persian-mah, Old Prussian-mah,
Lithuanian-menu, Gothic-mena, Greek-mene, Latin-mensis, the common root being
me. As is clear from the Sanskrit verb, 1st person singular, mami (to measure, to calculate),
the moon was " that which measured."-Hentze, p. 241 (Nachzvortvon H. Kuhn).
239) ibid., pp. 241-242 (Nachwort von H. Kuhn).
 58 THE KAPPA LEGEND

oxen were at that period made objects of religious worship as they later came
to be in the Orient. Neither did the area in which oxen were held to be sacred
Fertility and animals spread over the whole sphere of lunar mythology. It had as its centre
ox-worship the southern regions of the Old Continent, stretching towards North and East
Africa on the west, and towards East Asia and Indonesia on the east, and the
fact seems to show that the worship of the ox as the symbol of fertility and
generation only made its appearance in the lunar mythological sphere of culture
along the southern borders of the Old Continent, after the development of
agriculture, and possibly after the domesticated ox had come to be bound up
integrally with agriculture. The relics of the oldest known forms of ox-
worship, which were given at the end of the last chapter, must be the products
of this kind of cultural environment, and this relationship between the ox and
the lunar mythology, constantly adding to itself new elements, continued on
to the world of ancient civilization. The Babylonian moon-god Sin, or Nanna-
ru, was commonly given the epithet of "the Young Bull," and he was re-
presented with two great horns.240) The cow was used as a symbol of the great
earth-mother Ishtar (Astarte, Ashtart, Ashtoreth, etc.) of the Semites, the
daughter of the god Anu and the moon-goddess, and there are records which
lead one to believe that the goddess was cow-headed.241) The great goddess
Isis of the Egyptians was also sometimes represented with the head or the
horns of a cow, would assume the form of a cow, and the cow was sacred to
her.242 In Greek mythology, the goddess Hera who combined in herself
the three elements of the cow, the moon and the earth-mother, and Io, who,
changed into a cow by Hera, crossed the Bosphorus (" cow crossing ") in that
form, must both be considered in their relation to the Egyptian Isis.243'
Heracles passed the sea upon the neck of the " cow-moon,"244) and while the
moon, clouds, the dawn and the sky were all represented as the beneficent
cow of abundance by the ancient Indo-Europeans,245) both Indra and Odin
were said to be descended from such a cow.246) Milk was yielded constantly
by the cow kept in the celestial city of Varuna in the Ramayana, whence the
moon with its white light and the ambrosia and nectar emerged.247 The
animal sacred to the god Siva, girdled with serpents and wearing a necklace
of skulls, and connected with linga-worship and sanguine sacrifice, was the
bull Nandi.248 In the cosmogony of the ancient Persians also, the bull was
240) Ebeling, S. 165 b.
241) Sayce, p. 888.
242) Miiller, pp. 37, 99, 116; Edwardes and Spence, p. 93.
243) Elworthy, 1900, p. 14; Elworthy, 1895, p. 183.
244) Gubernatis, vol. 1, p. 273.
245) ibid., pp. 3-4.
246) ibid., p. 224.
247) ibid., p. 69, note 4.
248) Edwardes and Spence, p. 160.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 59

one of the first things to be created. When Ahrman killed this primitive bull,
55 species of grain and 12 species of medical plants grew forth from the earth,
" owing to the vegetable principle proceeding from every limb of the ox, and
their splendour and strength were the seminal energy of the ox," while its
sperm was carried to the abode of the moon, and purified by the light of the
moon, produced an ox and a cow, and after them 282 species of each kind upon
the earth.249) The epithet always used in regard to the moon in the Avesta is
gaokithra, " having the seed of the bull."250? It is clear that a fertility concept
lies at the bottom of all these ideas. The animal chosen to draw the sacred
cart of Nerthus, the goddess of fertility-terra mater, the earth-mother-
worshipped by a portion of the ancient Germans, as recorded by Tacitus,
was a cow.251)
Secondly, we see something like the same condition of things as in the The moon and
case of the ox, in the relationship of water or water-gods to the other elements water
in the sphere of lunar mythology. The association of water with the moon,
however, differs from the former case in this that it seems to go back to a
period of the greatest antiquity, as is evidenced by the fact that in the flood
legend, which is common to various tribes that are found scattered today over
points in this globe at the widest possible distance from each other, and who
are thought to preserve amongst them the most primitive forms of culture,
it is always the moon which is supposed to have caused these floods. Thus,
it was the god Puluga, who possesses many of the characteristics of a moon-
god, that brought down in the Andaman version a great flood as a punishment
to mankind.252) The Yagans of Tierra del Fuego at the southernmost tip
of the South American Continent also have a legend of the moon causing a
flood.253e In the flood legend of the Kurnai who inhabit the southeastern
regions of Australia, animals of all kinds attempt to make a gigantic frog that
had absorbed into itself all the water in the world vomit back the water by
dancing comic dances before it, and the serpent succeeding by its writhings
to do so, the water pouring out from the frog causes a great flood in which
nearly the whole of mankind is destroyed.254' The frog is a symbol of the
moon, and other legends in which floods are caused by the moon are found
among the primitive peoples of Australia.25' In legends of a great many of
the American Indian tribes, the raven, the whale, the coyote, and particularly,
the great rabbit Manabozho, which animals are believed by one or the other

249) Bundahish,ch. X, 1-3: West (tr.), pp. 31-32.

250) Zend-Avesta,Mdh rasht, Siroah, I, 12: Darmesteter (tr.), pp. 88-91, 8.
251) Tacitus, Germania,40: Hutton (tr.), p. 331.
252) UdG, Bd. 3, 1931, S. 109, cf. S. 85.
253) ibid., S. 109, cf. S. 85; Bd. 1, 1926, S. 392 Anm. 1.
254) ibid., Bd. 1, 1926, S. 393-394.
255) Hentze, p. 50 note 186.
 60 THE KAPPS LEGEND

of these tribes as well as by many other peoples of the world to be seen in the
moon, play an important part in the causing of floods,256~while the idea that
rain and thunder are caused by the moon is found among the Eskimos, Bush-
men, and certain tribes along the coast of Peru.256a) Traces of the connection
between lunar mythology and flood-legends are also to be found among peoples
of a higher culture, as may be seen in the Chinese legends of the Emperor
Yii and the wise minister I-yin.257' It remains a question, therefore, to what
extent, in the case of the tribes of the lowest stage of culture like the Andama-
nese, the Yagans and the Kurnai, these legends which are found distributed
all over the world are really native to them, and to what extent they have been
borrowed from later cultures, a question which is yet to be determined together
with that of the interpretation of these legends themselves. But as we have
already pointed out, it is possible to discover the elements of a lunar mytho-
logy in the culture of hunters and gatherers of the Palaeolithic Age, and we
propose to continue the discussion of this subject by quoting the words of
a Bushman of South Africa, which show with what anxiety the benefits of rain
are awaited, even in the simplest forms of the plant-gathering mode of living.
The rain cow In a cave on a small hill on the south bank of the Caledon River in Orange
Free State, there is a rock-painting which the Bushmen explain as " She-rain
with the rainbow over her " (Fig. 11).258) It is shaped like an ox, and the
rainbow, a band coloured yellow above and red below, stretches over its
whole body. In rock-paintings copied by George William Stow during the
70's of the last century, there are besides this one many figures of animals
whicht he Bushmen call "rain bulls" or "rain cows" (Fig. 12) 259) The
Bushmen have only one word for rain and water in their language, and the
following account given by one of them about these animals has much in it
that is of interest to us:
" My mother told me that people pull out the water cow and lead her over
their place, that the rain may fall at their place, in order that the wild-onion
leaves may sprout out there. If the rain does not fall, they will die. There-
fore the medicine men shall go and kill the water cow at the place to which
they go to stay near the wild-onion leaves, so that they can dig out and eat
the wild-onions. If the rain did not fall, they would not see the wild-onion
leaves, for these are bulbs which they dig out and eat; they are the Bushmen's
food. Therefore they beg the medicine men to make rain fall for them. This
is the reason why the medicine man works for them. The water's people
walk about, they charm the water, they make it rain, so that the mothers may

256) Riem, S. 181 (cit. by Hentze, p. 55).

256a) Koppers, 1936, S. 376.
257) Hentze, pp. 5-52; Granet, tome 1, pp. 416 ff.
258) Stow and Bleek, pi. 34.
259) ibid., pl. 67 a; cf. S. 18, 32, 41, 42, 58.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 61

dig and feed themselves. They sling a thong over the water cow's horns,
they lead her out and make her walk, they kill her on the way. They cut her
up so that the rain may fall where they have killed her. The rain does fall;
they bring the rain by means of the water cow's flesh. The rain falls behind
them as they go home, it follows them; the people who asked for the rain.
really see the rain clouds."260)
We see in the artlessness of this narrative the eagerness with which the
plant-gathering peoples await the coming of rain. The Bushmen learned of
domesticated oxen from the Bantus of the north, an event of not very great
antiquity. They live by hunting, as well as on bulbs which form their princi-
pal means of subsistence, and which their women dig up with sticks inserted
into round stones for weight.26?l We have already shown that in this type
of plant-gathering economy lie latent the germs of a plant-growing form of
existence. But once men enter the stage in which they assure their food supply
by tilling the soil, their interest in rain and drought can only become more
urgent, as a matter of life and death to them. It is surely possible to think
then that in this way, the belief in the magical powers of water over the fertili-
ty of the earth now made its appearance as an important element in the lunar
mythological complex, in addition to other magico-religious concepts of sexual
nature having for their objects the fertility and propagation of man himself
and the animals he hunted. Thus, on the one hand, the powers of the rain-
maker were vastly increased socially, and on the other hand,, in the world of
mythology, beliefs concerning the association of rain or water with the moon,
acquiring a special meaning, came to hold sway across the ages in the lives
of the agricultural peoples. The idea of the speckled surface of the moon being
the figure of a man carrying pitchers of water (usually by means of a pole), The moon and the
and legends explaining this idea, are found distributed over a wide area, from water of life
Northern Europe, Germany, Ireland, across Siberia to the Northwest Indians
in North America on the one hand, and among the Ainu, the Okinawans and
in New Zealand on the other hand,262'while N. Nevskii has recorded a legend
in Miyako-jima concerning the water of life and water of death which shows
connections with the moon-legend just mentioned, having to do with men
and serpents, and explaining the origin of the custom of drawing water from
the well on the dawn of the first festival of the year and all having this water
of rejuvenescence poured over them.263' The meaning of such phrases as
" the ochimizu (the water of rejuvenescence) which the moon has," as recorded
in the Manyoshu, and the nature of the Japanese belief in the wakamizu (water
260) ibid., pl. 34, Explanation by a Bushman.
261) ibid., p. xxiii, Introduction by Dorothea F. Bleek; Hirschberg 1939, S. 366.
262) Ishida, 1950, pp. 2-10; Nevskii, pp. 218-220; Batchelor, pp. 67-68; Harva, 1938, S.
185-186; Coxwell, pp. 134, 158, 280-281; Wolf, S. 56; Swanton, pp. 450-452; Alexander,
p. 257; Westervelt, pp. 170-171.
263) Nevskii, pp. 635-639.
 62 THE KAPPA LEGEND

of rejuvenescence) which has existed since the Heian period have only been
made clear as a result of such comparative studies.264' In the case of peoples
who developed agriculture by means of irrigation from great rivers, it is easy
to understand from what has already been written the nature of the process
by which the idea of regarding rivers as sacred combined with the ancient lunar
mythology, the flood-legend, and the fertility-rites of sexual nature to produce
its own particular form of legends and rites. Even from the rough description
given above, it is clear that the two elements of oxen and water had to become
associated with each other through lunar mythology and the various beliefs
concerning fertility. The rain cow of the Bushmen already mentioned is
an example of this, about which one may say that the ox must have been re-
garded as a symbol of fertility among the tribes of the north, before oxen came
into the lives of the Bushmen. We propose to give in this chapter, from the
point of view stated above, examples of the association of oxen with water,
or water-gods, but before proceeding to do so, we would like to say a few words
more concerning the relationship between horses and the lunar mythology.
The horse and We have seen in Chapter I examples in which the horse appeared in
the moon conjunction with water, water-spirits, or water-gods, as well as with the earth,
the world of the dead, fertility-concepts, and other elements of what we have
named in the present chapter the lunar mythology. The idea of the horse
carrying to the world of the dead or of spirits the dead (and sometimes the
living), shamans, and disease demons, is found widely distributed in the world
of Shamanism of the Asiatic continent and the popular beliefs of the Indo-
European peoples,265) and has been made the object of studies from the earliest
days. In Nordic mythology, the moon-goddess Mani on her chariot drawn
by the swift-footed steed Alsvider flees forever across the skies pursued by
Horses of the sun the two wolves Skoll and Hati.266) But side by side with such concepts of
a lunar mythological character, the idea for example of celestial horses drawing
the chariot of the sun is to be found in the mythologies of Babylonia, India,
Greece, Scandinavia and China,267) and the bronze model of a chariot with
a bronze horse and carrying the disk of the sun plated with gold has been dis-
covered at Trundholm in Denmark.268) The custom of sacrificing horses to
the sun-god existed among the Jews, Persians, Scythians, Massagetaes, Spartans,
Armenians, and the people of the island of Rhodes.269) But we have no
proof whatever that the horse, ever since its domestication, bore the same

264) Manyoshz, XIII, 3245; Orikuchi, 1929, pp. 150-169; Ishida, 1950, pp. 1-10.
265) Sui-yuan-chengt'ung-chih,Meng-tsu, pp. 92, 97-98; Minakata, 1918, p. 181; Karutz, S.
130-131; Negelein, 1901-1902, Bd. 11, S. 414-419, Bd. 12, S. 377-380.
266) Howey, pp. 126-127.
267) Izushi, pp. 188-195, 222-224 (notes).
268) Berthellson, S. 451 b-452 b, Tafel 76; MacCulloch, 1930, pp. 198-199, pl. 25.
269) Izushi, pp. 189-192, 222-223.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 63

close relationship to lunar and solar mythology as the ox did to the lunar
mythological complex.
As we have already pointed out, the horse, coming from the north, made
its appearance in the world of the pre-Aryan civilization which stretched from
the Eastern Mediterranean to India, and began to play the important part it
did in it, at a much later date than the ox. The well-known relic of the horse-
sacrifices of the later Neolithic Age, of a flint-dagger left embedded in the
skull of a pony, was discovered at Schonen in Scandinavia, but this does not
date back to a period earlier than 2400 B.C.,270'and it has been ascertained from
rock-paintings of the Bronze Age that even in Scandinavia, where the horse
has been universally used in agriculture, oxen were first employed to draw the
plough.271) For these reasons, we are inclined to seek for the place of origin
of horse-rearing among the steppes of Inner Asia. W. Schmidt assumed the
existence of a nomadic and patriarchal sphere of culture which for long pursued Worship of the sky
its own particular line of development in the isolation of these steppes. This
sphere of culture had cattle-breeding for its economic basis, and socially
and politically, was patriarchal and military in character. In the field of
religion, the form of cult which may be said to be truly its own must be
its monotheistic worship of heaven.272 The lack of material in the shape of
prehistoric remains makes it impossible to sift the question as thoroughly as
in the case of the religious significance of the ox, but if it is true that the horse
was domesticated and developed into what it became in the nomadic culture
of the steppes, ceremonies which bear no relationship to other cultures, such
as the king of the Hsiung-nu sacrificing a white horse to heaven on the top
of a mountain, as recorded in the Han-shu,273?and the custom surviving until
recent times of consecrating horses to the god of heaven,274'must be regarded
as preserving the original form in which the horse first made its entry into
the religious lives of men. The idea of celestial horses, and that of gods
descending vertically from the sky mounted on horses, which appear in later
ages, must also have their origin in this nomadic culture. But when the
nomadic peoples with their horses commenced their exodus into the agricultural
regions to the east, west and south, the contact, over-lapping and mixing of
different cultures which must have been going on for a long time already, now
received a further impetus. Especially, with the appearance and diffusion

270) Rl. d. Vorg.,Bd 9, Tafel 95 a; Amschler, 1934, S. 298-299.

271) Thurnwald, 1929, S. 345-355; Rl. d. Vorg., Bd I, Tafel 3 a.
272) Schmidt und Koppers, S. 102; Koppers, 1935, S. 16-17; cf. UdG, III. Teil, Die Reli-
gionen der Hirtenvilker(Bde. 7, 8, 9), 1940-1949; Schmidt, 1942.
273) Ch'ienHan-shu, 94, Hsiung-nu-chuan(J4tfi), pt. 2.
274) Cf. relevant passages in: Gahs, S. 217-232; Koppers, 1936; Bleichsteiner, 1936, S. 414 ff.
Attention is further drawn to the fact that, while Shamanism is closely connected with
sanguine sacrifices, the shamans take no part in the bloodless sacrifices that are practised
at the same time by the nomadic peoples of Asia.-Gahs, loc. cit.; Menghin, S. 518.
 64 THE KAPPA LEGEND

of horses in the agricultural world of the ancient Orient, in which, as we have

shown chronologically, the ox had come to occupy more or less the central
position in the religious life of the people, the two cultures of the north and
the south, of the horse and the ox, while retaining their individual characteris-
tics, gradually began to combine together and form a single culture. In
The replacing of consequence, in the domain of myth and rituals also, the horse was sometimes
the ox with the seen to take a share in the part played until then solely by the ox, or to replace
horse
the latter altogether. At the same time, the central position originally occupied
by the cow, as in the case of the cow sacred to the goddess Isis, would be taken
over by the bull, or the element of sky-worship would begin to preponderate
in the lunar-mythological complex, both of which phenomena may be regarded
as forming a part of the same process outlined. Professor Koppers seems to
consider the solarization of the lunar mythology which took place in the history
of the ancient Orient also in relation to this process.275 The transformation
of the bull-god Poseidon into a horse-god, or the strange phenomenon of the
two existing side by side, both of which facts have been discussed by Miss
Harrison, may be best understood in this light. Furthermore, the culture
itself of the Indo-European peoples would seem to have for its basis the two
cultures referred to, northern and southern, cattle-breeding and agricultural,
and it is from this culture historical and ethnological point of view that the
present writer wishes once more to consider the principal subject of this treatise.
Poseidon as earth- The first point to be discussed is the character of the water-god Poseidon
god and god of to which reference has been made in the last chapter. As has already been
agriculture pointed out, it was natural that the god Poseidon of the ancient culture of the
nautical peoples of the Mediterranean should have become the god of the ocean,
of sailors and of fishermen. But it is doubtful whether this foreign god who
came to Mt. Olympus in the form of a bull or a horse from Crete and North
Africa, had always been a sea-god. It was into the fresh-water spring of Dione
near Genethlium that the Argives of old threw horses, bitted and bridled,
in honour of Poseidon. Onchestus, " the bright grove of Poseidon," where
chariots drawn by young horses were offered to Poseidon the King, was in
no other place than Boeotia, far removed from the sea. Guided by these
doubts, we cannot help coming across aspects of Poseidon, the sea-god,
bull-god and horse-god, which are eminently those of an earth-god and a god
of the world of the dead, an agricultural god and a fertility-god.
The corn-spirit Sir J. Frazer in his monumental work, The Golden Bough, has enumer-
and the horse ated and discussed the popular beliefs in Europe of the corn-spirit taking
the form of a mare, and the rites for invoking this spirit at harvest time.2761
This corn-spirit may be traced back to Demeter, the " corn-mother," the
It was
goddess of agriculture who was worshipped at Phigaleia in Arcadia.
275) Koppers, 1936, S. 372-395.
276) GB, pt. 5, vol. 1, pp. 292-294.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 65

a goddess with the head and manes of a horse, and according to the legend,
she took this form and hid herself in a cave in Phigaleia to escape from the
pursuit by Poseidon. This caused the fruits of the earth to wither, and the
people were faced with starvation, when the god Pan took on himself to appease
the goddess and succeeded in bringing her back, upon which the people of
Phigaleia honoured her by putting up her image in the cave to commemorate
her return to the fruitful fields.277' In Roman mythology, Neptunus pursues
Ceres, the Corn-Mother, who searches over the earth for her daughter Pro-
serpina whom Pluto, the King of Hades, carried away to his dominions, Ceres
in her flight changed herself into a mare, and Neptunus caught up with her
and had his will of her in the guise of a stallion, out of which union was born
Arion the divine horse, a legend which coincides in detail with a Greek one
quoted in the last chapter. In the Odyssey, when Telemachus arrived at
Pylos on the coast of the western Peloponessus, the people of the coast " made
to the blue-haired Shaker of the Earth oblation, slaying coal-black bulls to
him."278' The priestess Athene who accompanied Telemachus at once offered
a prayer to the king of the ocean saying, " Hearken thou, Poseidon, Girdler
of the Earth, nor grudge our work to end according to our vow."279) When
Theseus begs Poseidon to kill Hippolytus by sending the sea-bull out of the
waves, the words of his curse were, " Poseidon, reverencing my prayers, shall
slay and speed him unto Hades' halls."280) Poseidon who had once ruled
over the whole land, had shown his bride Amymone the water-springs of Lerne
and when the sovereignty of the land was adjudged to Hera, he in wrath caused
the springs to dry up and made Argos "very thirsty."'281 The water-god
Poseidon who appears in these words and legends is a being somewhat re-
moved from the sea. We find evidence both in Homer and Athenaeus that
the bull was the proper animal to sacrifice to Poseidon,282) and if, as Miss
Harrison argues, the bull-god Poseidon was a later form of the Cretan Minotaur,
and if the origin of the sacred bulls who filled the palace at Cnossus can be
traced back to the Egyptian culture of the Nile, then we are surely justified in
thinking that the primary character of the god was that of the god of the nether
regions and the world of the dead, with much in him that pertains to an agri-
cultural god. Here then must be the answer to the riddle of Poseidon seated
on the back of a bull and holding in his hand a great blossoming bough. The
sacred bull and the religio-mythological ritual attached to it which we find
forming the basic element in the ancient cultures of Crete and Egypt, belong

277) ibid., vol. 1, pp. 35-91; vol. 2, p. 21; Pausanias, VIII, 42.1: Frazer, 1913, vol. 1, p.+o.
278) Homer, The Odyssey,III, 5-7: Murray (tr.), vol. 2, p. 69.
279) ibid., III, 55-56: Murray (tr.), vol. 1, p. 73.
280) Euripides, Hippolytus,895-896: Way (tr.), p. 233.
281) Pausanias, II, 15, 5: Frazer, 1913, vol. 1, p. 93; Harrison, p. 51.
282) Harrison, p. 51; Athenaeus, VI, 261: Gulick (tr.), vol. 3, pp. 145-147.
 66 THE KAPPA LEGEND

by their character almost without a doubt to an agricultural culture, and the

world of lunar mythology into which some elements of a solar mythology have
been introduced, while at the same time, once the great king of the nether
regions betakes himself to the sea, it is easily conceivable that he should
extend his dominions and become the lord of the ocean.283)
Water and the ox Although the sea has no direct connections with agriculture, water itself
is the source of life to agricultural people. Water is a mystic force in that it
controls the growth of plants and the increase of flocks. That being the case,
we can find many examples besides that of Poseidon, of an ox, which occupies
a central position in agricultural ritual as the symbol of fertility, becoming
associated with water-gods. Already in predynastic Egypt the goddess Meht-
ueret (" the great flood ") sprang from the combination of the idea that the sky
is a great cow with the idea that the sky is the water of a great river or a con-
tinuation of the ocean. The goddess was the cow of the skies, the expression
of the primeval fertility of the female principle, and the female personification
of watery matter which formed the substance out of which the world pro-
ceeded.284) The Greek river-god Acheloos is usually represented in the form
of a bull with a human head, from which grew horns that were supposed to
have the power of bringing fertility to animals and plants. When this god
competed with Heracles for the love of the maiden Deianeira, he is said to have
turned himself first into a serpent, and then into a bull, and gave every proof
of his powers of metamorphosis.285" Sophocles makes Deianeira exclaim:
Courtship of a For my first wooer was a river god,
water-god Acheloos, who in triple form appeared
To sue my father Oeneus for my hand,
Now as a bull, now as a sinuous snake
With glittering coils, and now in bulk a man
With front of ox, while from his shaggy beard
Runnels of fountain-water spouted forth.286
It is a fact worthy of notice that the " sinuous snake " occupies a position
lunar
equal in importance to that of the ox in the agricultural, matriarchal, and
mythological complex. Water-gods most commonly take the form of serpents
in South Africa and Australia, while in India and Eastern Asia, as has already
been pointed out, imagination has turned these serpents into dragons. But
whether in the form of dragons and serpents, or of oxen and horses, wherein
lies the meaning of water-gods seeking the love of human maidens ? It is
said that the Trojan maidens before marriage bathed in the sacred river
S camander and prayed to the river to take their virginity,287) and the custom

283) Steller, p. 1634. 284) Mercer, p. 712; Miller, p. 39.

285) Ovid, Metamorphoses,IX, 62-86: Miller, vol. 2, pp. 7-9; Frazer, 1918, vol. 2, p. 413.
286) Sophocles, Trachiniae, 9-15: Storr (tr.), p. 259; Harrison, p. 30.
287) GB, pt. 1, vol. 2, p. 162.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 67

existed in Syria and various parts of India, of barren women bathing in those
rivers that were supposed to be inhabited by river-spirits in the hope of con-
ceiving children.288) These facts would seem to show that stories of water-gods
seeking union with virgins289) also arose from the magical rites of agricultural
peoples who sought help from the fertilizing powers of rivers, springs and rain.
The Japanese Miwayama-type legend in which gigantic serpents inhabiting deep
pools change themselves into beautiful youths and nightly visit human maidens
is distributed over a very wide area, while legends of the Perseus and An- Sacrificeof virgins
dromeda type where heroes rescue virgins offered in sacrifice to dragons and
serpents, of which the Japanese legend of Susa-no-o and Kushiinada-hime
is another example, might indicate the actual existence in the past of a custom
of offering human sacrifices as a part of fertility rite. Legends of this type
are found in Babylonia and in Greece, from the Japanese islands and Annam
in the east to Scandinavia, Scotland and nearly the whole of Europe in the
west, as well as among the Negroes and Kabyles of Africa, and among American
Indians and the Eskimos,290) and the extent of its distribution suggests its
antiquity. Human sacrifices were in fact offered to river-gods, to the River
Nile in Egypt, to the Ganges in India, and to the River Tiber in Rome besides
other places,291) and it is equally clear that they were in the nature of a fertility
rite. The Indian water-god Varuna, who gave a thousand white steeds to
the father of the bride at the marriage feast of the sage Richika, was regarded
as the god of fertility in marriage, and the words, " king of the world of water,
who curbs the wicked, who made a road in the heavens to receive the rays
of the sun, etc." were used in prayers addressed to him. Human sacrifices
were offered to this god also, as we read in the tale of Sunahsepa, and it is said
that this gave rise to the custom in later times of sacrificing infants to the river-
goddess Ganga at the mouth of the river.392) Neither should the story of the
Cretan Minotaur demanding a tribute every seven years of Athenian youths
and maidens be regarded simply as a dramatization of the enmity roused in
the hearts of the Athenians by the historical facts of the heavy burden laid
by King Minos on tributary cities like Athens and Megara along the coast
of the Mediterranean, but as containing vestiges in it of some religious ritual
of bygone ages. The ball of thread given by Ariadne to Theseus before his
entry into the labyrinth reminds us of the story of the thread which Ikutama-
yori-hime passed by means of a needle through the hem of the gown worn
by the Japanese serpent-god, Miwa-no-Omono-nushi, who visited her every
night, and we must not forget that, in the Mediterranean culture of the period,

288) ibid., pp. 159-161.

289) ibid.,pp. 150-154.
290) ibid.,pp. 155 ff.; MacCulloch, 1920, p. 408; James, p. 708.
291) Mercer, p. 710.
292) Crooke, 1920, p. 717; Gubernatis, vol. 1, pp. 69,71.
 68 THE KAPPA LEGEND

the bull often represented the god of water, and that the bull-headed Minotaur
may be taken to be the forerunner of Poseidon.
Oxen and horses If such is the case, it would seem to us that the custom of sacrificing oxen
offered to water- to water-gods which we find widely spread along the coast of the Mediterranean
gods
in ancient times had the character originally of an agricultural fertility rite.
Then what of horses ? According to Homer, a bull each was offered to
Poseidon and the spirit of the sacred River Alpheus by being thrown into the
waters of the river,33) but into " the fair stream and whirling silver waves "
of the River Scamander, the ravisher of maidens, "single-hoofed horses"
were cast alive besides many oxen.294) In later ages, as we read in Tacitus,
when the Roman general Vitellius came with his army to the banks of the River
Euphrates, he sacrificed pigs, rams and bulls in the river after the Roman
manner to appease the river-god, while Tiridates slew a horse for the same
purpose.295) The story of Pompey causing magnificent war-horses to be thrown
into the sea in thanksgiving for a victory is well-known. The interpretation
given to these sacrifices may have differed with the times, but for reasons already
stated, we are led to conclude that they were the result of the horse, which had
come into the ancient Mediterranean sphere of culture from the north at
a later period than the ox, being assimilated into this agricultural culture and
becoming the symbol of fertility and growth, side by side with, or replacing
Horse-headed the ox. The horse-headed Demeter, the Corn-Mother, and the harvest
agriculturalgods festivals of European peasants of which the festivals held in her honour furnish
us with an early instance, are examples of the horse being regarded in such
a light by the agricultural population, and the idea has been early suggested
by W. Mannhardt and others that the sacrifice of the October horse in ancient
Rome may have been in reality a symbolic representation of the mythical
killing of the horse-shaped corn-spirit, and its subsequent resurrection.296)
The god Mars to whom this horse was sacrificed, was the god of fields and
harvests as well as being the god of war,297) and the head of the horse that had
been sacrificed was cut off and garlanded with a string of loaves to symbolize
the Spirit of the Corn, while the blood was used later for fumigating cattle
in the spring. The grotesque head of the horse made the object of a heated
contest between the inhabitants of two wards, the Sacred Way and the Subura
and if the former ward won, in the earliest days of Rome, the head was fastened
on a wall of the King's House, whereas if the latter did, it was the Mamilian
Tower that was adorned with the trophy.298) The custom of hanging horses'

293) Homer, The Iliad, XI, 726-729: Murray (tr.), vol. 1, p. 535.
294) ibid., XXI, 130-132: Murray (tr.), vol. 2, pp. 417-419.
295) Tacitus, Annales, 37: Murphy (tr.), p. 275.
296) Mannhardt, S. 160, 163 i. (eit. by Koppers, 1936, 6. 28t9.-31 .
297) .Ovid, Fasti: Frazer, Appendix,pp. 397-399; Eitrem, S. 20 (cit. by Koppers, 1936, S. 289).
298) Ovid, Fasti: Frazer, Appendix,pp. 413-416; Koppers, 1936, S. 290; Hewey, pp. 109- 10.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 69

heads at the entrance of farmhouses as a kind of charm still remains in certain

districts at the present day, and such heads were commonly seen in the Ou
region in Japan until quite recently299'(Cf. Fig. 20). Many images of Oshira-
sama, who is variously worshipped as the patron god of abundant harvests,
of silk-worms, of children, of those stricken with diseases of the eye and so
on, by the people of the Kanto and T6hoku districts if Japan, are furnished
with horses' heads (Fig. 9).300) Moreover, other examples such as the legend
of a girl uniting herself with a horse and together with the horse's head or
hide flying through the air, which explains the origin of this particular god,301)
299) Thomas, p. 519. Mr. Sasaki Kizen records his memories of this custom as practised in
his native village in Rikuchu province in Northeastern HonshA as follows:-" Of course,
this was not confined to my village, but there was a custom in the old days of cutting off the
heads of horses that had died and hanging them on poles set up outside the entrances of
houses. When I was a boy, a third, or even perhaps half of the fifty houses in my village
had these poles before them. Before some houses, three or four of such horses' skulls washed
many times over by the rain looked up at the sky through hollow eyes and showed their teeth
ranged along the upper jaws. In my house, too, three such skulls lay on the stone wall until
one or two years ago. One can easily imagine that in my grandfather's time, in my great-
grandfather's, and in times still further back, every house had such horses' heads before it."
-Sasaki, 1931, p. 21; Sat6, pp. 248-249; Yanagita, 1914, pp. 87-188 (ed. 1942, 240-
241). In Europe, in the northwestern part of Germany, Wales, Russia, the Tyrols, Raetia,
Spain and elsewhere, one often sees two sculptured heads of horses jutting out cross-wise
from the summit of gables of farmhouses.-Petersen (cit. in Folklore,vol. 11, p. 322, pls. I-V,
p. 437-pl. VI). The present writer does not think that these customs found in Japan are
directly connected with the Southern European belief in corn-spirits and horses' heads. As
with the Japanese belief in Oshira-sama given in the next note, such Japanese customs aS
hanging horses' skulls outside farmhouses seem to contain elements in them which differ con-
siderably in origin from the Southern European belief in question. We have only referred
to these customs as showing how the horse, brought by the nomadic peoples, came into and
became a part of the lives of the agricultural peoples.
300) Oshirasama-zuroku, pl. 43. Cf. pls. 18, 26, 33, 36, 37. A detailed bibliography on the Oshira-
sama is given in pp. 127-141 of the same work.
301) Yanagita, 1935, pp. 55-56, 181-182. The following is a typical story from the Tono Mono-
gatari, told to the author by Mrs. Daid6 Hide of Tsuchi-buchi village, Kamihei-gun, Riku-
chf province (age over 80): " Once there lived a poor farmer who had lost his wife, but had
a beautiful daughter. They kept a horse, and the daughter so loved the horse that at night
she went to sleep in the stable and she and the horse came to mate. One night, her father
found this out, and the next day, he took out the horse without letting his daughter know
of it and killed it by hanging it by its neck on a mulberry tree. That night, his daughter
found the horse gone, and learning what had happened from him, went in alarm and sorrow
to the mulberry tree and began to cry, clinging to the neck of the dead horse. Her father
saw this and grew angry, and cut off the horse's head with an axe, when the girl leapt on to
the horse's head and ascended to heaven. This is the origin of the god Oshira-sama, and
his image is made out of the mulberry tree on which the horse was hanged, etc."-Yanagita,
1935, p. 55.
It is clear that this story springs from the same source as that recorded in the Sou-sMn-
chi, 14, in which we read, " The horse's skin suddenly rose up and enveloped the woman,
and carried her away ... After several days, the woman and the horse's skin were found
among the branches of a great tree, but all had turned into silkworms, which were weaving
cocoons on the branches . . . For this reason, the tree came to be called the mulberry tree,
etc." But it is an interesting question whether this is an instance of the
spreading of legends
through books, or the legend was brought to Japan before, or independently of the coming
of books, for instance through the importation of the art of sericulture.
70 THE KAPPA LEGEND

the custom of throwing images of Oshira-sama into rivers and wells,302) the
Emburi dance of peasants of the Tohoku district in which the dancers wear
great caps shaped like horses' heads and execute horse-like movements at
the time of the raking of rice-fields,303) the belief that the god Oshira-sama
goes up into the sky at the beginning of each winter, carrying with him the
seeds of cereals which he brings back to earth in March of the following year,304)
the custom of the makko-tsunagi (" tethering of horses ") in the Tono area of
Rikuchu province whereby images of horses are hung on branches together with
straw wrappings containing rice-cake, which are said to travel to Izumo pro-
vince to meet the coming of the ripening of cereals,305)that of carrying figures of
horses' heads haru-koma (" spring colt ") in January,306'the practice of bringing
out white horses and striking them on the occasion of the Hakuba-sechie (" white
horse ceremonial ") at the Japanese court in old times,307) the pilgrimage to the
Inari shrine dedicated to Kura-ina-tama-no-kami, the god of rice, on the first
Day of the Horse in February according to the lunar calendar,308'and the custom

302) Sasaki, 1931 a, pp. 156-157.

303) ibid., p. 158. Mr. Sasaki says that he saw an Emburi dance at Hachinohe in Aomori pre-
fecture in February 1931, and became aware for the first time that the eboshi-hat worn by
Oshira-sama was derived from the shape of a horse's head.
304) ibid., p. 158. For this reason, there is a custom of bringing out a mill-stone into the garden
on the dawn of the day of the god's coming, and making noises in it with a pestle. This is
said to be done to call down the god.
305) ibid., p. 158. " In the old days, it was usual to make images of horses about 2 feet long
with straw, and to take them, together with straw-wrappers containing shitogi (roughly
kneaded rice-cakes), to trees growing near wells and rivers or the sluices of one's rice-fields,
and hang them on the branches. In recent times, it became rare to see horses made of
straw, paper folded four times or six times in the form of horses being substituted, and these
were pierced with spits and hung at the places named. Whether made of straw or paper,
the rice-cakes were smeared on the horses' mouths. These horses were also offered to ubu-
suna-gami,the local deities of the place. The horses were supposed to travel to Izumo pro-
vince to greet the coming of the ripening of corn. The earlier the horses were hung the
better, for the agricultural gods of the families who were late in hanging their horses were
supposed to come back late, and so everyone vied with each other in going out to hang the
horses at dawn. When we were boys, we used to collect these horses on our way back from
school, and see who collected the most. We showed off those we collected which had shapes
that differed from others, and tried to guess which family had hung out which horse. The
boys of the present day also seem to indulge in this pastime."
306) Tsunoda, vol. 2, nos. 11-12, pp. 681-684, 730-731; vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 26-28; Hirase, pp.
108-110.
307) This custom is still to be found today in certain districts, and it is said that at the Shirouma-
matsuri (" white horse festival ") held each year on the night ofJan. 7th at the Kashima shrine
in Hitachi province, and the first festival of the year held on Jan. i3th according to the lunar
calendar at Kuon-ji temple on Mt. Minobe, horses are still beaten on the buttock.-De-
guchi, p. 10. For the meaning of this custom of striking horses, cf. Deguchi, p. 11 ff. and
passages on the " whipping oxen " in this chapter, p. 107.
308) Deguchi, p. 17; Minakata, 1918, p. 181.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 71

of bringing out black horses,309)or cutting off horses' heads and throwing them
into rivers, when praying for rain,310)all show that in Japan, horses, and more
particularly, their heads, possessed the qualities of an agricultural god. The
circumstances which gave rise to the horse-headed K6shin-image and the
worship of Bato-Kwannon (" horse-headed Avalokitesvala ")311) are not clear,
but it is worthy of particular notice that Kodapen (Kodadeo, Ghordeo), the god
of horses worshipped by the Gonds in Central India, is represented by stones
set up on the boundaries of villages, and besides presiding over the villages
as their patron god, also has something of the character of a corn-spirit.312)
There are also scholars like Miss Harrison who would iave it that it is possible
to see in the famous Trojan horse the relics of a wooden horse originally used
in some fertility rite and forming part of the paraphernalia for a resurrection
ceremony or the magical rite of a sacred marriage, when one compares the
Trojan horse with the hobby-horse-the symbol of fertility-which still
survives in the village tradition and customs of Europe, or the wooden cow
of Crete which Daedalus hollowed out and placed on wheels, covering it with
cow hide, and in which he put Pasiphae to please Ariadne.313) From all this,

309) Nakayama, p. 67 (cites Seyo^-gorei-ikyo, Higashikasugai-gun-shi,Engishiki, 3.)

310) In Inano village, Kawabe-gun, Settsu province, the inhabitants cut off a horse's head and
throw it into the waterfall Mizo-taki at the source of the River Namase, when praying for
rain. The horse must be white with black markings. At this ceremony, a book of prayer
for rain preserved in the village is read, and then the horse's head is cut off and thrown into
the waterfall, after which the inhabitants return to the village without looking back. The
man chosen to cut off the head wears the ceremonious dress, kami-shimo,and performs his
task on a rock. In some years, the man only makes a semblance of cutting off the horse's
head, and after wounding the horse slightly on the neck, the blood is smeared on the rock,
after which the inhabitants return to the village. One such ceremony was held in 1883, and
much rain fell while the villagers were on their way back.-Nakayama, p. 67.
311) Examples of K6shin-images with horses' heads are quite common in the neighbourhood of
Tokyo. Bat6-Kwannon is the Japanese version for Hayagriva Vidyaraja and there must
certainly be some connection between these two. A similar relationship may exist between
our Bat6-Kwannon and some older popular beliefs. We read in the Kwannon-reijo-ki
(fi:
*S-ge), 6, that the presiding deity of Matsuo-ji temple in Wakasa province, near the boun-
dary between this province and Tango, is Bat6-Kwannon, and the origin of the temple is
as follows: A fisherman of K6-np-ura put out to sea carrying an image of Bato-Kwannon
1 sun 8 bu (about 2 ins.) long, and me ta storm, but was able to reach the shore guided
by
the neighing of a white horse. So the fisherman carved another image of Bato-Kwannon
out of wood thrown upon the beach, and built a temple in which to enshrine it, and ever
since then, someone among his descendants, who must always be squint eyed, is chosen to
take care of the temple. The image has three faces and two arms, coloured red, and re-
presented as in anger, with the head of a white horse on top of the faces. (From the material
collected by Mr. Yanagita).
312) The stone on the outskirts of the village representing a horse-god is worshipped at the be-
ginning of the rainy season. Only men join in the worship, women being excluded.-
Crooke, 1912, p. 8 a. " When a field is sown, the field-god, Kodopen, said to represent the
god of the kodomillet (Paspalumscrobiculatum),but more probably a hill-god, is propitiated."
-Crooke, 1913, p. 313 a. Cf. Crooke, 1926, p. 351; Minakata, 1918, p. 181.
313) Harrison, pp. 43-46. Cf. Apollodorus, III. 1, 4: Frazer (tr.),.vol. 1. p. 305.
 72 THE KAPPA LEGEND

then, the significance of the cornucopia held in the left hand of Epona, the
Celtic goddess of water and of horses (Fig. 5), has, we think, become much
clearer.
North and South The sacrifice of horses practised from ancient times by the peoples of
the steppes of Inner Asia in the north, was by its nature a bloodless sacrifice
offered to heaven and differed greatly both in form and content from the sacri-
fices, such as have been just described, in usage among the agricultural peoples
of the south. We naturally find many elements in the ox-rearing customs
of the area stretching from the southern half of the Eurasian continent to East
Africa that owe their origin to the nomadic culture of Inner Asia,314) but as
we have already pointed out, the sacrifice of oxen and horses to water-gods,
or rather, the association of these animals with water-gods, has a strongly
"southern " character, and in the opinion of the present writer, it indicates
that the process which began primarily with the ox was later extended to the
horse. But as is usual with all such secondary complexes, there is much also
in these customs and legends which possesses a "northern" quality having
its origin in the nomadic culture, and other qualities belonging to cultures
of still other orders. The question of the sacrifice of horses in its entirety,
which would require a book by itself to be fully discussed, cannot be dealt with
here. But to give only one example having to do with water-gods, the casting
into the sea of a yoke of four horses at the annual festival of the sun-god in
Rhodes, where the people followed a religion of Semitic origin,315'indicates
a culture different from that seen in the sacrifice of oxen in the agricultural
and lunar mythological world. The idea of regarding the horse as the animal
sacred to the sun-god is particularly prominent in the religion of the Semites,316'
while we have already given some examples showing that the association in
some form or other of the horse with the sun was widespread among the beliefs
of the Indo-Europeans.
We have perhaps been tarrying too long by the coasts of the Mediterranean
of the ancient world. But it is not that we have been lured into doing so by
the poetic charm in which its myths and legends abound, washed as we might
say by the blue waves of the Mediterranean. If we have stayed too long, it
was because the remains and legends of the ancient world preserved in these
regions are comparatively rich in clues to the solution of the questions raised
in this essay. But we must now take leave of this fascinating world and particu-
larly of Poseidon, the great water-god, the one who " moves in a kind of rolling
splendour." We shall retrace our steps, and in examining the relationship
of oxen (and horses) to the water-spirits and water-monsters of European
folklore, it.is hoped that the conclusions arrived at from the foregoing study
314) Flor, S. 16-24.
315) Smith, p. 293.
316) II Kings, XIII, 11.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 73

of the ancient Mediterranean culture will be further confirmed,

Beginning in the north, we shall first give a glance at the Slavic peoples. The Slav
There is a water-spirit living in the depths of rivers and marshes called Vodyanik The water-man
or DeduSka Vodyanoi (" water-grandfather ") in Russia, Vodnik in Bohemia,
Vodeni Moz (" water-man ") in Yugoslavia, Topielec (" drowner ") in Poland
and so on. He usually appears as a bald-headed old man and lives mostly
at the bottom of the water near a mill, where he keeps numerous herds of oxen,
horses, sheep and pigs which he drives up to land every night to graze. It
is said that he is sometimes seen seated on the mill-wheel, combing his long
green hair. This old man possesses great strength in the water, but has
none at all when on dry land. He likes to ride on a sheat-fish, or saddles horses,
bulls or cows and rides them until they fall down dead in the marshes. What-
ever happens in the world of water is his doing, and although he helps the
fishermen and sailors when in good humour, he will overturn boats, tear the
spikes out of mill-wheels, and cause mills to be flooded by the rising waters
of rivers when he is irritated. To avoid such mishaps, millers must bury
some living thing like a cow, sheep, or even a man in the foundations of their
mills. The old man also appears often at markets. If he pays a high price
for corn, it is a sign that the harvest is going to be bad, and if a low price, the
crop will certainly be a good one. He marries water-nymphs and girls who
have been drowned. When the waters of rivers and lakes overflow their
banks, men know that he is getting drunk at his marriage-feast. During the
winter, he usually remains underwater in his dwelling, and when he wakes
up with the coming of spring, he is hungry and irritable, breaks the ice, stirs
up the waves and frightens the fish. To appease him, a horse smeared with
honey is sacrificed, and being impatient for it, he causes the water to heave
and howls dismally for three days. In Ukraine, the head of a horse used to
be buried in a dyke so that it would not be destroyed by the Vodyanik.317a
Although of a different origin perhaps from this water-man, a spirit in the
form of a gigantic bull is said to inhabit each of the large lakes in Yugoslavia,
and people make offerings of coins to them before washing sheep in these
lakes.318) There are also legends among the Western Slavic Wends (Sorbes)
of how the water-spirit Nix draws cows into the water each day at midday.319.
The facts enumerated above show to what extent the water-spirit, regarded The Turks
as the god of fertility, has become associated with agriculture and oxen and
horses, so as to leave even today vestiges of some ancient agricultural ritual in
the popular beliefs of the Slavic peoples. We may add here that the legend
of the Slavic water-spirit, together with that of the water-horse Rusalka,
spread to the Turks in the basin of the Volga, and to the far Siberian tribes
317) Machal, pp. 270-271.
318) Bolivka,S. 318.
319) Panzer, S. 132.
 74 THE KAPPA LEGEND

also through the Russians. The Yakuts in particular have much in their
folklore that is of purely Russian origin. They believe that the water-spirits
come on land between New Year's Eve and the Twelfth Night and wander
along the roads with many children who are carried on the backs of oxen. At
that time, the people gather together at cross-roads, openings in the ice, and
near deserted huts to listen to the noise the spirits make, and foretell from
it the things that will happen during the year. The Yenissei-Ostyaks and
other fishing tribes of Northern Siberia believe in the existence of a spirit who
presides over rivers, lakes and marshes, and make offerings to it at the begin-
ning of the fishing season in spring, while the Yakuts in the past are said to
have sacrificed a black bull to their water-spirit, Ukulan Tojon, through the
shamans.320W
The Finno-Ugric If we turn our attention next to the water-festivals of the Finno-Ugric
peoples peoples in Northern Europe who are either surrounded or in actual contact
with the Slavs, we find the agricultural character of their festivals equally pro-
Water-festivals, nounced. For instance, in Russian Ingermanland, the head, hoofs and entrails
oxen and horses of a cow that had been slaughtered for the occasion were thrown into the water,
at the peasant festival held on St. Peter's or St. Elias' day. Other examples
are reported in which not only the head and entrails but a whole he-goat
was cast into a river, or the head of an ox first thrown into a lake as a
redemption-offering and then afterwards the carcass. According to the
inhabitants of those regions, the object of this practice was to ward off
death by drowning, and according to some others, to prevent any misfortune
overtaking the cattle, but it is hardly possible that a ceremony of this sort held
regularly every year at a fixed period should have been started to guard against
accidental mishaps like drowning. St. Elias, on whose day the ceremony was
held, was regarded as the god of wind, rain and thunder, and Uno Holmberg
is of the opinion that the original significance of a ceremony which was at first
a magical fertility rite must have become forgotten in the course of ages.321)
The custom of sprinkling water on oxen, horses and sheep when first turning
them out to pasture in the spring is to be found everywhere in Finland,32)
and indicates a belief in the magical powers of water as the source of fertility.
The custom of bringing the bride on the second day after marriage to some
place where there is water, and a relation of the bridegroom, or the bride and
bridegroom themselves overturning the first pitcher of water drawn is derived
from the same idea. This custom is to be found mainly in Eastern Finland
among the Cheremiss, Esthonians, Karelians, Ingrians, and Votians, and since
it coincides in every detail with the practice in Eastern Russia, it is thought
to be of Slav origin.323? The Votyaks, Mordvins, and the Baltic Finns sacri-
320) Holmberg, 1927 a, pp. 469-470.
321) Holmberg, 1913, S. 229-230.
322) ibid., S. 232. 323) ibid., S. 230.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 75
ficed a black animal, generally a sheep or a black bull, not only to the earth
but.also to the "Water-Mother," chiefly to obtain fruitful rains. The
Cheremiss sprinkle water on one another at such ceremonies.324) The Votyaks
and the Mordvins, like the Russians earlier, hold a great festival at which they
throw horses into the water when the ice begins to break in the spring. At
an Ostyak festival which Holmberg witnessed in 1911 at the River Buy, a
tributary of the Kama, a young foal was first killed and cooked by the river,
then the people knelt down facing the river and the officiating priest began
reading a long prayer begging prosperity from the river. Meanwhile the bones,
hide, and other parts of the carcass were thrown into the river together with
the animal's new halter, the blood having been already flowing into the river
through a ditch dug in the dyke. The kind of animal to be sacrificed was
changed every year, so that if it was a brown foal one year, it would be a black
bull the next.325) According to Castren, the Ostyaks of Obdorsk, when fishing
was bad on the River Obi, sometimes sacrificed a reindeer by sinking it in
the river with a stone hung on its neck.326) This, however, is not to be taken
as the authentic form of sacrificing reindeer, and is probably an imitation of
the sacrifice of oxen and horses in practice among the agriculturual peoples.
Examples of water-spirits appearing in the form of horses, or luring horses Master of the water
into the water, have already been given. But these spirits, like the great Po-
seidon, also assume the form of oxen, and lure oxen as well as horses into the
water. Vit-oza (" water master ") dreaded by the Cheremiss dwells in such
waters as do not dry up during the hot season. He usually appears as an old
man, but can turn himself also into a horse or a bullock. He likes to lure
human beings, but when he fails, he captures cattle and carries them away
into the water.327) When the Nakk, the water-spirit of the Esthonians, wishes
to entice cattle into the water, he turns himself into an animal and mixes with
them on their pasture ground, and then, when returning to the water, entices
the other animals to follow him.328'
The idea of water-spirits keeping herds of magnificent cattle in under- Oxen kept by
water pastures, as in the case of the Russian Vodyanik, is prevalent also among water-spirits
the Finns who live along the shores of the Baltic. One finds such legends
as that in the diocese of Uuras, a man once saw a herd of beautiful cows come
out of Lake Uuras and land on an island in the lake, but disappear again into
the water when the man approached them, or that in the diocese of Kiirsten
on the bay of Bothnia, great herds of the " cows of the Nakk " appear nightly
on the shore and graze there from sundown until dawn of the next day.329)
324) Holmberg, 1927 a, p. 212.
325) ibid., pp. 214-215, pl. XXI, p. 200.
326) Holmberg, 1913, S. 56-57.
327) Holmberg, 1927 a, p. 199.
328) ibid., p. 203.
329) Holmberg, 1913, S. 209.
 76 THE KAPPA LEGEND

Sometimes,afterthese oxen have been led back at dawn into the water by the
water-spiritwho owns them, it happensthat just one animalis left behind. If
a man circles the animal once or three times with a piece of iron in his hand,
it can no longer return to the water. It becomes a part of the human world,
and the water-spiritcan only howl from the water, vainly searching for the
lost animal. If it is a cow, one has only to caress her and be gentle to her,
or even just recognize her for what she is, to make her one's own.330' To
rear such a water-cowwith a herd of ordinarycattle, her first milk must be
offered to the spirit of the earth. Her blood, when she is slaughtered,must
also be offered to the earth. In some regions, when milking such a water-
cow, the first three spouts are spilled on the groundwhile one recitesthe words,
" One for the earth, one for the water, one for those who dwell in the air ! "331)
At the extremityof the peninsulaof Kurlandto the south, wherearethe villages
of the Livoniansnow reduced to a populationof a little over 1,000, one finds,
besides legends of the Nakk in the form of a horse and of sea-horses,stories
of a sea-maiden,sometimes called " Virgin Mary," who tends blue sea-oxen
by the shore and drives them back into the sea before the eyes of human
watchers,and how one cow which lagged behind left her progenyin Kurland,
and an abundance of other such legends.332)
Oxen of the earth- According to the Finns of Scandinavia,great herds of cattle owned by
spirit and the oxen an earth-spirit called Maahiaiset (" the undergroundone ") also come out
of wells
of the earth and disappearinto it again, but if a man throws anything made
of iron at them, they can be easily caught. A similar story is told about the
" cows of Manalaiset('the dead') " in Northern Finland and Russian Kare-
lia.333) In general, one sees again in these legends and popular beliefs, the
conjunctionof the earth,water,the netherregionsand the ox that is peculiarto
the religious concepts of most agriculturalpeoples. But as the idea of water-
spirits keepingherds of cattle is confinedto the BalticFinns amongthe Finnish
peoples, and the cows being beautiful animals giving an abundantsupply of
milk, the possibility of men capturingthem by going round them and other
such factors have much in common with the beliefs of the Nordic peoples,
it is thought that the idea must have been importedamong these Baltic Finns
by the latter.334' Among the Finns of Nyland, there is a legend of a water-
monster called Kaivoharka(" the bull of the well ") who lives at the bottom
of wells, and the story of how he will draw anyone who comes near into the
well is used to frighten children. Whether this is a variation of the Nakk
legend, or derivedfrom the story of the oxen kept by water-spiritsis not clear,
330) ibid., S. 209-210; Holmberg 1927 a, p. 205.
331) Holmberg, 1913, S. 210-211.
332) Loorits, p. 42.
333) Holmberg, 1913, S. 211.
334) ibid S. 211.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 77

but there are similar monsters in the folklore of the Germanic peoples, and it
is probable that it originated with them.335)
It is best therefore that we should examine once more the forms of the The Germantic
water-monsters in Germanic folklore. In Northern Germany, there is a peoples
legend of a variegated bull which came out of the sea everyday to give a dinner The water-bull
to a shepherd, and even a clean shirt on Sundays, a legend which is widely
spread with its several variants.336) Near Scheuen in Niedersachsen, there
is a marsh called Taufe from which a wild bull sometimes appears to cover
cows grazing. There is no doubt that this story has something in common
with the idea of grazing horses by the water-side to obtain fine horses which
had been mentioned earlyin this paper, and as we have observed in connection
with the water-stallion seen by Sindbad the sailor, legends of this type might
be a reminiscence of herding customs once actually in existence. It is also
said that, when a storm rises over this marsh, a great horse with gigantic hoofs
rises out of the water.337' In Eastern Germany, the water-man often appears
in the form of a white calf, and goes about limping while uttering pitiful cries.
This is a sign that someone will be drowned. It is also said to appear in the
form of a black calf with a horse's head and long ears. In Swabia, there is
a water-spirit which has the form of a white cow. In Switzerland, there lives
a water-monster with the belly of a great cow, whose thousand shining eyes
are all fixed on one point. When this monster rolls out of the water, it destroys
everything within its reach.338) In Switzerland there is also a legend of two
oxen appearing out of a lake and fighting with each other,339) and in England
too there are many legends of oxen who live in lakes, and of the water-spirit
Nix, or a water-giant, appearing in the form of oxen. This is supposed to
cause diseases and death to cows.340? The mediaeval legend of how Meroveus
was born of the union of a bull which appeared on the sea-shore with the sleep-
ing queen341) clearly belongs to the same category, and it is said that there is
also a similar legend in Spain. The Scotch water-horse kelpie sometimes The Celts
appears on land in the form of a bull, and then it is called a water-bull.342)
We often find the water-bull in the folklore of other Celtic peoples including
the inhabitants of the Isle of Man,343'and in this way, we can see that the idea
335) ibid., S. 211-212.
336) Kuhn und Schwartz, S. 501 -(-t. by tbernatis, v.2, . 2-3A )A5m.
m - - 57
337) Grimm, 1876, Bd 1, S. 406.
338) Panzer, S. 132.
339) ibid., S. 132.
340) Wirth, S. 482.
341) Simrock, S. 437, 469 (1887, S. 417, 448); Wirth, S. 482; Gubernatis, vol. 1, p. 223;
Grimm, 1903, Nr. 424 {e4r. by Panzer, &S 32~.
342) Grimm, 1876, Bd 3, Nachtr., S. 142. For examples of water-oxen in Europe, see the
Handworterbuch des deutachenAberglaubens,Bd 8, S. 482 already cited, while a detailed biblio-
graphy on the subject is given in p. 484 of the same work.
343) Rhys, pp. 284-285; Peacock, p. 569; Crooke, 1896, vol. 1, p. 44-45.
 78 THE KAPPA LEGEND

connecting oxen with water-spirits, side by side with that connecting horses
with water-spirits, has spread among the Germanic, the Slavic, the Celtic, and
in fact, nearly the entire European peoples, extending as far as the various
peoples of Finno-Ugric origin.
The Semites Taking leave of Europe and turning back once more to Asia, there is a
" Oxen's well" place of pilgrimage called " Oxen's well," Ain al-bacar, at Acre on the west
coast of Syria. This was visited by the Jews, the Christians and the Moham-
medans for the reason that the oxen Adam ploughed with came out of the
well.344' This mediaeval legend of the Semites which connects the prigin
of agriculture with sacred water and oxen must have its source in the culture
of the ancient Orient. Ox-worship did not originate with the ancient Semites,
to whom it seems to have been transmitted by way of Sumeria to Babylon,
and from the Hittites to Northern Syria,345) and there is extant a Babylonian
hymn written in both the Sumerian and Semitic languages addressed to
the great bull, the offspring of the storm-god Zu, "the supreme bull
that treadest the holy pasturage . . . planting the corn and making the field
The bull which luxuriant," in which it is said that the mouth of the great basin of water,
bears the " sea" -(" sea " or " the deep,"-which stands in the court of a Babylonian temple,
lies between the ears of the bull. In the same hymn occur the words " the
twelve gods of copper," so that this " sea " must have been of the same sort
as the " sea" of Solomon's temple of which we read in Kings that " it stood
upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, anid three looking toward
the west, and three looking toward the south, and three looking toward the
east; and the sea was set above upon them, and all their hinder parts were
inward."346) There is an ancient Jewish story of a king of the deep sea who
had the form of a three-headed bull, and the idea which occurs in the Arabian
Nights of a bull wxhichstands up in the middle of the ocean bearing the world
on itself is thought to have been carried with the spread of Islam in later ages
to Egypt, to Eastern Russia, and the Turks of Central Asia, and then on to
the Volga Finns and the various tribes of the Caucasus.347'
We have already mentioned the fact that in the culture of the ancient
Indo-European peoples, there was a mingling of "southern" elements
centred round the bull with " northern " elements founded on the horse.
Taking this culture as such with them, these peoples advanced eastwards to
the Iranian plateau, to the Punjab, and to the fertile plains watered by the
Ganges, and in following their march, we should like to start with two
Persians incidents recorded by Herodotus. The first has to do with the arrival of the
Persian army led by Cyrus on the banks of the River Gyndes, a tributary of

344) Smith, p. 183, note 1.

345) Sayce, pp. 888-889.
346) ibid., p. 888; I Kings, VII, 25.
347) Harva, 1938, S. 30-32.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 79

the River Tigris, on their way to attack Babylon. Cyrus was about to order
his great army to cross the river, when " one of the sacred white horses ac- White horses and
companying his march, full of spirit and high mettle, walked into the water, river-gods
and tried to cross by himself; but the current seized him, swept him along
with it, and drowned him in its depth. Cyrus, enraged at the insolence of
the river, threatened so to break its strength that in future even women should
cross it easily without wetting their knees. Accordingly he put off for a time
his attack on Babylon, and, dividing his army into two parts, he marked out
by ropes one hundred and eighty trenches on each side of the Gyndes, leading
off from it in all directions, and setting his army to dig, some on one side of
the river, some on the other, he accomplished his threat by the aid of so great
a number of hands, but not without losing thereby the whole summer season.
Having, however, thus wreaked his vengeance on the Gyndes, by dispersing
it through three hundred and sixty channels, Cyrus, with the first approach
of the ensuing spring, marched forward against Babylon."348) The number
360 corresponds to the number of days in a solar year. That is to say, we
find expressed in this legend, besides the idea of river-gods seeking white horses
such as we have already seen in old Chinese records, the idea of the white horse
as an animal sacred to the sun-god which is common to the ancient Semites
and Indo-Europeans. The second incident is concerned with the expedi-
tion into Greece of Xerxes, the grandson of Cyrus. When the vast army
of Xerxes came to the River Strymon in Trachea, the Magi accompanying
the army sacrificed white horses to make the stream favourable. " After pro-
pitiating the stream by these and many other magical ceremonies, the Persians
crossed the Strymon, by bridges made before their arrival, at a place called
The Nine Ways, which was in the territory of the Edonians. And when they
learnt that the name of the place was The Nine Ways, they took nine of the
youths of the land and as many of their maidens, and buried them alive on
the spot. Burying alive is a Persian custom."349) It is worthy of notice
that we find recorded here, besides the sacrifice of white horses to propitiate
river-gods, sacrifices consisting in the burying alive of boys and girls by the
bank of a river, a form of fertility rite wide practised among ancient agricul-
tural peoples. These two examples have to do with white horses and river-
gods. Then how does the case stand with the oxen ? Plutarch relates that Sacrifice of cows
the ancient Persians sacrificed sacred cows by the banks of the Euphrates-
" On the other side of the river, there was a certain number of kine consecrated
to Diana Persica, whom the barbarous people inhabiting beyond the river of
Euphrates, do reverence and honour above all the other gods: and these kine
they employ to none other use, but only to sacrifice them unto this goddess.
They wander all about the country where they will, without any manner of
348) Herodotus, I, 189-190: Rawlinson (tr.), vol. 1, pp. 310-311.
349) ibid., VII, 113-114: Rawlinson (tr.), vol. 4, p. 94.
 80 THE KAPPA LEGEND

tying, or shackling otherwise, having only the mark of the goddess, which is
a lamp printed upon their bodies, and they are not easy to be taken when one
would have them, but with great ado." But when the Roman general Lucius
Licinius Lucullus was advancing with his army against Tigranes, the king of
Armenia, and had completed the crossing of the Euphrates, " one of these
consecrated kine. . . came to offer herself upon a rock which they suppose is
hallowed or dedicated unto their goddess, bowing down her head, and stretch-
ing out her neck, like those that are tied short, as if she had come even of purpose
to present herself to Lucullus, to be sacrificed as she was. And besides her,
he sacrificed a bull also unto the river Euphrates, in token of thanks for his
safe passage over."350'-We have already argued, from an analysis of the struc-
ture of ancient Oriental culture, that these sacrifices of oxen and horses to
river-gods must have been derived from the sacrifice of oxen having the charac-
Distribution of the ter of a fertility rite connected with agriculture. Among the Iranian peoples,
water-horse legend the relationship between water and horses is particularly prominent, and begin-
and the Iranian
ning with the goddess Anahita and the Scythian horse-charm in the form of
peoples
a golden fish which have been mentioned in the last chapter, such other ex-
amples as the legend of horses that sweat blood of Ta-yuan and Tokhara,
the Dapple of Ch'inghai which was obtained by turning loose a Persian mare
into Ch'inghai (Kuku-nor), the water-horse in the river which neighed in
answer to the bronze horse in the Zoroastrian temple in the River Oxus, all
these have some connection with the Iranian peoples. If we further take into
consideration the story of the sea-stallions in the Arabian Nights, and the
legends of water-horses belonging to the Islamic sphere of culture to be found
in Kashmir, Kurdistan and Armenia, we cannot help thinking that a portion
at least of these legends was carried to the east and west of the Eurasian conti-
nent by the equestrian peoples of Iranian origin.
But we must neither forget that the ox occupied in the Zoroastrian religion
a position equal in importance to that which it held in the Hindu. We have
already mentioned the legend of the moon " that contained the seed of the
bull." There is a hymn in the Avesta which says: ' Hail, bounteous bull!
Hail to thee, beneficent bull! Hail to thee, who makest increase ! Hail to
thee, who makest growth ! Hail to thee, who dost bestow his part upon the
righteous faithful, and wilt bestow it on the faithful yet unborn ! "351)
Sacred urine of The urine of the cow was used in religious ceremonies of purification,
oxen at which it was drunk or used for washing one's face, and the Avesta gives a
formula to be recited on taking the cow-urine.352) A variant of the legend
given in the last chapter of the divine horse which lived in a cave on the south
350) Plutarch: North (tr.), vol. 5, pp. 229-230.
351) Zend-Avesta,Vendidad,XXI, 1: Darmesteter (tr.) pt. 1, p. 231.
352) Zend-Avesta,Khordah-Avesta,III: Bleek (tr.) pt. 3, p. 3; Gubenatis, vol. 1, pp. 95, 99,
80-81.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 81

side of Mt. Po-li in Tokhara, recorded in Chinese works of the T'ang and
Sung periods, and according to which the urine of the horse is supposed to
have been constantly flowing out of a hole in a wall of stone,353) may have
some connection with such ideas.
The custom of using the excrement and urine of oxen as a means of purifi- India
cation is thought to have spread from the Hindu to the Persians, but it cannot Pre-Aryan
culture
have been derived from the religious ideas of the Aryan peoples themselves.
As we have already stated, the ethnological and archaeological knowledge
we possess today permits us to follow the development of a culture which ex-
isted in a zone extending from India to the Mediterranean long before the
coming of the Aryans. The culture of the Dravidian peoples who, as the pre-
Aryan inhabitants of India, laid the foundations of ancient Indian civilization,
or the far older Indus civilization which yet seems to be closely related to the
former, are both parts of this pre-Aryan culture, and as far as we can ascertain
through the Atharvaveda which is said to reflect the popular beliefs of these
pre-Aryan peoples, or the excavations at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa which
tell us of the Indus civilization of fifteen or sixteen centuries before the Aryan
invasion, this culture, although from the point of view of ethnology it was
made up, strictly speaking, of a variety of primitive cultures, had a strongly
agricultural and matriarchal character. The Earth-Mother, trees, oxen,
serpents and sexual organs were worshipped, and polyandry and bloody
human sacrifices seem to have been practised. The people learned early to
rear oxen and made these animals the centre of their religious life, but they
were unacquainted with horses, which is the reason given for their having been
easily conquered, in spite of the comparatively high level of their culture, by
the Aryan new-comers who went to battle with war-horses and chariots.354'
The Aryans already possessed, prior to their invasion of India, a culture which
combined ttle-breeding with agriculture and the horse with the ox. But
the idea of considering the ox as something sacred in the manner of the ancient
Brahmans and the modern Hindus, to the extent of regarding the urine and
excrement of oxen as the ambrosial food, must be founded on a religious con-
ception of an agricultural character having to do with fertility rites, which
was held by the pre-Aryan inhabitants of India in common with the peoples
belonging to the ancient Oriental and Mediterranean sphere of culture. This
agricultural and matriarchal culture which was dominant in pre-Aryan India
must have been extended to the Tibetan plateau in the north, and in the east
must have been in contact with the agricultural and ox-rearing culture of
the area extending as far as Southern China from the Indo-Chinese peninsula.
The important part played today by oxen and water-buffaloes in the agricultural
rites of tribal societies with marked matriarchal characteristics in Assam and
353) T'ai-ping-kuang-chi,435; cf. note 45.
354) Kimura, pp. 339-354 361, 383.
 82 THE KAPPA LEGEND

Indonesia, will probably have to be studied in relation to the migration of the

Austronesians, who spread southward from their home in the Asiatic continent
to the islands in the Southern Pacific, long before the coming of Hinduism.355
Furnished with the cultural data given in the foregoing pages, if we now
turn our steps towards India and return for the last time to China and East
Asia, we shall have advanced a step further towards the solution of the problems
the clues to which we first gained in our examination of the structure of the
ancient Mediterranean and Oriental culture.
We shall first begin by glancing over the folklore which may have been
preserved for thousands of years among the vast population of India.
Sacrifices to the " In the Punjab, when a village is in danger of floods, the headman makes
flood demon an offering of a cocoa-nut and a rupee to the flood demon. As in many other
places the cocoa-nut represents the head of a human victim, which in olden
times was the proper offering... Some people throw seven handfuls of boiled
wheat and sugar into the stream and distribute the remainder among the persons
present. Some take a male buffalo, a horse, or a ram, and after boring the
right ear of the victim, throw it into the water. If the victim be a horse, it
should be saddled before it is offered. A short time ago, when the town and
temples at Hardwar were in imminent danger during the Gohna flood, the
Brahmans poured vessels of milk, rice and flowers into the waters of Mother
Ganges and prayed to her to spare them."356)
The object of the sacrifice to the water-demon in the passage quoted,
a
just as in the case of Wang Tsun of the Han dynasty in China who sunk white
horse in the Yellow River to appease the water-god, is to avert the disaster
of a flood, but if we examine the nature of the offerings, it is difficult not to
notice that the ceremony has the character of an agricultural ritual. In
called
Baffalo demon Mirzapur on the banks of the Ganges, there is a famous water-hole
Barewa. It is said that a herdsman once brought some buffaloes to graze
by it and the water of Barewa was incensed by this and swallowed up both
the herdsman and the cattle. The drowned buffaloes then turned into a
abode
dangerous demon called Bhainsasura (" buffalo demon ") who took up his
in the pool with the Naga and the Nagin, so that today no one can fish in the
of a fowl, eggs, and
pool without first appeasing the devil with the offering
a goat.357' This demon also became deified as a corn-spirit, and it is neces-
come into ear.358) The buffalo is
sary to propitiate him when the grain has
worshipped together with Yama, the god of death, as his vdhana (vehicle),
so that pious Hindus do not use it for ploughing and carting.359) The legend

355) Heine-Geldern, 1932, S. 543-619.

356) Crooke, 1896, vol. 1, 46.
357) ibid., p. 44.
358) Marshall, vol. 1, p. 72.
359) Crooke, 1926, p. 366.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 83

of the slaying of the death demon, Asura Mahisa, which had the form of
a buffalo, by Devi (Durga), the wife of the god Siva, may explain the sacrifice
of buffaloes often offered to this Mother-Goddess in place of the human sacri-
fices of ancient times.360) The Gaddi shepherds in the Punjab offer food,
water or sheep made of flour to the Batal water-spirits,361) the Khasis of Assam
offer a goat to the river-goddess before casting their nets,362)and the Kaivarta
fishermen of Bengal throw a live kid into the water at the ceremony for guarding
their nets.363) These are the rites perfomed by herdsmen and fishermen
to propitiate water-gods, and oxen and horses have no part in them, the animals
sacrificed being confined to small horned animals like sheep and goats. They
are probably later imitations of the sacrifice of oxen and horses.
We have already referred to the relationship between horses and the Varuna in the
water-god Varuna. This god who was originally the god of the celestial world Asvamedha
first appears as the lord of water in the Purinas,364) and the linking of his name
with the Asvamedha, the sacrifice of the horse, which was practised from
the age of the .Rgveda also seems to be a secondary combination.365) But
we cannot overlook the fact that this national ceremony, the nature of which
is preserved for us in detail in the classical literature of India, has characteristics
which show its close relationship with the world of lunar mythology and the
mythology of the nether regions, and all that has to do with fertility rites,
and Varuna also seems to be invoked in the capacity of such a type of deity.
At the beginning of this ceremony, at the moment the horse chosen for sacrifice
is led into the pond for cleansing, a black " four-eyed dog " (a dog with a
spot above, or at the side of, each eye) is knocked down dead by a pariah and
the words, " Those who would do harm to the horse, may Varuna crush them !"
are chanted. Then the dog's carcass is thrown at the foot of the horse standing
in the water. Four-eyed dogs often appear in the beliefs of the Indo-European
peoples as a dog of the god of the nether regions. 366 After this, the horse is let
loose towards the northeast for a year, and when it is strangled together with
hundreds of other animals after going through various preparations, the first
wife of the king who presides over the ceremony takes her place by the side
of the horse, and the priest spreads a cloth over them. This represents the
sexual act, and during this time, the priest and the women exchange ribald
pleasantries.367) When the moment has come for the final ablutions, the king
enters the water with the queen and chants a hymn of praise to the god Varuna,
360) Keith, 1917, pl. 1, Frontispiece; Marshall, p. 72, note.
361) Crooke, 1921, p. 718.
362) Gurdon, pp. 114, 115.
363) Crooke, 1921, p. 718.
364) Dowson, p. 338.
365) Keith, 1925, p. 346 (cit. by Koppers, 1936, S. 341). vol. .z, p. 'e-3+7.
366) Koppers, 1936, S. 341.
367) ibid., S. 297-298, 345.
 84 THE KAPPA LEGEND

saying, "Praised be Varuna ! The bonds of Varuna have been severed !"
and "a man of the Atori clan, white, with yellow eyes, and wrinkles on his
face " is immersed up to the mouth in water, while the blood of the horse that
has been sacrificed is poured on his head.368 In this way, those who follow
him and the king who is presiding over the ceremony are purified of their
sins. The " white-skinned and yellow-eyed " old man who may be compared
to the Jewish scapegoat, while being a symbol of Varuna himself, is con-
sidered as having perhaps some significance that has to do with the lunar
mythology, since the Atori clan is frequently associated with gold.369'. In this
connection, we should also remember the story of Sunahsepa in which human
sacrifice is offered to Varuna.
The horse and But the question goes beyond Varuna. The being round which the
the mysteries of
mysteries of Asvamedha centre is Prajapati as the creator of the universe.
Mttyu-Prajapati- He is, in his original form, Mrtyu-Death-and while he creates all things,
Asvamedha
he devours everything that he creates. He writhes, sings, and sweats
in order to create, and thus the horse and the Asvamedha are born. It
is Prajapati himself who offers sacrifice in the Asvamedha, and the horse
sacrificed is no other than the universe. All things are contained in the
Asvamedha.370) Such are the mysteries of the Mrtyu-Prajapati-Asvamedha
as interpreted pantheistically in the White Yajurveda, and such an example
of the horse occupying the central position in a cosmogonic complex of this
kind is not to be found among other Indo-European peoples. But what is of
particular interest to us in connection with the questions with which we are
dealing is the fact that Mrtu-Prajapati is considered at the same time as being
Aditi Aditi.371) Aditi is the goddess of cows, or of the earth, and usually closely
related with the moon-goddess herself.372) Prajapati is also said to be a bull.
"The great bull is Prajapati! " " The bull is the Prajapati (lord of creatures
or generation)! "373) And often the cow which is the mother of the earth is
represented on a pendant worn by Prajapati the creator in his guise of a
bull.374' Here again we might see, as we did in our examination of the
Mediterranean culture, a reminiscence of a previous civilization in
India before the coming of the Aryans. The mysteries themselves
and their cosmogonic content must be of ancient origin. But it is
possible that the appearance of the horse in the ceremony, and the foregoing
philosophic interpretation of Mrtu-Prajapati, date from a comparatively late
368) ibid., S. 298, 342.
369) ibid., S. 344.
370) ibid., S. 324.
371) ibid, S. 324.
372) ibid., S. 362.
373) ibid., S. 337; Satapatha-Brdhmana;IV, 4, 2, 14: Eggeling, 1885 (SBE, vol. 26), p. 360; V,
2, 5, 17: Eggeling, 1894 (SBE, vol. 41), p. 58.
374) Held, p. 74 e4i. by Koppers, 193, S. 362-4
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 85

period. Moreover, the priest of the Asvamedha whispers in the right ear
of the horse, " Thou art strong by thy mother," and to the carver he says,
" Bless its (the horse's) mother! Bless its father! " naming its mother first,
while, when the ceremony has reached its climax, the women begin lamenting
and calling to the horse just sacrificed, " Mother! Little mother! Dear little
mother! There is now no one to lead me !-The little mother over there! "375)
All this establishes beyond a doubt that in a zone covering pre-Aryan The Earth-Mother
and pre-Semitic India, Iran, Southwestern Asia and the Mediterranean, and oxen
there existed a matriarchal, vegetable, and agricultural religious complex of
great vitality, closely connected with the moon, oxen, water and the world
of the dead, and centred round the idea of the Earth-Mother, Magna Mater.
M. Jean Przyluski affirms that the Aryans in India were in contact since before
the age of the Vedas with the peoples who were worshippers of this Earth-
Mother,376'but however that may be, it is, as we have already seen, the agreed
opinion of all who study cultural history today, that before the appearance of
the horse in the sphere of culture presided over by the Earth-Mother, the animal
which was held to be inseparable from her was the ox. Since that is the case,
it is permissible to surmise that the process by which the horse, appearing out
of the sphere of culture with strong patriarchal tendencies of the nomads of the
steppes, established itself in the world of the Earth-Mother, forming connections
with the moon, water, and the world of the dead in great national ceremonies like
the Asvamedha or in the rites and beliefs of the common people, consisted
quite simply in replacing the ox in the religious position it occupied prior
to the coming of the horse.
But before we return once more, in the wake of the sacred bull, to East Godsof thunder
Asia, there is left still one more problem which we must take this opportunity and rain, and oxen
to clarify. It is the question of the relation of oxen and horses to the gods and horses
of rain and thunder. According to the Vedic idea, both the horse and the
bull were that which pours out and that which makes fruitful. The horse of
Indra, the god of thunder and rain,-and even the chariot they drew,-pos-
sessed this virtue.377) This fact is of particular importance in pursuing the
problem before us. We read in the Aitareya Brahmana that the ancient
kings of India performed the ceremony of the sacrifice to Indra of the
stallion,378) and there is a hymn in the R?gvedain which Indra appears
on horseback.379) All schohars are agreed that this god used to be one
of those to whom the sacrifice of the Asvamedha was offered.380) But the

375) Koppers, 1936, S. 362.

376) Przyluski, 1934, p. 430 (cit by Koppers, 1936, S. 362}
377) .RgvedaSanhitd,V, 36, 5; VIII, 13, 31: Wilson (tr.) vol. 3, p. 293; vol. 4, p. 276.
378) AitareyaBrdhmana,VIII, 21 ff.: Keith (tr.), 1920, pp. 336 if.; Koppers, 1936, S. 337.
379) R.gvedaSanhitd, I, 183: Wilson (tr.), vol. 2, p. 122.
380) Koppers, 1936, S. 337.
 86 THE KAPPA LEGEND

Indra-Adad type of commonest symbol of Indra, the god of thunder and rain, is the bull, and the
thunder-god deed for which he is known is his striking with thunder the evil dragon Vrtra,
who had pent up all the water in the world in a cave, and causing the water
to flow back to the sea again. We find the same two characteristics in the god
Verethraghna-later Mithra-who is the Iranian equivalent to Indra in the
Avesta, and also in the thunder-gods Adad (Hadad, Ramman) and Tesub
in Southwestern Asia and Asia Minor.381s In connection with the
formation and essential character of the god of thunder and rain, Prof. F.
Kern has pointed out that, while the god is in a certain sense a projection
of the god of the sky worshipped by the nomads, he is also in another
sense the prqduct of an agricultural society, and Kern argued that a nomadic-
agricultural mixed culture was best fitted for the formation of such a deity.382'
We can see indeed from such other cases also as Jehovah of the Israelites
wreaking his anger on the whole land of Egypt by sending down thunder
and hail,383) and Zeus striking with lightning Phaeton driving the chariot of
the sun, and killing by the same means the hero Iasion enamoured of the
goddess Demeter,384' that the idea of the god of the sky easily leads to that of
the god of thunder and lightning, but at the same time, it must not be forgotten
Moon, thunder that thunder and rain stand in close relationship to agriculture, and are
and rain therefore apt to become associated with the moon. On this account, Prof.
Koppers, augmenting the theory advanced by Kern, has mentioned examples
of the idea that thunder, lightning and rain are all caused by the moon occurring
among the Eskimos, Bushmen, and certain tribes along the coast of Peru, and
made it clear that the thunder-god possesses at the same time the characteristics
of the moon-god.385) In proof of the existence in the thunder-god Indra of
elements belonging to the lunar mythology, Koppers enumerates such factors
as the legendary repetition of the slaying of the demon dragon Vrfa being inter-
preted as a symbol of the waxing and waning of the moon, and soma, the
drink of gods, which is regarded as something having a connection with, or the

381) ibid., S. 338, 367, 378-379; Gubernatis, vol. 2, pp. 391-394. Of special interest is the
fact that Verethraghna sometimes assumes the form of a bull.-Koppers, 1936, S. 338, Anm.
80. Adad is the Western Semitic name of the Sumerian god IEkur. The god has also
other names such as Mir, Mirmer, Iluwer, Mur, meaning the giver of storms, and Ramman,
" the roarer." Tesub is the Hittite name for the same god. The god, while being feared
on the one hand as the destroyer of cities and plains, was also worshipped as a fertility god
wlho gave water to the fields. His symbol was a trident or an axe, and he was represented
as a bull lying down, or with the horns of a bull, or riding on a bull.-Ebeling, 1924, S. 17
a, b; Unger, S. 440 a; Langdon, 1931, p. 47.
382) Kern, S. 179.
383) Exodus, IX, 23, 24.
384) Fox, pp. 244, 226; cf. pp. 53, 90, 264, 280; Apollodorus: Frazer (tr.), vol. 2, pp. 388-
394, Appendix 11; ibid., III, 11, 1: Frazer (tr.), vol. 2, p. 35.
385) Koppers, 1936, S. 376.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 87
same thing as the moon, the bull which is supposed to be the animal of the
moon, the death-spirits Maruts that live in the moon, and water which is
inseparable from the moon, all being closely associated with Indra, and further
gives such evidence as the similarity between Indra and Heracles, in whom we
find many characteristics pertaining to the lunar mythology, and the absence
in Indra of solar mythological as well as ethical elements.386' As for the bull
being connected with the thunder-god, we see examples of it in Mesopotamia, The thunder-god
mounted on the
Palestine, Asia Minor (the Hittites), and Syria, besides in India and Iran as
bull
we have already pointed out, and the thunder-god was represented mounted
on a bull as far back as in the third millenium B.C. in Ur.387, It is interesting
to compare this figure of the thunder-god mounted on a bull with the Indra on
horseback of later ages. The idea of gods riding animals is only possible when
men have learned to ride themselves. So that, somewhere in Southwestern
Asia, where the thunder-god was worshipped in the form of a bull, or re-
presented with a bull following at his heels, men must have come into contact
with the equestrian peoples of Inner Asia, and inspired by them, conceived
the idea of placing on the back of a bull the thunder-god who was so closely
associated with the bull.388' And in India, we might say that a step forward
was taken, when they represented their bull-god Indra on the back of a horse.389)
Here too we see an instance of the Indo-European peoples, who brought the
horse into the sphere of ox-cult, substituting the bull with the horse.
The area of distribution of the Indra-Adad type of the thunder-god in the
ancient Orient extended from Asia Minor and Mesopotamia at its centre to
Syria and Palestine, but there does not seem to have been any contact with
the cultures of ancient Egypt and Crete.390' And since the worship of the god
spread eastward to Iran and India, and we find traces of his influence west-
wards in the Greek Heracles and Thor of the Nordic mythology, it is to be
surmised that this god has his origin in the ancient Tauris culture of Asia
Minor and the Caucasus, and that his worship then spread to the primitive
Indo-European peoples.391)
The thunder-god associated with the bull was also commonly worship- The thunder-god as
ped as the god of fertility. The thunderbolt sent by Indra of the Rgveda, the god of fertility
which penetrated the clouds and made the cow fruitful, took the form
of a phallus.392) In the same way, the axe of Thor, the Indra of the Nordic
mythology, seems to have figured in nuptial ceremonies as a symbol of fecundi-

386) ibid., S. 339-340.

387) ibid., S. 378-379, Anm. 29; cf. note 217.
388) ibid., S. 380; cf. Ebeling, 1928 a, S. 439 a; Unger, 1926, S. 440 a.
389) ibid., S. 380-381; 379, Anm. 29.
390) ibid., S. 376.
391) ibid., S. 376, 377, Anm. 25.
392) Gubernatis, vol. 1, pp. 224-225.
 88 THE KAPPA LEGEND

ty.393) Parjanya, another ancient Indian god of thunder and rain, was likened
to the bull, as the embodiment of the power which controlled the growth of
plants, the increase of cattle, fecundity in women, and similar manifestations.394)
The Esthonian peasants used to pray for an abundant harvest and bene-
ficent rain by sacrificing an ox to their thunder-god Taara.395) The Slavs also
sacrificed oxen to their thunder-god Perun.396'
It is also probable to find a projection of these Indra-like qualities of a
god of thunder and rain associated with the moon, the ox, and water, in the
mythology of the agricultural peoples of Eastern Asia. The process by which
the god of thunder, as the god who brings on showers, becomes at the same time
the god of water and agriculture, is to be seen in the etymology of such Japanese
words for lightning as ina-zuma (" rice-wife") and ina-bikari (" rice-
light "), in such Japanese customs as that of surrounding with a row of green
bamboos hung with shime-nazwa(sacred straw festoon) a piece of rice-field
struck by lightning, and sanctifying it as the spot where the thunder-god
descended,397' and in such Japanese legends as that of the thunder-god falling
down from the sky and being turned into a boy, and giving water to rice-
fields in return for his having been rescued by men,398' and the Japanese have
Susa-no-o-no- in their Susa-no-o-no-mikoto a perfect example of the Indra-Adad type of
mikoto
393) The giant Thrymr stole and hid Mjolnir, the hammer of Thor, and asked Freyja to marry
him. Thor took on the form of Freyja and came to the house of the unsuspecting Thrymr,
who brought out Mjolnir and placed it on his bride's knees, and so the entire race of giants
was killed by Thor. This Nordic legend indicates that the thunder-god Thor was originally
a fertility-god, and we might mention in this connection, that there was a cusom in districts
along the coast of the Baltic formerly belonging to Russia, of placing an axe under the bridal
bed that sturdy children might be born of the marriage. In Sweden, there was discovered
a crude rock-picture of a man and a woman lying down and a man beside them holding
aloft an axe.-Bing, S. 242, Abb. 10 Taf. 15; cf. Abb. 5, Taf. 15. A similar picture is en-
graved on a funeral tablet discovered in Semferopol in Southern Russia.-Tallgren, 1926,
p. 49, Fig. 36 B, No. 6.
394) GB, pt. 1, vol. 2, p. 368; RgvedaSanhitd,V, 83: Wilson (tr.), vol. 3, pp. 373-374.
395) GB, pt. 1, vol. 2, p. 366; Grimm, 1875, Bd. 1, S. 146.
396) GB, pt. 1, vol. 2, p. 365; Machal, pp. 295, 296.
397) Yanagita, 1940 a, p. 108.
398) ibid., pp. 107-108. In Chapter 2 of the Shirin Saiyo-sho (A.D. 1266),. there occurs the
following passage: " According to the story preserved by old people, Tatsu-ta was the place
where the thunder-god once fell and could not ascend to heaven again. He was changed
into a boy, and a farmer adopted him as his child. There was a drought over the land at
the time, and no rain fell in the neighbouring villages, but a shower came down at intervals
over the farmer's fields so that the rice grew and ripened, and the farmer harvested as much
rice as he wanted. The boy asked the farmer sometime afterwards for permission to leave
him, and turning himself into a little dragon, ascended to heaven, whence the name Tatsu-ta
(" dragon-field ") which came to be give nto the place."-p. 16. In the story of the saint
Shin-yf of Echigo province, who bound up the thunder and built a tower, given in Chapter
12 of the Konjaku-monogatari-sha, water gushes forth from a hole which the thunder-child
makes in a rock.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 89

thunder-god in Eastern Asia. This god who slew the serpent, Yamata-no-
orochi, at the source of the River Hi and rescued Kushi-inada-hime, while being
the god of thunder-storms who shook the mountains and rivers, had also much
in common with the moon-god Tsuki-yomi, and in addition to being the god
of the Japanese nether regions, Sokotsu-ne-no-kuni, had also marked character-
istics of an agricultural god. Further, as the god " who ruled over the plains
of the sea," there are many points about him which remind us of the unruly
foreign god Poseidon. We may argue from this that it was not mere coinci-
dence which caused him to be regarded in later ages as the Japanese counterpart
of the Ox-headed King of Gods, Gozu-tenno, and perhaps it is even possible
that the god of thunder, Kitano-Tenjin, mounted on a bull, has an origin going
back far beyond Sugawara-no-Michizane, the historical personage of the 9th
century who is supposed posthumously to have taken the form of this deity
The fact that the god Omono-nushi (Okuni-nushi, Ona-muchi), the son ihunder-godsin
of Susa-no-o-no-mikoto, appears as a serpent-god in the Miwayama type the form of serpents
legend, indicates that Susa-no-o-no-mikoto probably possessed the characteris-
tics of a serpent-god as well as those of a bull-god, and in all Japanese beliefs
concerning thunder-gods, they seem to have had originally the form of ser-
pents. When Chiisakobe-no-Sugaru captured the thunder on Mt. Mimoro
and presented it to the Emperor Yuryaku, it is said to have been shaped like
a great serpent, and that " its eyes glowed,"399) and when the priest D6j6,
begot by the thunder-god, was born, a serpent was coiled twice round his
head with the serpent's head and tail hanging down towards the back of the
child.400' In the story of Mt. Kurefushi in Hitachi-Fudoki, the god who visited
his human paramour nightly seems also to have been a thunder-god with
the form of a serpent, and the little serpent born to the god tried to shock
its uncle to death and ascend to heaven.401 In this connection, Mr. Yanagita
is of the opinion that the Japanese words like okan-dachi meaning thunder, and
yu-dachi, a violent shower of rain (dachi<tatsu), probably signify the descent
of the god of heaven on a piece of ground that has been purified for his re-
ception, that the word tatsu (v. to stand, appear; n. dragon), as in omokage
ni tatsu (to seem to appear before one's eyes), yume-makura ni tatsu (to appear
in one's dream), and tsui-tachi (the first day of a month), had originally the
meaning of a god making his appearance, and that unless this view is taken, it
would be difficult to account for the legend of thunder falling in the place, told
in explanation of the name Tatsu-ta in Yamato province,398' or the Japanese
reading of the Chinese character a (lung, dragon) as tatsu.402) In China also, China and her
it is the serpent-shaped dragon lung, the water-god, who raises thunder-storms, border regions

399) Nihongi,14: vol. 2, p. 224; Yanagita, 1940a, pp. 110-111.

400) Ryoiki,pt. I, 3; Yanagita, 1940 a, p. 110.
401) Fudoki,p. 72.
402) Yanagita, 1940a, p. 114, note 6; 1940 b, pp. 1-2; cf. note 396.
 90 THE KAPPA LEGEND

makes the wind rise, and causes the clouds to form, just as in the case of Japa,
nese dragons. In the Shan-hai-ching there occurs the passage, " The thunder-
god dwells in the Thunder Marsh. He has the form of a dragon with a human
head, and strikes on his belly as though it were a drum,"403'which shows us
Thunder and the that the thunder-god was early associated with the dragon in the minds of
dragon the Chinese. It is said that on the Lung-t'ai-t'ou (ftSlji "dragon raising his
head "), which falls on the 2nd day of the 2nd month of the lunar calendar, the
warmth of the sun envelops the earth, and the dragon who has been lying
under cover during the winter raises his head,404'and we also find it recorded
that the dragon is kindred to the thunder, and that he ascends to heaven in
company with thunder and lightning.405' At the same time, the pearl held
in the claws of the dragon is taken to be the thunder in the midst of clouds,
or again, the moon hidden by clouds.406) The dragon is of the same nature
as the clouds and rain,4071rides on clouds,408)and as one of the most exalted
Wicked dragons of heavenly gods, is called T'ien-i (X-) and T'ai-in (JpI-).409) On the other
destroyed by of the same nature as the a that has become
thunder
hand, although thunder, dragon
degenerate may be destroyed by thunder and lightning (or an axe). We find
written concerning the legend of the temple Hui-li-ssu (itf ) in Ch'ing-
chiang-hsien (fIJ,1), "
Kiangsi province, that, Old men tell us, there was
a rock in the river which had the sinuous form of a dragon, complete with
head, claws, and scales. A priest named Shan-chou(u)J) lived in the Hui-
li-ssu, and divining that the dragon did evil, one day brought thunder and
shattered the rock."4?1 " Hai-yin ( l]p)was a priest of the temple Hui-li-ssu.
It is said that there was a stone dragon by the river, sinuous and of immense
size, with every scale in place. This stone dragon did mischief in company
with a wooden dragon carved in ancient times that was in the temple. So
the priest hammered a copper nail into the wooden dragon, and having read
aloud some sutras, brought thunder with which he struck the stone dragon.
One evening, it thundered, and the dragon was shattered to pieces."410a)
It is interesting to note the similarity of motif between these stories and
the Indra-Adad type of legends dealing with the slaying of evil dragons. The
thunder and lightning of Indra transformed themselves without difficulties
into the axe of Ramman (Adad) and the hammer of Thor. The water-god
General Yang-ssu (fE4/) of Ch'ang-sha (~[J) cut down with an axe Wu-i-lung

403) Shan-hai-ching,13, Hai-nei-tung-ching(j;^X@),); Huai-nan-tz6,4, Chui-hsing-hsiin(fji[\).

404) ren-chingsui shih-chi,Jap. tr. p. 43, note 2.
405) Lung-heng,6, Lung-hsii-p'ien(',l).
406) Visser, pp. 103, 106.
407) Lung-heng, 16, Lan-lung-p'ien(AL} ); 14, Han-wen-p'ien(~2 ).
408) Han-fei-tzu, 17; Lung-heng,6, Lung-hsii-p'ien.
409) Huai-nan-tzi, 3, T'ien-wen-hsiin (X?J1).
410) Kiangsi t'ung-chih, 1732, 161, Tsa-chi (i2), 3; Huang Chih-kang, p. 77.
28, Tsa-chih (7,8);
410a) Ch'ing-chiang-hsien-chih, Kiangsi t'ung-chih, 1880, 179, Hsien-chih ({Il
V), 2; Huang Chih-kang, p. 77.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 91

(t,.k ), a dragon water-god,411) and Erh-lang-chfin (-ril:), a water-god

dwelling by the Yangtse River, also fought with an evil dragon on horse-
back armed with an axe.412) For this reason, the image of this god enshrined
by the river shows him wearing a golden armour, holding an axe in his hand,
and treading underfoot a chiao-dragon. This is the form in which General
Yang-ssu is usually represented.413) Moreover, the dragon which dominates
the moon and the heavens through its power over wind, rain, clouds and
thunder, and grants by the same means the prayers of farmers for abundant
harvests that follow a beneficent rain, in its turn becomes associated, on falling
from the heavens to earth, with the ox. In legends of struggles with chiao- The chiao-dragon
dragons about which we shall speak later, the dragons usually appear in the in the form of oxen
form of oxen. The chiao-dragon is a species of dragon which, having left
its abode in the sky, lives at the bottom of rivers. It is shaped like a serpent,
and is said to cry in a manner resembling the lowing of oxen.414) The facts
give an added interest to the legend of thunder falling in ancient times on
a farmhouse in Po-chou (iJ'Il) in Anhui province, and how, on having urine
thrown at it, it lost the power to return to the sky and "lowed like an ox."415' We
shall give later an example of oxen in the water causing the wind to rise, and
rain. The legends already referred to of the inhabitants of a village in E-mei-
hsien casting a fine horse into the water, thereby causing much rain and thunder,
and of the messenger of a river-god mounted on a white horse with red mane,
followed by abundant rain wherever he goes, may be explained by the as-
sociation of the horse with the dragon, but in China, too, the first animal which
became connected with river-gods may have been the ox. At any rate, it is
clear that a complex connecting the moon above with the waters of rivers on
earth below through the medium of thunder, rain, wind, and clouds on one
hand, and chiao-dragons, horses, and oxen on the other, possesses pre-eminent-
ly an agricultural and lunar mythological character.
The foregoing is the first step on our way back to the world of Eastern Origin of the
Asia. The chronology relating to the domestication of the ox and the horse domestication of
in Eastern Asia may not be ascertained with such exactitude as in the case oxen and horses
of the ancient Mediterranean, Egypt, Southwestern Asia and India. Students
of prehistoric archaeology in China and Japan do not appear to have paid much
attention in the past to this important problem in the history of mankind. In
reference to the numerous bones of oxen discovered among remains of the
Yang-shao culture in Honan, Kansu and Ch'inghai, the present writer has not
been able to obtain any information except that J. G. Andersson considers

411) Huang Chih-kang, p. 6.

412) ibid., p. 10.
413) ibid., pp. 11-12.
414) Eberhard, 1942, S. 401; Hsin-ch'i-hsieh,17, Lung-mu (f .).
415) Liao-chai-chih-ishih-i, Lei-kung (,|?).
92 THE KAPPA LEGEND

about 40 of the bones of oxen found on the site of Lo-han-t'ang in Ch'inghai

province to be those of oxen that have been domesticated, and the question
is certainly among the most interesting which remain to be solved in the domain
of Chinese prehistoric research.416) It is said that the site of Lo-han-t'ang
belongs to the early Yang-shao period which follows closely on the Ch'i-chia
period. We have already dealt with the reasons which give cogency to the
theory that the origin place of domestication of the ox lies further to the south
on the Asiatic continent than that of the domestication of the horse, and we pro-
pose in the following pages to elucidate our view that the association of the
ox in China with traits of religion, mythology and legend of an agricultural
character should be linked up with the culture of Southeastern Asia rather
than with anything further north. But the fact that the oldest remains per-
taining to the domestication of the ox in China should be found on her western
borders, whereas those discovered in China proper belong to a much later
date, would seem to support the view that the introduction into China of the
domesticated ox took place through the eastern advance of a cultural wave
by way of Central Asia. On the other hand, in respect to the wild horse, the
bones of the Equus sanmeniensishave been found on the site of the discovery of
the Sinanthropus,417)and those of the Equus prjezwalskii,the ancestor of the Chi-
nese domesticated horse, among remains belonging to the Palaeolithic Age,418'
which facts indicate the existence of the horse in China from the earliest times,
but this does not imply that any trace of its domestication has been so far
found. The horse was well-known to the Neolithic people in Kansu, but it
does not seem to have been domesticated at that period either.419 In contrast
to these facts, the bones of horses discovered together with those of oxen in
Ch'eng-tzu-ai (t?-h- ) in Shantung, and belonging to the later Neolithic Age,
lead us to think by their vast quantity that they had already been domesti-
cated.420' Perhaps the similarity in species of the bones of oxen in Ch'eng-
tzu-ai to those discovered at the Yin site in An-yang may also be
cited in support of such a conclusion.421 Prof. Erkes has recently put
forward the novel thesis that the wild horse, known from the most ancient
times in China, became domesticated during the Neolithic Age, and thence
the product was made known to the Ural-Altaic peoples instead of the contrary,
basing his arguments on the antiquity of the wild horse in China, and the fact
that the Indo-Chinese languages possess a common word for the horse, and

416) Andersson,1934, p. 242; Heine-Geldern, 1932, S. 594.

417) Andersson, 1934, pp. 120-121.
418) Boule, Breuil,Licent et Teilhard de Chardin,pp. 45-46, pl. X, Fig. 8.
419) Andersson,1925.p. 17, Fig. 5 a, shows the pictureof a horseon a piece of potteryof Hsin-
tien period.
420) Creel, pp. 189, 191, 192-193; Li-chi, p. 91.
421) Creel, pp. 189, 191.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 93
that at least, the nouns which stand for horse in the eastern Altaic languages
-morin in Mongolian, mal in Korean etc.-seem to have been borrowed from
the Chinese mar.422' But if the bones of horses discovered in Ch'eng-tzui-ai
are to be taken as the earliest remains of domesticated horses in China, the
period to which they belong, roughly coincides with that of the mass transmi-
gration of the Hyksos and the Aryans in the 2nd millenium B.C., when a
powerful wave of the horse culture of Inner Asia spread towards the southern
regions of the Eurasian continent, whereas we already see traces of the domesti-
cation of the ox in the site of Lo-han-t'ang belonging to the early Yang-shao
culture which ante-dates the supposed period of the domestication of the horse
by several, or perhaps more than 10 centuries. The present writer has pointed
out elsewhere the lack of conclusive proof in the data produced by Erkes in
support of his theory, and the abundance of documentary and ethnological
material in Chinese history which tends to confirm the opposite of what Erkes
has advanced.423' The question, then, of the process by which the domesti-
cated ox and the domesticated horse made their first appearance in Chinese
culture, and that of Eastern Asia in general, must wait for further developments
in archaeological research to be satisfactorily solved. But it is none the less The ox-headed
true that in ancient China also, the horse was employed mainly by the ruling Shen-nung
classes in war, and for transit and hunting, whereas the labours of the field
were assigned to the ox, as the animal pertaining peculiarly to the earth. The
fact that the mythical emperor Shen-nung (ifit " Divine Farmer "), who
first made the plough and taught men to till the fields, is represented as ox-
headed, must be a reminiscence of an old belief of the early days of agriculture.
In regard to the relationship between oxen and horses and the world of water
which in its turn is inseparable from agriculture, if we read through the Shan-
hai-ching, monsters which dwell in the water, or which cause floods or rain-
storms, are nearly always described as having the form of oxen and not of horses,
and in the two examples where these monsters appear in the form of horses,
they are said to have the tails of oxen. To quote some passages:
" In the Eastern Seas there is the mountain Liu-po-shan (ifgjL), 7,000 Water-horses and
li from the shore. On the mountain is a beast shaped like an ox, of a blue water-oxen in the
colour, without any horns and with only one foot. When this beast goes about Shan-hai-ching
the water, the wind rises and rain comes. Its light is like that of the sun and
the moon, and its voice is like a peal of thunder. It is called kuei (g). The
emperor Huang-ti had it captured and made a drum with its skin. When
the drum was beaten with the bones of the thunder-beast, its sound could
be heard at a distance of 500 li, so that the whole country stood in awe of the
Emperor."-14 Ta-huang-tung-ching (}jkt,}i).
"On the mountain of K'ung-sang (t) . .. there is a beast. It has
422) Erkes, S. 27-32.
423) Ishida, 1948, pp. 46-71 gives a detailed criticism of the Erkes' theory.
 94 THE KAPPA LEGEND

the form of an ox with the markings of a tiger. Its voice sounds like a bell.
It is called ling-ling ($?) . . When this beast appears, it is the sign of great

floods being caused over the country."-4 Tung-shan-ching (IFlfip?).

"The river Hua-shui (f7J() has its source... in the mountain of Ch'iu-
fa (S:i) ... In the river are many water-horses. They are shaped like horses,
with limbs that are dappled, and the tails of oxen. They cry as though they
were calling someone."-3 Pei-shan-ching (LthL,jr).
"The river Mao-shui (?Jz) . .. which has its source in the mountain of
Tun-t'ou (V:A) flows eastward into the marsh Ang-tse (?1lpi). In the river are
many po-ma (!g,%). They have the tails of oxen, white bodies, and, a horn
growing on their heads. They cry as though they were calling someone."-
3 Pei-shan-ching (IL Ji,_i).424'
The fact that in such a work as the Shan-hai-ching, there are hardly any
strange beasts connected with water having the complete form of horses as
in later ages, and that most of them either have the forms, or at least the tails
of oxen, constitutes one of the reasons why the present writer is inclined
to the view that, in China also, the animal which was associated with water-
spirits and river-gods, in popular belief at any rate, was originally the ox. A
" Ox in the service further proof is offered by the words ho-po p'u-niu (ilff,L4 "ox in the service
of the river-prince " of the which also occur in the Shan-hai-ching. The passage
river-prince "),
is as follows:
" There is a country called K'un-min-kuo ( A1 )), whose rulers belong
to the Kou (&g) family. There wrasa man called Wang Hai (EE) who held a
bird in each hand, and ate their heads. Wang Hai entrusted Yu I (;%-) with
the care of ho-po p'u-niu. Yu I killed Wang Hai, and gained possession of
p'u-niu." 14 Ta-huang-tung-ching.
We are concerned with the meaning of the words ho-po p'u-niu. In Kuo
P'o's commentary, we are only given the explanation that " ho-po p'u-niu are
all names of persons," but this does not seem to clarify the passage. It is
424) In later records, the po-ma is supposed to appear out of the sea to the south of Kuangtung
province. " There is a great sea to the east of Ping-ting-hsien (25-TI). In the sea is found
the po-nla, which is an animal like the horse with the tail of an ox, and having a horn growing
on its head."-Kuang-chou-chi. To give a further example or two from the Shan-hai-ching,
although it is not quite clear whether the animal lives in the water or not: " The river
P'an-shui (lJ7j) has its source in ... the Yellow Mountain. It flows westward and joins
the Red River, in which are found a great quantity of jade. There is a beast there which
has the form of a bluish-black ox with large eyes, and this beast is called a miin(i)."-2 Hsi-
shan-ching( "',Il). "The river Yao-shui (,7J.) flows here, and its waters are as clear as
crystal. A celestial being lives here, who has the form of an ox with eight feet and two heads,
and the tail of a horse . . . Whenever he appears, there is war in the region."-loc. cit.. The
t'ao-tu, chiao, k'ung-k'ungwhich live in the "Northern Seas," and which we mentioned in
Chapter 1, are the only water-monsters given in the Shan-hai-chingthat are described as having
the form of horses (see p. 13). But living in the " Northern Seas " does not necessarily
mean: in the sea.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 95

Mr. Lo Chen-yii who, in his study of the ideographs discovered at the Yin
site, has identified the p'u-niu in the Shan-hai-ching with the fu-niu (8R.) in
the Lii-shih-ch'un-ch'iu etc., the old pronunciation of both p'u and fu being the
same. The ho-po p'u-niu may therefore be translated as " ox in the service
of the river-prince."425) It is said that, when the King Mu of the Chou
dynasty held a ceremony in honour of the god of the Yellow River, he caused
oxen, horses, pigs and sheep to be thrown into the river,426)but if one examines
the ideographs discovered at the Yin site, one sees that the original ideograph
of the character ch'en (it, to sink) as used in the word li-ch'en (S;t), a kind of
sacrifice to the spirits of mountains and rivers, is constructed by placing the
ideograph for ox within the ideograph for water.427) So that if we go back
to the Yin dynasty, it is to be surmised that the animal held sacred to the river-
god was the ox, and in consequence, the words ho-po p'u-niu in the Shan-hai-
ching must mean the sacred ox in the service of the river-god, an expression
capable of being interpreted as the river-god himself in the guise of an ox.
In Shen-chou (J1IJ) in the northwestern part of Honan province is the An iron ox quells
T'ieh-niu-miao (f4J+Y-), the " Temple of the Iron Ox." The iron ox worship- a river in flood

ped here is the one about which Su Tung-p'o (4iBj ) has written in a poem,
"Who, like the iron ox, can lay himself down and bear the weight of the Huang-
ho ? " It stands in the middle of the river to the north of the city, and it is
said that the head of the ox rested in Honan province and its tail in Hopei,
and that the Emperor Yui employed it to quell the water of the Huangho in
flood.428' The iron ox of Shao-chi-wa ( )) in Chiang-ling-hsien
11 (~ )
in Hupei also stands by the temple of the god of the Yangtse River, has the
shape of an ox with a single horn, is about 10 feet in height, and supposed to
have power over the waters of the river. The iron ox outside the east gate
of the Ta-ming-hsien (f;k ,) in Hopei is supposed to have inside it some
precious treasure by means of which it averts floods, and the copper ox in
I-ho-yuan (Ng4p[i) in Peking is also said to rule the waters of the lake there.
The Chen-ho-miao (.jyiJJl), to the northeast of K'ai-feng in Honan, and the
So-chiang-lou (.fiE~) to the southeast of Chiu-chiang-hsien (Lt,%Q) in Kiang-
si have each its iron ox, and although the iron ox of Huai-ning-fu ('f)i )
in Anhui has become buried in the earth so that only its back is now visible,
it was originally cast in order to subdue the water-monsters dwelling in the
river.429) Such ideas as these may have taken their rise from the oxen which
were once sacrificed to river-gods, or from the even older idea of the river-
425) Lo Chen-yii, pt. 1; Kuo Mo-jo, p. 104.
426) Mu-t'ien-tzu-chuarn,1.
427) Lo Ch6n-yti, pt. 2, p. 16 a, b, pt. 3, p. 62 a, b.
428) P'ei-wen-yun-fu, 26, pt. 1, niu (+).
429) Other iron oxen of this sort are found in Yueh-yang-hsien (f[i ) in Hunan, Lo-yang-
hsien (fig) in Honan, Chao-i-hsien (ilh_) in Shensi, Han-tan-hsien (t3f/,j) in Hopei,
while there is a copper ox in Ho-hsien ('|gU) in Shansi.-Huan Chih-kang, p. 25-27.
 96 THE KAPPA LEGEND

god having the form of an oxen, and together with the belief that water-spirits
abhor iron, must date back to a period of considerable antiquity. Even of
great interest is a legend in the Sou-shen-chi of a tree-spirit in the form of an
ox who had power over wind and rain, and ended by disappearing into a river.
Tree-spirit in the "The Nu-t'e (A,M&4) shrine stood in Wu-tu Ku-tao (3i}5t). A catalpa
form of a blue ox tree grew over the temple, and Prince Wen of Ch'in ordered the tree to be cut
down. On men attempting to do so, a great rain-storm arose, causing the
gashes made on the tree to heal up, and after a time, it was found that axes
were no longer of avail in felling the tree. The prince then ordered thirty
or forty men with axes to bring down the tree, but still it could not be done.
The men were wearied and went home to rest, but one of them who had hurt
his foot could not walk, and so laid himself underneath the tree. Then he
heard the gods of the tree say to each other, 'We have laboured hard in our
fight today,' and one of them said, '0, it was nothing at all.' Another then
said, 'If the prince of Ch'in continues to send men, what then ?' His inter-
locutor answered, ' What can the prince of Ch'in do against us ?' But another
of the gods said, 'If [the prince of] Ch'in makes the men twine, with their hair
dishevelled, a red thread round the tree, and causes them, clad in red and with
ashes on their heads, to cut you down, then you will be helpless.' To this, the
other could make no answer. The next day, the prince did as the sick man heard
the demon say he should, and so the men were able to cut down the tree. At
the moment it was cut down, a blue ox came out of the tree and ran into the
river Feng-shui (_T7J). After this, an ox appeared out of the river, which the
prince commanded his horsemen to slay. However, they found the ox more
than a match for them, when one of them fell from his horse, and re-mounted
with his hair undone. The ox was frightened at the sight of it, and sank
into the water, never daring to appear again. From this time onwards, Ch'in
caused her horsemen to wear helmets garnished with yak-tail."430'
Wu-tu Ku-tao lies in the southern extremity of Kansu province in what
used to be the territory of Ch'in in the Chan-kuo period. What is meant
by Nu-t'e is not clear, but a passage in the Lieh-i-chuan says, " The shrine of
Nu-t'e stands in Wu-tu Ku-tao-hsien, and the god enshrined is that of a great
catalpa tree which used to grow in Nan-shan (J hJ)," and gives the date of the
above incident as the 27th year of the reign of Prince Wen of the Ch'in dynasty,
ending with the words, " The tree, on being cut down, turned itself into an
ox and entered the river Feng-shui, so Ch'in raised a temple in its honour."431)
From this, we can see that it was a temple built in the honour of a tree-spirit
in the form of a blue ox who took refuge into the river Feng-shui. The Feng-
shui may be the same as Feng-shui-ch'iuan (T7J,7) in Ch'eng-hsien
430! Sou-shen-chi,18. In the Hsiian-chung-chi,the same story is given as occuring under the
Emperor Shih-huang of the Ch'in dynasty.
431) Shui-ching-chu,14, Wei-shui (7Jk).
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 97

(J,,l) in Kansu, but in the Shui-ching-chu, the river into which the
blue ox entered is the Han-shui (g7Jk), a tributary of the river Wei-shui.432)
If this is true, then the ox may have gone down the Wei-shui into the Huang-
ho, to reappear from its waters in the days of the Later Han dynasty, for there
is a legend that in the reign of the emperor Huan-ti, when the Emperor had
gone on an excursion on the Yellow River, a blue ox rose out of the water
and kicked him. The people round him took fright and fled, when a brave
man grappled with the ox, drew its feet towards him with his left hand, and
finally cut off its head with his right hand, with an axe. This blue ox was the
spirit of a tree ten thousand years old.433 We also come across such passages
in books as, " The spirit of a tree a thousand years old becomes a blue sheep,
that of a tree ten thousand years old becomes a blue ox, and they often appear
among men, "434) or "A great pine, perhaps a thousand years old, grew on
a mountain, and the spirit of the pine became an ox."435) Such an idea of
tree-spirits turning into oxen, and causing rain-storms or entering into the
water, reminds us very much of the Indus culture and the beliefs of ancient Single-horned oxen
India. Among the seals found at Mohenjo-Daro, there is one, shown in Fig. of the sacred tree
12, in which the pipal tree, still held sacred in India today, is represented
in a curious combination with single-horned animals which look like wild
oxen.436' Ernest Mackay interprets this as the heads and necks of a species
of wild oxen springing from the lower part of the stem of the sacred tree, and
says that it shows the special relationship in which wild oxen, that appear so
often on remains of the Indus culture, stood to the Indian " Tree of Cre-
ation,"437) while John Marshall is of the opinion that the pipal tree is growing
out of the necks of the " unicorns " connected together, that this particular
animal was perhaps closely associated with the goddess of the pipal tree
as her vahana (vehicle), that such an association of tree-spirits with their
animal vdhanas occurs frequently in Hindu and Buddhist iconography, and
that it was probably traditional from pre-Aryan times.438) Although an interval
of 3,000 years, and a distance of 2,500 miles, separate the spirit of the
catalpa
tree in the form of a blue ox of Wu-tu, and the oxen sacred to the goddess of the
pipal tree in the valley of the Indus, if it can be shown that the association
of oxen with tree-spirits was once a widely distributed belief over the ancient
Asiatic continent, then perhaps such a passage in the
Shan-hai-ching as,
" There is a tree shaped like an ox, and by pulling at this, one
may get a piece
of bark shaped like the string for attaching one's hat to one's head, and like
432) loc. cit.
433) riian-chung-chi; Hsiian-chung-chi.
434) ibid.
435) T'ien-chung-chi,55.
436) Marshall, vol. 3, pi. CXII, no. 387.
437) ibid., vol. 2, p. 390; Mackay, p. 74, pi. M, 3.
438) Marshall, vol. 1, p. 64.
 98 THE KAPPA LEGEND

a yellow serpent... The tree is called the chien (Lt) tree,"439) may be taken as
preserving traces of some ancient belief of this nature. The legend of the
Buryats of later ages concerning the hero Gesir Bogdo, and how his nine horses
into which so many birch trees had metamorphosed themselves carried nine
Shalmo Khans far out into the Yellow Sea, and there becoming birch trees
again, drowned the Khans,440' may also be a development of legends of the
type of which we have given an example, that had been transmitted to the
equestrian peoples of Inner Asia.
Blue oxen in the For other examples of blue oxen in the water, there is a deep pool called
water Ch'ing-niu-yuan (fl4- "Blue Ox Pool") in what was once the river
Ch'i-i-shui (ljST7J), and is now the river Hu-liu-shui (~-57TJ) in the north-
eastern part of Shansi province. This pool is said to have been so named
because a dragon lived in it and appeared from time to time on the river, having
the form of a blue ox.441' Yiieh-wang-t'an (LS3Ei "Pool of the King of
Yiieh "), to the north of Sui-an-hsien (,I S,, southwest of the present I-
hsing-hsien ~?,) in the southern part of Kiangsu province, is said to be
the place where a great stone bull weighing a 100 shih, which Chien-te (4fe),
the king of Yiieh, obtained when he invaded the kingdom of Wu, and which
he caused 3,000 boys and girls to draw, fell into the water, men, boat and ox,
and that even now its spirit appears on the river in the form of a blue ox on
a boat.442' Huan Hsiian (Tgh) who lived in Nan-chiin (ijA), Hupei province,
once met an aged nobleman riding a blue ox in Ching-chou (#HjJlI),and struck
by the form and colour of the ox, exchanged his horse for it, when, coming
to Ling-ling (~lr) in the southern part of Hunan province, the ox entered the
water and disappeared.443' These examples come mostly from regions to
the north of the Yangtsekiang, and along the Huangho also, the in-
habitants even at the present day believe that the god of the Huangho, whom
they call Ta-wang, the Great King, appears in a variety of forms such as a
sure
dragon, or an ox, or a horse, and that wherever this happens, a flood is
to follow.444) The cries of what are supposed to be a species of frog in a lake
Mongolian called the Boshade-nor in Ming-an Banner in Chahar, Inner Mongolia, are
water-oxen taken by the inhabitants to be the bellowing of the usunai ukhur (" water-ox "),
and the present writer has heard in Mongolia, that there are also tales of this
water-ox coming up on land to mix with herds of oxen grazing about the place,
or dragging men and cattle into the water, but he has had no opportunity to
visit the actual region. But these legends of water-oxen seem to be found

439) Shan-hai-ching,10, Hai-nei-nan-ching(ptjMf l,S).

440) Curtin, pp. 130-131.
441) Shui-ching-chu,13, Shih-shui (iAJ).
442) T'ien-chung-chi,55.
443) Tu-ming-lu.
444) Wilhelm, S. 141.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 99

sporadically among the Mongols, and Potanin reports that the Khalkha
Mongols living along the great lakes near the northern border of Outer Mon-
golia like Upsa-nor and Tirkhin-Tsagan believe that the lakes are inhabited
by water-oxen, called usunai argamyk, whose cries can be heard nightly.445'
Haslund also, when voyaging on Sokho-nor in 1927, heard from the Etsingol
Torguts the following extremely interesting story concerning the legendary
water cattle " sokho," which were supposed to live in the lake:
" Where the lake of Sokho-nor now heaves there once stood a great and
wealthy city. Its inhabitants lived a sinful and unrighteous life which called
forth the wrath of the gods. In order to punish the people the angry gods
one night caused the whole city to sink into the earth, and in the hollow made
by this they created a lake into which they cast alkali and salt so that no people
would be able to live in its proximity. But the innocent cattle were not to
suffer for the sake of their sinful owners and the animals therefore were trans-
formed into sokho, the water cattle, who could live and multiply on the rich
pastures of the lake's bed. Sometimes one could see them rise to the surface
of the water, but always right out in the middle of the lake. Sometimes,
when the water level was specially low, early morning hunters had seen their
tracks on the brink, and old folk could remember their parents telling them how
sixty years ago, when the lake was dried up after a very dry summer, the
mysterious water cattle had been seen disappearing into the interior of the
earth through a hole in the bottom of the lake.
" The lake was ruled over by sokho and was therefore known as 'The
Lake of Water Cattle' and sokho were in intimate contact with the gods. Once
upon a time, many generations before, men were better than they are now,
and in those times it could happen that a poor huntsman who lived
a pure life would hear at night the tree-tops whispering a mystic formula.
And if this poor huntsman on the next night led a cow to the edge of the lake
and laid himself down to sleep beside it after having cried the proper formula
out over the lake, during the night the cow would be visited by sokho and soon
afterwards would become pregnant and give birth to a calf whose productivity
was equal to that of a herd of many hundred animals. But nowadays, when
people were less good, these miracles occurred no more."446'
The rich pastures at the bottom of the lake, and water-oxen which appear
by night on the shores of the lake, and cover cows so that they bear calves
endowed with extraordinary powers of propagation, are instances of a re-
markable coincidence between the legends of the east and the west. The
popular belief that when a bull which is supposed to live in the lakes begins Oxen and wind
to bellow, it is a sign of storms coming, or of some other sinister event, is and rain
recorded over a wide area covering Central and Northern Asia, and it is said
445) Potanin, vol. 2, p. 98.
446) Haslund, pp. 137-138.
 100 THE KAPPA LEGEND

that in those regions, when the ice cracks and rises during cold nights, the
inhabitants attribute it to the water-bulls breaking the ice.4471 But on the other
hand, these legends we have been examining, which probably spread north-
wards with the northward advance of the domesticated ox, belong to a com-
paratively late period, and if we classify the material in ancient Chinese works
according to the place of the origin of the material, we find that, while legends
concerning divine horses in the water are found from the western and north-
western provinces of China to Central Asia, those about oxen and water pre-
ponderate in the southern and southwestern regions, where they are divided
into local types according to the area of their distribution. The legend that:
"During the K'ai-huang (Mlll) era of the Sui dynasty, a white ox entered the
village, which the inhabitants of the village killed and ate. The next day a
great rain-storm (some words here missing) . . .and the ground fell in, and
the whole village was turned into a lake,"448) which is found in Sui-hsi-hsien
(;_&?,) in the northern part of Lei-chou peninsula in Kuangtung province,
seems, like the story of causing a thunder-storm by throwing a fine steed into
the water, to have its origin in some belief which was generally held since the
Golden ox and age of the Shan-hai-ching. Another legend which appears to have spread
golden chain over an area covering the provinces of Kuangtung, Fukien, and Kuangsi since
about the time of the Chin dynasty, is that of a golden ox in the water tethered
by a golden chain.
" Chin-niu-t'an (?i~ "Golden Ox Pool ") lies 20 li to the northeast
of Tseng-ch'eng (ti), and it is so deep that it may not be fathomed. There
is a rock about 30 ch'ih in circumference on its northern shore, and a fisherman
once saw a golden ox come out of the water and lie down on the rock. During
the I-hsi (l,k) era, a man living in Tseng-ch'eng-hsien called Ch'ang An (RtZ)
came to this pool and picked up a golden chain which he found on the rock.
It had the thickness of a man's finger, and though he sought for its end, there
seemed to be no end to it, when suddenly, something in the water began to
pull at it. He tightened his grip on the chain, but the thing in the water
continuing to pull, the chain broke, and some ch'ih of it was left in the
man's hands. This man lived to a great age. Later Chou Yiin-fu
(Jli p) saw the ox resting on the rock. Beside it lay a chain. Yiin-fu being
naturally a brave man, went towards the ox and took hold of the chain, and on
his pulling at it, the chain broke, and in this way he obtained about 2 ch'ih of
it. He later obtained great wealth."449

447) Holmberg, 1927 b, p. 470. We have already made referenceto the fact that a part at
least of the Siberianlegendsconcerningwater-spiritsand oxen were broughtby the Russians
from Northern Europe (see pp. 73-74).
448) Madenokoji MS. (cites P'ei-wen-yiin-fu
?).
449) T'ai-ping-huan-yii-chi, 157, Ling-nan-tao (OMiS), Kuang-chou Nan-hai-hsien (fjijS
V) ; T'ai-ping-yu-lan, 900.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 101

" Chin-so-t'an (lirs " Golden Chain Pool ") lies 30 li to the east of
the hsien(Ch'ing-yiian-hsienjflJ,, Kuang-chou,)lj). In the days of the Ch'in
dynasty, K'un-lun (N-E) sent a rhinoceros in tribute. The rhinoceros ran into
the pool and disappeared, dragging after it its golden chain. In the time of the
Chin dynasty, a fisherman called Chou Chung-chiiu(4I,) fished up the golden
chain, and on at
pulling it, saw the rhinoceros. He tried to secure the rhinoce-
ros, but could not, the chain broke, and so he obtained about 1 ch'ih of it."450)
The two localities named are situated respectively in the eastern and
northern parts of Kuangtung province. The rhinoceros mentioned in the
latter legend often makes its appearance in Chinese legends concerning water-
gods together with the ox, and numerous examples of Japanese water-monsters
also being called sai (rhinoceros) or sai-ryu (" rhinoceros-dragon ") in the
provinces of Shinano, Omi, Tot6mi, Musashi etc. are given in the Santo-
mindan-shu.451 Chinese legends of golden bulls in the province of Fukien,
Kuangsi etc. differ little in character from those already given.
" 20 li to the west of chou (Fu-chou iJi'I), one comes to the Chin-so-
chiang ( jf~ "Golden Chain River "). It is written in the Min-chung-
chi (Qji%l ) that once a fisherma-nfished up a golden chain from the river, and
saw a golden ox rise from the water. The fisherman at once began pulling
up the golden chain, but on reaching the river-bank, the ox broke the chain,
and so about 2 ch'ih of it was left in the man's hands. The emperor K'ang-
ti of the Chin dynasty gave orders that a temple be built on the spot, and the
god of the temple became known as a very powerful god."452'
In Kuangsi province, there are the following legends concerning Pa-
ch'iu-hsien (EJh,J), to the north of the Hsia-chiang-hsien (daSF,), and Kan-
hsien (|,4) to the south of it.
"A pool 30 li above Chin-kang (i Vf) in Pa-ch'iu-hsien is called the Huang-
chin-lai (jt] gg "Golden Pool"). Once a man was fishing in the pool and
brought up a golden chain which, on being pulled up, filled the boat, when
a golden bull rose out of the water. It was of a fearsome appearance, and so
were its cries, and it leapt back into the pool. The chain continued to go after
it for a long time, and then it was played out, and the man
grasping its end
and pulling with all his might, obtained several ch'ih of it. Hence the name of
the pool."453)
" A fisherman lived in a place 20 li to the north of Kan-hsien at the
begin-
ning of the Hsien-ho (tJ) era under the Chin dynasty. One day he fished
450) T'ai-ping-huan-yii-chi,157, Ling-nan-tao, Ch'ing-yian-hsien (fgV,). According to the
I-viian, the same event occured in the Chien-yuan (tJ|) era under the emperor K'ang-ti
of the Chin dynasty.
451) Yanagita, 1914, pp. 52-53 (ed. 1942, pp. 66-67).
452) T'ai-ping-huan-yi-chi, 100, Chiang-nan-tung-tao ([jIiijI), 12, Fu-chou (AM^l), Min-
hsien(-mg).
453) Yu-ming-lu.
 102 THE KAPPA LEGEND

up from the river a golden chain, and had pulled up several hundred ch'ih of
it, when something rose from the water after the chain. It was like an ox,
and had red eyes and white horns. It was frightened at the sight of the man,
and ran away dragging the chain after it. The fisherman cut the chain with
a sword, and so he obtained several ch'ih of it."454'
Golden ox in This golden ox of South China seems to have gone as far south as
Annam Annam, to appear sometimes even today on the lake Hsi-ho (]jj "West
Lake ") to the west of Hanoi. In a collection of legends translated by M.
Cheon, we read that:
" There is a great lake called the West Lake to the west of Hanoi. The
lake was once a forest in which lived monsters that did harm to men. A
nobleman named Khong lo had a great bell cast on a mountain called the
Mountain of the Raftsman (in the province of Bac-ninh), and rang three trial
peals on it. The sounds echoed throughout heaven and earth, and a golden
buffalo in China hearing the bell thought it was its mother calling to it, and
started at once for Annam. The road taken by the golden buffalo became
what is now the River To-lich. The buffalo came as far as the forest, but could
not find its mother. So the enraged creature caused such commotion that
the forest sank into the ground and became a lake. Even today, when the
weather is fine and calm, the golden buffalo is said to come up to the surface
of the lake. The bell now lies at the bottom of a river called the River of the
Six Heads."4551
Jean Przyluski says he heard a similar legend about the origin of the
West Lake from a Chinese who was a native of Kuangtung, according to whose
story the golden buffalo of China heard a golden bell ringing in Annam and
came as far as Tonkin, where it smelt the bell lying buried in the earth, and the
heard
ground it dug up became the present West Lake. The Chinese had
the story in South China before coming to Tonkin.456' Przyluski has shown
that there are many points in common between Annamese and South Chinese
beliefs concerning gold, and in the Malay peninsula also, there are legends
of tin ore moving about underneath the ground in the form of a buffalo, and

454) Ta-ming I-t'ung ming-sheng-chih(;--t,,F.) (cit. by Huang Chih-kang, p. 159). We

also find legends of this type to the north of the Yangtsekiang: " The river at Niu-chu-chin
(4i4j*) in Huai-nan (jff4j) is extremely deep, and may not be fathomed. Once a magni-
ficent golden bull was seen there, to which was attached a golden chain."-Tu-ming-lu. But
when we come to Shantung further north, the legend loses some of its original characteristics,
and there is only a white ox to which is attached a chain: " A native of Yen-chou (^-Wf)
was travelling by boat, and saw a chain floating on the water. He picked up and pulled in
500 or 600 ch'ih of it, when a white ox came up at the end of it. It differed in no way from
an ordinary ox and was beautifully shaped. The man saw that it was a divine animal and
let it go, and the ox entered the water dragging the chain after it."-T'ai-ping-yii-lan, 900.
48).
455) Przyluski, 1914, pp. 2-3 (Ch6on, Recueildecenttextesannoteset traduits,2eme ed., texte no.
456) ibid., p. 7 and note 1.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 103

the spirit of gold taking the shape.of a kijang or roe-deer,457)so that in regard
to the gold motif in these South Chinese legends of the golden ox and the golden
chain, their origin may be traced to Annam which is particularly rich in original
folklore on the subject of gold. But as to the main source of this group of Hsii Chen-chun
legends, all obviously belonging to the same category, and which spread over imprisonsan evil
a definite area in South China at about the same period under the Chin dynasty, chiao-dragon
it is to be sought for in the legend of Hsii Chen-chiin ( =[:) imprisoning an
evil chiao-dragon, which became popular all over China just about the time
of the same Chin dynasty.459' We have already pointed out the frequent
association of chiao-dragons with oxen. Hsu Chen-chiin and the chiao-dragon
fight with each other, in the course of which they both assume a number of
different shapes and employ all their resources as supernatural beings, and in
the end Hsii Chen-chiin captures the chiao-dragon, plants an iron tree by the
side of a well, and attaching the dragon by an iron chain to the tree, throws
it into the bottom of the well. The dragon begs for mercy and asks Hsii
Chen-chiin when it will be able to see the sun again, to which the latter replies,
"When the iron tree blossoms, and horns grow on the heads of horses, then
I shall set you free."459' This type of legend is often found associated with
iron pillars which were set up in different parts of the country as a charm against Iron pillars and
mischief wrought by chiao-dragons, and sometimes Erh-lang-chiin (_zi-l) iron chains
takes the place in these legends of Hsii Chen-chiin. The iron pillar in the
well in the T'ieh-chu-kung ( tSE " Iron Pillar Palace ") in Nan-ch'ang,
Kiangsi, and that on the mountain Hsiian-tan-ling (,i, .) in Chi-shui-hsien
(fv~,J) in the same province are both said to have been employed by Hsii
Chen-chiin to hold chiao-dragons in subjection,460' while on the banks of the
river Hsi-chiang (TiT7iJ) in Kuan-hsien-ch'eng (?lf ), Ssuich'uan province, it
is Erh-lang-chiin who is supposed to have set up an iron pillar and attached
a chiao-dragon to it by an iron chain.461) The iron pillar at the meeting point
of the rivers Lan-ts'ang-chiang (MSail) and Hei-hui-chiang (Ai:I), 200 li
to the east of Shun-ning-fu (Jil,B f) in Yunnan province, is supposed to have
been set up by the Emperor Yii to mark the hai-yen (" eye of the sea "), when
he came here after successfully combating a flood,462)and although the T'ieh-
chu-kang (ftf_ ] " Iron Pillar Hill") on the sea-shore 2 li from the north
457) Skeat, pp. 250-252, 271. There is a legend of a golden kijang at Raub in Pahang on the
east coast, known for the quality of the gold produced there.
458) Huang Chih-kang, p. 157.
459) ibid., p. 51.
460) ibid., pp. 61-64.
461) ibid.,, pp. 10-11 The chiao-dragonknowing that further resistance is useless, begs for mercy,
and asks Erh-lang, " When shall I regain my freedom ? " to which frh-lang replies: " When
flowers blossom on this iron tree and horses grow horns on their heads, then you will be
free."
462) ibid., pp. 157-158 (cit. Tien-nantsa-chih fif-i ). Cf. p. 16.
 104 THE KAPPA LEGEND

gate of Yen-ch'eng-hsien ([Q%*) in Kiangsu province is believed by inhabit-

ants of the district to be the pillar to which the First Emperor (Shih-huang) of
the Ch'in dynasty once tethered his horse, a passage in the Yii-ti-chi-sheng
Chiao-dragons fear says that " chiao-dragons abound along the shore here, and since they are
iron by nature timorous of iron, the pillar was set up here to hold them in sub-
jection."463) These iron pillars, like the iron oxen already mentioned, have
their origin in the belief that iron has the power to drive away chiao-dragons
in the water, and a further examination would show that they have a connection
with a megalithic culture, a question with which we shall deal later. While
the chiao-dragon pursued by Ilsiu Chen-chiin is said to have turned itself into
a yellow ox, seeing which Chen-chiin made a black ox, or himself became a
Fights with oxen black o eox tngage in combat with it, other legends of fights with or between
in the water oxen in the water are also found widely distributed in the western and southern
parts of China, containing much in them that is of great interest to us. Ac-
cording to the Po-zcu-chih by Chang Hua of the Chin dynasty, when divine
oxen born by the waters in Chiu-chen (At) in Northern Annam fought together,
the sea seethed, and when they fought on shore, the oxen kept by the inhabi-
tants were very much frightened, while if there was anyone who stood in the
way of these divine oxen, thunder was heard, for which reason they were called
divine.464) This detail of the thunder may have originated in the association
of oxen with thunder-gods which, as well as in those regions already mentioned,
is a feature of Southern Asiatic mythology. In the ancient Hsin-an-hsien (f
?,b) to the east of the present K'ai-ping-hsien (ZFr,) in Kuangtung province,
there was a water-ox which had the shape of a fish, and which came on land
to fight with oxen kept by the inhabitants. It fought until its horns became
soft, and then it returned to the water, upon which the horns immediately
hardened again, and it would then come up once more on land.465) There is
also a legend in Huai-an-fu (i-~tf), Kiangsu province, of a cow which turned
itself into a dragon and fought with a dragon of a lake, and overcoming it,
became itself the dragon of Ta-hu, the Great Lake.466' Besides these examples,
Li Ping and the the type of legend most widely distributed in China concerning fights with
river-god oxen is that in which a river-god oppresses the people by causing floods every
year, and a governor with the attributes of a water-god like Li Ping (j~c) and
Erh-lang goes into the water to fight the river-god, overcomes him, and so
frees the people from the fear of all such occurrences in the future. This type
of legend is to be found in Ssuch'uan province and the provinces of Kansu,
Shansi, Anhui etc., while the date of the story ranges from modern folklore

463) ibid., p. 158 (cit. ui-ti-chi-sheng).

464) Po-wu-chih, 3.
465) T'ai-ping-huan-yi-chi, 157, Liang-nan-tao, Hsin-an-hsien (5fi j). In the ru-yang-tsa-tsu,
pt. 2, bk. 8, the is
place given as Chii-lou-hsien (i-lj ) on the northern border of Annam.
466) Huaian-fu-chih, 1685, 1, Yu-ti-chih ( 2/:), 2, Hsing-yeh (i-); Visser, pp. 129-130.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 105

to as far back as records of the Han dynasty. What is more, in these tales
it is not only the river-god who often appears in the shape of an ox, but his
antagonists like Li Ping, the governor of Shu (Ssich'uan), also assume the
form of an ox in attacking him, a fact which lends to these legends a capital
importance in their relation to the subject of this chapter. The oldest record
of such a legend is probably the following passage quoted in the Kua-ti-chih
as occurring in the Feng-su-t'ung by Yin Shao of the Han dynasty.
" Chao-wang, king of Ch'in, made Li Ping the governor of Shu. Li
Ping drew the waters of in Ch'eng-tu-hsien and irrigated ten thousand
ch'ing of rice-fields. The god of the river had a custom of taking two women
as his consorts, and Li Ping went in the guise of a woman and was married
to the god. A path led to the temple of the god, and there Li Ping offered
wine to him, filling the cup to the brim, and therewith Li Ping began upbraiding
the god in no uncertain tones. The god hearing this, at once disappeared.
After a while, two blue oxen were seen fighting on the bank of the river and
then they once more entered the river. Then Li Ping called to the officials,
'I am extremely tired, you must help me. The white thing on the loins of
the ox facing south is my official sash.' The treasurer of the province then
ran his sword through the ox facing north, and the river-god died."467)
In a book which seems to belong to the T'ang dynasty, there is a passage
which says that to commemorate the exploits of Li Ping, bull-fights were held
in spring and autumn, and a stone ox was buried in the garden of the
temple
dedicated to the hero.
" Li Ping became governor of Shu-chiin. There dwelt a
chiao-dragon
in those parts which caused floods every year that inundated the entire district
Li Ping entered the water and killed the chiao-dragon. He then turned him-
self into an ox, and seeing the dragon who was god of the river leap out of the
water, he overcame the god also. He then came out of the river, chose several
hundred soldiers known for their bravery, gave them strong bows and
great
arrows and said to them, 'I assumed the form of an ox the last time, and this
time the river-god is sure to take that form also. I shall bind a
long piece
of white silk round my body so that you will be able to recognize me, and when
you see us appear, you must kill the one who is without any such a sign.' He
then entered the water, roaring. Soon a thunder-storm arose, of such violence
that heaven and earth became of one colour. When this had subsided a
little,
two oxen were seen fighting on the shore, and a long piece of white silk could
be seen round the ox that was Li Ping. So the men sent a
volley of arrows
at the other ox, and the river-god died. After this, the
people of Shu never
suffered from floods. Even today, when great waves rise on the river,
they
seem almost to reach the temple of Li Ping and then the water
begins to retire
in a body. It is not without reason, therefore, that
bull-fights are held in
467) Kua-ti-chih,7; Shih-chi, cheng-i (iEH), 29, Ho-ch'u (Jpq) (cit. Kua-ti-chih).
 106 THIE KAPPA LEGEND

the spring and autumn. There are several thousands of houses to the south
of the temple dedicated to Li Ping, and although the ground by the river is
extremely low, it is not necessary for the people to move at the time of
autumn floods. There is a stone ox buried in the garden of the temple. In
the 5th year of the T'ai-ho (_AErp)era in the time of the T'ang dynasty, there
was a great flood. The god Li Ping assuming the form of a dragon again
fought with a dragon at Kuan-k'ou (S ), and this time also wore a piece of
white silk so that he might be distinguished from the enemy. The water
began to go down, and although during this flood tso-mien (Jti4) and tzu-t'ung
(484) floated on the river and filled the valley, and tens of districts suffered great
danger, Western Shu alone was quite unharmed.468)
In Chapter 93 of Prof. Eberhard's book, Typen chinesischer Volksmdr-
chen, a total of 7 examples ancient and modern, including the two cited above,-
Bull-fight and 4 examples from Ssiich'uan, and 1 each from Kansu, Shansi, Anhui provinces,
fertility rites -are given as belonging to Type No. 1 of " The fight with the river-god."
In these examples, the river-god appears as a chiao-dragon and also as an ox
in 3 of the stories from Ssfich'uan, as a chiao-dragon only in the 4th, and as
an ox in the 3 stories from Anhui, Shansi and Kansu. In the 3 stories from
Ssuch'uan, not only the river-god but his antagoist, Li Ping, the governor
of Shu, also turns himself into an ox as already mentioned in his fight with
the river-god, and in the stories from Anhui and Shansi also, the image of
an ox is placed in the garden of the temple dedicated to the governor, while
bull-fights are held in his honour in the story from Ssach'uan which we have
of
given. Eberhard regards this type of legend as providing an explanation
the origin and meaning of bull-fights, and the existence of so many legends
of this kind in Ssuch'uan must have some connection with the fact that the
Miao used to have bull-fights in the past.469? We read in the Yu-yang-tsa-tsu
that in the country Kuei-tzu-kuo ( t'n|),the people also held bull-fights and
horse-races on New Year's Day, by which to foretell the increase or otherwise
of sheep and horses.470' In the bull-fights held at the present day in Chin-
hua-hsien (~,~) in Chekiang and elsewhere, the people divide themselves
into two parties, each party backing an ox, and the vanquished ox being eaten
afterwards,471)and as we shall explain later, the custom seems to have had
its origin in the sacrifice of oxe. as a part of some fertility rite. In this con-
nection, we might add that in the 3 stories from Ssuch'uan among the 7
mentioned by Eberhard, young girls are offered in sacrifice to propitiate the
river-god, and this Perseus and Andromeda motif are held, as in examples
already mentioned, to be a reminiscence of human sacrifices having the character
468) T'ai-ping-kuang-chi,291.
459) Eberhard, 1937, Kap. 93, S. 135-138.
470) ibid., S. 137; ru-yang-tsa-tsu,4.
471) Eberhard, 1942, S. 175.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 107
of a fertility rite. The river-god in the story from Kansu cited by Eberhard
is the spirit of the tree ten-thousand .years old, who fled from the tree in the
shape of a blue ox into the river Feng-shui, and it is clear that this tree-spirit Clay oxen and
too has something of the character of a fertility-god. There is material from ta-ch'un
other regions to support this interpretation. A custom observed by farmers
practically all over China in the beginning of spring is whipping coloured oxen
made of clay, and then breaking them into pieces to forecast the coming or
not of drought that year, on which day also, food and wine are offered to the
earth-god.472' This is called ta-ch'un (Trr "striking of spring "), pien-ch'un
("A " whipping of spring "), pien-niu (~4 "whipping oxen ") and so on,
and no doubt has the magico-religious significance of sacrificing the clay oxen,
the symbols of fertility, to greet and to speed the spring's return. The custom
of striking cattle with sticks or the branches of certain trees that are thought
to be phallic symbols is to be found in India, Germany, Albania, Greece and
other regions,473) and the Japanese custom of striking the buttocks of horses
at Shinto ceremonies, or that observed by the Japanese people from ancient
times of striking the posteriors of women with kayu-zue (sticks for stirring
gruel), kezuri-kake (half-shaved sticks), or sticks fashioned in the form of
phalluses, on 15th of January, no doubt have their origin in the same sort of
idea connected with a magical fertility rite.4741 The ox has always been as- Oxen, the she and
sociated in China with the earth and the centre of things,475 and inseparably the tsu
bound up with the earth-god or she (f?). We read in a passage in the Po-wu-
chih quoted in the T'ai-ping-yii-lan:
" The Emperor received in the first month of the Chou dynasty the
heads of sacrificial oxen offered to the she and then issued the seeds for
sowing... On the eighth the Emperor shot down black sacrificial oxen in
the suburb and prayed that the harvest be plentiful that year."476'
We can see from this importance attached to the sacrifice of oxen at the
ceremony of praying to the earth-god for a plentiful harvest at the beginning
of the year. But the earth-god was also represented by a stone image or pillar

472) ibid., S. 175-177; Ho-p'u-an,pt. 1, vol. 3, p. 51 (Chekiang), vol. 4, p. 39 (Fukien), vol. 7,

p. 26 (Shensi), vol. 8, pp. 5, 21 (Kuangtung), pt. 2, vol. 2, p. 20 (Shantung), vol. 6, p. 15
(Hupei). This custom of whipping oxen is found over a wild area in Eastern Asia, M.
Grenard witnessing it in Kashgar and M. Diguet in Annam.-Chavannes, p. 500, note 2.
473) Gubernatis, vol. 1, pp. 224-225; GB, pt. 6, p. 266. Frazer gives examples in these pages
which show that the custom of striking not only cattle but human beings is found all over
the world.-pp. 254-273.
474) Deguchi, p. 12.
475) W. Eberhard, 1942, S. 178. " The Emperor wears a yellow robe, rides on a yellow horse,
adorns himself with pieces of yellow jade, and his standard is yellow also [the colour
yellow
is taken from the colour of the earth]. He makes the millet and the ox his food [both the
millet and the ox belong to the earth].-Huai-nan-tzu, 5, Shih-tse-hsun
(1llIJIl]).
476) T'ai-ping-yu-lan, 532.
 108 THE KAPPA LEGEND

of a phallic character called tsu (jif), and there even remains a custom today in
Yang-chou (i^H1) in Kiangsu province of a man and a woman carrying paper
images respectively of the male and female sexual organ round the streets at
t he festival in honour of the she in February and burning the images afterwards,
Oxen and the the festival being in fact called the festival of greeting the spring.477 On the
megalithic culture other hand, we find in Assam, Nias, and other regions of Southeastern Asia
a religious complex in which the sacrifice of oxen, erecting of megaliths, and
agricultural rites are combined. In such cases, the heads and horns of oxen
are considered to wield a powerful influence over the fertility of the earth,
but the tribes in Southeastern Asia who possess this megalithic culture are
invariably also head-hunters and skull-worshippers, and human heads are
believed to exercise the same sort of power over harvests as the heads of oxen
sacrificed to the she at the beginning of the year. If we now connect together the
series of geographical and ideological phenomena such as we have described,
it becomes possible to argue that not only the clay oxen used to propitiate
the earth-god and to greet the coming of spring in the ceremony of whipping
the spring, but the custom of having bull-fights and the legends attached to
them, also have their origin in the sacrifice of oxen in some fertility rite, and
that this in turn takes its rise from the same source as that which led to the
institution of human sacrifices. Moreover, the rivers are in a sense a pro-
longation of the earth, and are also the mainstay of the lives of agricultural
peoples, so that it is not surprising that oxen, which are animals held to be
sacred to the earth-god, should be transformed into river-gods and demand
the sacrifice of girls to be their consorts, or that the spirit of a tree ten thousand
years old should assume the form of a blue ox and enter the water, and such
beliefs must spring from the magical power of fertility attributed to oxen just
as we saw in the case of the agricultural sphere of culture of the regions ex-
tending from Southeastern Asia to the Mediterranean. But it has already
been pointed out by Eberhard that the complex comprising the series: sacrifi-
cial oxen-bull-fights-clay oxen-river-spirits in the form of oxen-earth-
god she-phallic stone tsu etc., which we find among the Chinese peasantry,
is most easily linked up with the megalithic culture of Southeastern Asia,
in which we find beliefs in magical powers of human skulls and heads of oxen,
ancestor-worship, and agricultural rites associated with the megaliths.478'
Further ethnological and archaeological researches remain yet to be made
concerning the characteristics of this megalithic culture. Here we must con-
tent ourselves with the pointing out of one or two more interesting points in
connection with this culture, within the limits of the subject of this essay.
The following strange story is recorded in various books since the time
Carp turned into
iron of the Chin dynasty as the legend of the miraculous rise to power of one Fan
477) Eberhard, 1942, S. 178-179.
478) ibid., S. 173-184.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods I.A9

Wen (f ) who usurped the throne of Lin-i (jg^), a kingdom laterto become
that of Champa on the east coast of Annam:
" Fan Wen was by origin a slave in Jih-nan (HBi). One day, he was
grazing sheep by a mountain stream, and caught two carp. He wished to
eat the carp by himself, and hid them. His master found this out and re-
primanded him, and so Fan Wen lied and said that he had brought back two
whetstones and not fish. His master went to the place where the fish were,
and found two stones instead, just as Wen told him. Wen marvelled at this,
and he found moreover that the stones had streaks of iron in it. So he took
them into the mountain and melted them, and made out of them two swords.
He took these swords and went to Chang (a), this being a place among the
mountains. He improvised the words of a charm and said, 'Carp changed
themselves, and were made into swords. If they can cleave stones, they must
have divine power. Wen shall then rule over the country.' In the end, he
cut them, and the people of the country made him king."479)
That is to say, two carp were turned into stones, and from the stones
were made two iron swords. It is a strange legend, but perhaps it is possible
to explain even legends like these if we compare them with ethnological material
from neighbouring countries.
In Tonkin today, there is a widespread belief that if a stone is buried Stones in the earth
long enough in the earth, its magical powers are gradually increased, so that
in the end it becomes a dangerous spirit with supernatural powers. In villages
in Tonkin, one sometimes sees small, strangely looking figures in stone of
dogs, horses, elephants, and other animals by the side of temples and in gardens
of communal houses. These are supposed to have been shaped naturally by
the constant action of the energy stored in the earth, and to turn into gold
possessing the most powerful mana if they should remain buried. An in-
habitant of Hai-du'o'ng province is said to have met with misfortunes on
account of having dug up a stone figure of this kind.480) There is also a story
that a farmer of Vo-song village in the canton of Dong-hai in the same province
once stole a small pig and kept it under a basket turned upside down, but it
was really gold that had been metamorphosed into a pig, and the next day,
it had turned into a piece of iron.481 The Annamese legend of carp turning
into stone, and then into iron, must then have some connection with beliefs
of this type concerning the metamorphosis of stone into metal, and the ac-
companying increase in magical power possessed by such stones. But there

479) Shu-i-chi, pt. 1. A similar passage is found in the Shui-chilg-chu, 36, Wen-shui (;7J).
The story is also found in the Chin-shu,97, SsA-i-chuan(Ne.A{), the Liang-shu,54, Chu-i-chuan
(:~{it), but in these we only read that " he caught two carp which became iron." The
original form of the legend is probably indicated in the carp turning first into stone.
480) Przyluski, 1914, pp. 3-4.
481) ibid., p. 7.
 110 THE KAPPA LEGEND

Carp, chiao-dragons, still remains the question of the carp. The Chinese have believed from old
and serpent times that the carp as the king of fishes often became the messenger of dragon-
kings, and it was generally regarded as being their equal. The golden carp
which Ch'en Kuang-jui (lt~:), the father of Hsiian-chuang, rescues and lets
go into the water in the Hsi-yu-chi turns out to be a dragon-king in disguise.482'
So that, it is not strange to find the carp being confounded with chiao-dragons
which are said to rule over the fish with their 3,600 varieties, and also with
serpents which are closely allied to chiao-dragons. But the serpent in Chinese
legends often appears transformed into coins, or metal from which weapons
are made.483' In this way, there may also be relationship between this idea
of carp and serpents having the character of water-spirits turning into iron
or some metal weapon, and the custom of throwing metal objects into the water
as a charm against chiao-dragons, the Nakk, and other water-spirits of which
Stone oxen in the we have spoken in the last chapter. The oxen in the water already mentioned
water may also be considered as pointing to such a possibility. According to the
Ching-chou-chiby Ch'eng Hung-chih (-,5L2), there were two sand-banks to the
south of Yen-wei-chou (,tJ,1F'I),called Lang (~,) and Ch'ung (g), and the
water between these two sand-banks abounded in strange fish. But since every
time a net was thrown into the water, it became caught on something and was torn,
a diver went down to investigate and saw two stone oxen at the bottom which
were causing the trouble, and so people ceased thenceforth to throw nets in
there.484' We have already given examples in Chinese folklore of people
fishing in rivers and obtaining golden chains from golden oxen, and this time
it is throwing nets from a sand-bank which become caught on stone oxen in
Water-spirits the water. The identity of these oxen is worthy of study. We read in Chinese
quelled by stone records that in Ssuch'uan, the governor Li Ping killed a water-god who appeared
rhinoceroses out of a river in the form of an ox, and afterwards made five rhinoceroses of
stone to quell the water-spirits, one of which he sunk in the river.485) The
rhinoceros resembles the dragon in some of its aspects, and we have already
mentioned the fact that in China and Japan, it is often confounded in its capacity

482) Hsi-yu-chi, 9.
483) Eberhard, 1941, Nr. lOOa, 113a; 1942, S. 401; 1937, S. 229-230.
484) T'ai-ping-yii-lan. 900.
485) Shui-ching-chu,33, Chiang-shui (7:J<). Huang Chih-kang, p. 25, cites from the Chi-ku-lu
he caused canals to
(~=-'$;): " Li Ping of the Ch'in dynasty was made governor of Shu, and
be dug so as to lead the water of the river into the Yangtsekiang, and in this way he put an
end to floods. The god of the river was angered by this, and turning himself into an ox, ap-
peared over the water. Li Ping took a sword and entered the water, and killed the god.
He then caused five rhinoceroses to be carved out of stone and had them placed by the water-
side. This being done, he made a covenant with the river and said, ' In after times, when
the water is low, it will not come as far as the feet of the rhinoceroses, nor as far as the should-
ers even when it is high.' The monument bearing the words of the vow is called Shih-shui-
-;
pei (,-J ' water-oath monument'), and is to be found at P'cng-chou (fifql)."
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 111
of a water-monster with the ox. Li Ping was a hero who had changed him-
self into an ox to fight with a river-god, and near the site where the five stone
rhinoceroses were placed, there was also the Shih-niu-men (iE+ " Stone
Ox Gate ") as well as the Shih-hsi-yiian (;ipEjf " Stone Rhinoceros Pool ").
Moreover, the people of Ssichu'an not only had these beliefs concerning oxen
in rivers, but they really seem to have sunk stone oxen in them to avert disasters
caused by water.486) In view of these facts, perhaps we may be justified in
thinking that the custom of throwing iron objects into the water as a charm
against chiao-dragons, which were supposed to abhor anything made of iron,
may have been derived originally from that of sinking stone oxen, or stone
pillars, into the water. Metal objects probably took the place of stone with
the coming of the metal age, and if we take into consideration the fact that in
sacrificial ceremonies, the animals or human beings sacrificed often embodied
the god himself to whom the sacrifice is made, it is possible for us to conjecture
that chiao-dragons, oxen, serpents, and other water-spirits, the beings to be
charmed away, were themselves embodied in the stone or iron objects thrown
into the water, while the idea of throwing these things into the water as being
held in aversion by water-gods may be a product of later ages, and if we trace
these practices back to their origin in the Stone Age, we may find that they
possessed originally a sacrificial meaning. Looking at the question in this way,
it is possible to comprehend the nature of such a legend as that of carp turning
into stone and then into iron, if we remember the close relationship between
carp and chiao-dragons. Considered from this point of view, the iron ox of
Shen-chou which was made to bear the waters of the Yellow River by Yii,
and the golden oxen bound by a golden chain at the bottom of the river, will
both be seen to possess origins going back to the remotest times. But if
objects of iron or other metal thrown into the water had taken the place of
stone oxen and stone rhinoceroses, the iron pillars of which we have spoken
in connection with the legend of golden oxen and golden chains
may also
have been derived from the stone pillars of preceding ages. We are here again
confronted then with the problem of the megalithic culture of Southeastern
Asia. In this culture, which was characterized by head-hunting, skull- Stone pillars and
worship and ox-sacrifice, and closely bound up with water and agriculture, sacrificial oxen
the stone pillars seem often to have been used to tether oxen that were to be
sacrificed to the ancestors and the dead,487) and Eberhard is of the opinion
that, not only the stone pillars of the tsu of the present day representing
both the earth-god and the phallus, but the stone tablets set up for the dead
in China since the time of the Later Han dynasty bear some
relationship to this
megalithic culture.488) In this culture, the worship of the dead and the ances-
486) Eberhard, 1942, S. 401.
487) Heine-Geldern, 1923, S. 946.
488) Eberhard, 1942, S. 400.
 112 THE KAPPA LEGEND

tors probably merged from the earliest times with the worship of the earth
and the god of generation, and it centred around the ox-sacrifice having the
The earth, ances- character of a fertility rite.489~ The earth, the world of the dead, and sex-
tors, sexual organs
and serpents
worship also become easily associated with serpent-worship. So that the
serpent-shaped river-spirit of China, the chiao-dragon, may have come to
have connections with oxen in the water partly through the influence of a
wave of the megalithic culture. But as the megalithic culture in South-
western China became acquainted with the use of copper or iron, special
magical powers must have come to be attributed to these superior metals,
and perhaps, just as they probably replaced the stone in serving as charms
against water-monsters, they may have given rise to the idea of copper ser-
pents and iron chiao-dragons in the water-world also. Such conjectures must
of course seem premature in view of the scanty material at our disposal today.
But the swords which Fan Wen, the tyrant of Lin-i, made out of iron carp
were certainly possessed of the magical powers of chiao-dragons. When he
Cutting off the smote stones with them, it was like cleaving rushes and straw.490' It is a
heads of oxen with fact of further interest to us that the Yao tribe in Southwestern China had
iron swords a custom, when a boy was born in a family, of immersing iron of the same weight
as the newborn child in poisoned water, and making a steel sword out of the
iron on the child coming of age. The sword was worn by him for life, but
it was the custom that the young man should try the temper of the sword by
cutting off the head of an ox with one blow.491) This had the character of
a test forming part of an initiation ceremony, and the motif of cutting off the
head of an ox, as also the legend of Fan Wen, might well be derived from the
iron.
megalithic culture after it had gained knowledge of the qualities of
Dragon-horses cum In a general manner, we might say of the relationship between water-
that whereas the
celestial horses
gods and oxen and horses dealt with in these two chapters,
versus river-oxen idea of the water-horse is found mainly in western and northwestern China,
cum earth-oxen
and further west in Central Asia, the idea of the river-ox dominates in the
southern and southwestern parts of China, and the regions still south of them
of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. And although both ideas are closely associated

489) " There is a double significance in the megaliths, at least in those of Assam. They have
to keep alive the names of the dead, serve as the dwelling-places of their souls, and as lasting
monuments to the religious and magical achievements of the dead during their lives on
earth, protect their souls from the dangers threatening them after death. But it is also neces-
and
sary to perpetuate the successes and riches of the dead and the fertility of their fields
cattle, to cause these benefits to be extended to all, and to preserve the power of fertility which
was probably regarded as a faculty directly exercised by the souls of the dead. The fact
that megaliths are closely associated with water must also have some connection with this
significance of megaliths as magical means of bringing about fertility."-Heine-Geldern,
1934, S. 22.
490) Shui-ching-chu,36, Wen-shui.
491) Wenz-hsie?-t'ung-k'ao, 328, Ssii-i-k'ao (r-~ ), 5.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 113
with that of the dragon as a water-god, the dragon connected with the horse
is, as we may see in the " Ode to the Celestial Horse from the West" in the
Han-shu, the lung-dragon which, while being a water-spirit, is also capable
of ascending to heaven and becoming its ruler, a fact which contrasts with the
dragon connected with the ox being essentially a chiao-dragon, a variety which
lurks in rivers and in the earth, and is deprived of the power of ascending to
heaven. This can be easily understood when we consider that "Heaven is Heaven is represent-
represented by the horse and the earth by the ox," as stated in the I-ching ed by the horse,
(Shuo-kua-chuan i fiE), has been a fundamental conception of the Chinese and the earth by
from the earliest times, but we would like here to take a step further and suggest the ox
that, while the idea of the dragon-horse cum celestial horse was for the most
part preserved in documents by peoples or classes of northern origin who
established a state along the valley of the Yellow River, and thence penetra-
ted to and became a part of the belief of the common people, the idea of river-
ox cum earth-ox originated in the belief and ceremonies of the agricultural
population in Central and South China, and forming for a long time a
part of these folk beliefs, gradually became adopted also into the rites
performed by kings, nobles, and the gentry. This dual structure of northern
elements and southern, heaven and earth, horse and ox, furnishes us with a
clue to the study of the historical and cultural formation of the Chinese people
today, and we might see the same kind of relationship between the worship
of heaven which developed into the idea of t'ien (" heaven ")
propounded in
Confucianism in North China, and the cult of the earth of which Taoism, in
South China, is an expression. Of course, this is a conjecture which has
only
to do with the primitive stages of the ideas in question, and no one can
deny
that these two sources of folklore came, with the
passing of time, to influence
and become combined with each other, both geographically and
ideologically.
Already under the Chou dynasty, the King Mu sacrificed oxen, horses, pigs
and sheep in honour of the god of the Yellow River, and when we come
down to the Chin dynasty, in the country of Fu-yii (At) further to the north,
oxen were sacrificed to heaven at the commencement of a war, and its hoofs
used to foretell victory or defeat.492~ In a still later age, however, in the time
of Liao, there is a legend of the ancestors of the Ch'i-tan:
" There was a god who rode on a white horse from the mountain Ma- White horse and
yii-shan (,j|th?LI),floated down the river T'u-ho (?+I) towards the east. There blueox
was a heavenly maiden who came in a carriage drawn by a blue ox from
pine
forests in the plain and floated down the river Huang-ho
(Qjtx). The two
rivers met at the foot of the mountain Mu-yeh-shan
(7*;iLI), and the god
and the heavenly maiden were united and eight children were born. Their
posterity multiplied and gathered power, and were divided into eight tribes."

492) Chin-jhu, 97, Tung-i-chuan (ifi).

 114 THE KAPPA LEGEND

For this reason, it is said that in the ancestral temple of the Ch'i-tan were
depicted the two divine beings and their eight children, and white horses and
blue oxen were also used in ceremonies held at the beginning of a war and in
spring and autumn, so that the origin of the Ch'i-tan might not be forgotten.493)
In this interesting combination of the male ancestor riding a white horse, and
the female going in a carriage drawn by a blue ox, both horse and ox floating
down a river towards each other, we may catch a glimpse of the two cultures,
one of the horse and of northern origin, and the other of the ox and of southern
descent, mingling together while retaining their respective characteristics.
The Abasy of the With the Yakut of Turkish origin, who emigrated much further north than
Yakut the Ch'i-tan, a part of their spirits Abasy live in the upper world and the other
part in the lower one, and horses are sacrificed to the former, horned cattle
to the latter. The Abasy also own households and cattle, but those of the
upper world only keep horses, while those of the lower only keep horned cattle.
At the same time, the Ajysyt (the goddess of birth) of horses seems to be a
man-spirit, while that of horned cattle is a woman spirit. To Urun Ajy
Toyon, the supreme god of the Yakut, only horses are sacrificed and never
horned cattle.494) This clearly indicates a mixture of the two cultures, and
in Central and Northern Asia also, the horse and the ox retain in the sphere
of religion the characteristics peculiar to each, which they have acquired in
their respective cultural milieus.
The Japanese If we now turn back to the Japanese Islands, while the process and the
Islands chronological order of the appearance of the ox and the horse as domesticated
animals must wait for future researches in Japanese prehistory to be deter-
Agriculture and mined, it seems at least possible to establish the fact that the first domesti-
the ox cated animal to become associated with agriculture was the ox and not the
horse, as we have done in the case of China.495) With reference to the various
popular ceremonies connected with rice-fields, the first of which is performed
on the day of okoto-hajime (the first day of the year in Japan for doing these
things), the practice of taking oxen and horses used in fields to mountain
shrines seems to have been confined at first to oxen, and then spread to horses.
As uses to which horses can be put grew in number, and more horses came to
be taken to mountain shrines, those shrines and temples which held the spring
festival on the day of the horse began to be chosen for the place of pilgrimage.
After the planting of rice-fields, oxen are given rest, but horses are not. When
a calf is born, its footprint is taken on wet paper and stuck at the entrance of
the farmhouse. This is to indicate that only oxen that have been purified
evil
according to Shinto rites are to be found there, and serves to drive away
The ox
spirits who might otherwise enter the place to do harm to the calf.
493) Liao-shih, 37, Ti-li-chih (It_^), 1.
494) Jochelson, p. 106.
495) Ikata, pp. 360-361, 278, 350.
 CHAPTER II Oxen and Water-gods 115

has always been regarded as an animal having close associations with water,
and on the day of the ox during the dog-days it had to be immersed in water
even if only superficially.49) In consequence, there are many legends in Divine oxen in the
Japan of divine oxen as well as of rhinoceroses and " rhinoceros-dragons " water
in the water already referred to. Beginning with some of the older examples,
when the Empress Jingiu was passing the sea near Bizen province, a great
ox appeared out of the waves and tried to overturn the ship,497 and when the
Emperor Ojin went to hunt in Awaji Island, a being calling itself the " Ox"
of Morogata in Hyuga came up out of the water wrapped in the skin of a deer
with horns.498) The Santo-mindan-shu gives examples of such legends from
Osaka and the provinces of Osumi, Tosa, Aki, Kai, Musashi, Shim6sa, Ugo,
Rikuchi etc.499) A water-god appears mounted on the back of a river-ox
(Shim6sa),500' an ox belonging to a farmer follows an underground stream of
water and goes about under the earth (Rikuchu),501) or, as in the legends of
the kappa trying to lure horses into the water, a yellow ox is drawn into the
water by a kappa (Aki),502)and there is even a legend of a water-monster resem-
bling an ox pulling a man into the water and drowning him (Kai).503) Ex-
amples are also given from all over Japan of such place-names as Ushi-
ga-fuchi (" Ox-pool ") and Ushi-numa (" Ox-marsh "), and examples of The ox and the
peasant customs of praying for rain which consist in throwing the heads of ceremony of pray-
oxen or great straw figures of oxen into waterfalls, ponds or rivers are to be ing for rain
found in the provinces of Bungo, Harima, Kii, Suruga, Iwashiro etc. At the
Minaochi shrine at Tadasu-no-hara, where the boundaries of the three dis-
tricts (gun) Nifu, Imatachi, and Nanjo in Echizen province meet, it is said
that rain will come if a pair of oxen which live in the pond are drawn up, and
there is a custom in time of drought of the men and women of the three dis-
tricts assembling and dividing themselves into two groups, one
pulling at the
bull and the other at the cow, the ropes being attached to rocks at the bottom
of the pond.504) Of course, we cannot adequately
study the significance of
these legends and customs with the material gathered in
Japan as our only
data, but iV!-. Yanagita's detailed study has shown that such festivals as Ushi- The Nakoshifestiva
1
no-Shogatsu (" Ox New Year "), Ushi-no-Toshi-koshi (" Passing of the etc.
year
of oxen "), Ushi-matsuri (" Ox festival "),
Ushi-kagura (" Ox music and
dance "), Ushi-maushi (" Ox festival "), Nakoshi-matsuri
("Passing the
496) Orikuchi, 1930, pp. 1028-1029.
497) Fudoki, p. 413.
498) ibid., p. 317.
499) Yanagita, 1914, p. 53-57 (ed. 1942, pp. 68-73).
500) ibid., p. 55-56 (p. 71).
501) ibid., p. 55 (p. 70).
502) ibid., p. 56 (p. 72).
503) ibid., p. 57 (p. 73).
504) Nakayama, pp. 67-68.
 116 THE KAPPA LEGEND

summer"), Gyut6 ("Ox-lantern") Ushi-no-Gion ("Ox Gion-festival"),

Ushi-no-Yabuiri (" Oxen entering the bush," annual holiday for oxen), Ushi-
kake (" Ox-race ") etc., which for the most part consist in bathing oxen and
horses in a river, or leaving them for a day to roam at will by the side of a river,
either towards the beginning of spring or the end of summer, have at least for
their object the safeguarding of these animals against any evil that might befall
them during the year by placing them under the protection of the water-
god,505' and if we compare such facts with the legends and customs to be found
in the southern half of the Eurasian continent which we have been studying
in these chapters, it will become sufficiently clear that the Japanese river-ox
belongs to the same category of ideas as that of agricultural populations of
China and Southeastern Asia.
The riddle of the Our long discussions in the foregoing pages have perhaps brought us a
kappa trying to lure little nearer to the solution of the problem posed by the legend of the kappa
horses into the water
trying to lure horses into the water. At Shinoda in Nagaoka-gun, Tosa pro-
vince, which is one of the places where the legend is preserved from old times,
horses are brought to the riverside on June 15th of each year and tethered
to stakes by long ropes. This is called the Nomaki (" Grazing in fields "),
and on this day a kappa festival is held.506' Near Fukuyama in Bingo province,
it was believed that if oxen and horses were bathed in the sea or in rivers on
the
July 7th, it made them immune against attacks of the kappa throughout
In some of
parts Kyushu, the kappa are called kawa-no-tono (" lords
year.507)
of the river "), and in the southern provinces of Kyfshu such as Hyuga and
Osumi where the kappa are the most venerated, they are called sui-jin (" water-
gods ").508) One of Mr. Yanagita's outstanding contributions to the etymology
of the Japanese language is the theory advanced by him that such words as
mizushi, which is used for kappa in Kaga and Noto provinces, medochi in Nam-
bu and the Ainu mintsuchi, are all derived from mizuchi, which in its turn is
a variation of mizu-tsuchi meaning a divine being in the water and having no
connection originally with the Chinese ideograph X chiao or $4 ch'iu which
is usually rendered into Japanese as mizuchi,509'and being of the opinion that
the kappa are water-gods who had degenerated into water-monsters, Mr. Yana-
gita says at the end of his article, "In this reason, such instances as the kappa
festival in Tosa when horses are tethered to stakes by the waterside may pro-
and
bably be considered as a sort of an old-age pension paid to the mizuchi,
such place-names as Senzoku-no-ike (" Feet-washing pond") and Uma-
arai-buchi (" Horse-washing pool "), as well as the name Koma-tsunagi-no-

505) Yanagita, 1914, pp. 84-85 (ed. 1942, pp. 107-108).

506) ibid., p. 86 (110).
507) ibid., p. 86 (p. 110).
508) ibid., p. 43 (p. 54), p. 81 (p. 104).
509) ibid., pp. 90-91 (p. 116).
 CHAPTER III Monkeys and Water-gcds 117

matsu (" Horse-tethering pine "), given to certain pine trees in all parts of our
country and the reason for which has so far remained unknown, are most likely
the relics of yearly rites held in ancient times at which horses were offered to
the water-god, and which in course of time came to be regarded by the agri-
cultural population simply as a means of safeguarding their horses from evil
throughout the year, the origin of the practice becoming completely forgotten.
The custom, however, of offering the heads of oxen and horses to the water-
god to pray for rain was long preserved."510) It may be difficult to find actual
instances in Japan of oxen and horses being offered yearly to the water-god,
but if we take into consideration the legends and customs in all parts of the
Eurasian continent discussed in these pages, it becomes no longer possible
to question Mr. Yanagita's conclusion that such Japanese customs as the
Nakoshi-matsuri and Ushi-no-yabuiri, or indeed the Japanese legend of the
kappa trying to lure horses into the water, have their origin in the sacrifice
of oxen and horses to the water-god in remote ages.

CHAPTER III

Monkeys and Water-gods

Much has been done to clear up obscurities in connection with the
identity of the kappa in the foregoing chapters, but a large number of ques-
tions still remain to be settled.
In Etchfi province, the kappa are called game (<kame, tortoise), and there Tortoisesand
are many regions where they are conceived of under a form resembling that snappingturtles
of tortoises.511) In the same way, in Mino province, the kazarambe (kappa)
are thought to be creatures that are rather like the dochi (snapping turtle),
and are in consequence called dochi-robe in some parts of the province.512'
Sketches of kappa said to have been captured at Niigata in Echigo province,
and at Mito in Hitachi (Fig. 1), show them to be monsters which crawl about
on all fours, and resembling tortoises or snapping-turtles.513) This idea of
water-spirits and river-gods having the form of tortoises and snapping-turtles
is a world-wide one, which we find in places as far removed from each other
as Mongolia and Egypt,514) and the legend given in the Sou-shen-chi of the
prince Ching-kung of Ch'i crossing a river has something in common
with the Japanese one of the kappa trying to lure horses into the water. In

510) ibid., p. 92 (pp. 117-118).

511) Kappa-Zokuden,p. 971.
512) ibid., p. 976.
513) Yanagita, 1914, pp. 38, 40 (ed. 1942, pp. 49, 50).
514) Minakata, 1916, p. 75.
 118 THE KAPPA LEGEND

this legend a great snapping-turtle appears out of the river and bites the left
horse of the three drawing Ching-kung's chariot, causing the horse to sink
into the water, and Ku-chih-tzfi ('i' ) draws his sword and kills the snapping-
turtle, crying in a loud voice to heaven, whereupon the river begins to flow
backwards.515) According to the Pao-p'u-tzu also, the snapping-turtle casts
a spell on men and makes them sick.516'
Otters In the dialect of Saga prefecture, the kappa is called kazcasso, and this
seems to be derived from kawauso, meaning otters.517) Similarly, with the
typical legend from Nishikawazu in Izumo province of a kappa trying to lure
a horse into the water, and on its failing to do so, giving a written apology
to the owner of the horse, the kappa or enko which is given as the culprit in the
Unyoshi becomes an otter in the modern version,518'and in the district round
Ryotsu in Sado, the inhabitants believe that a kind of otter living in the
sea knoiwn as umi-kaburo often deceives people and makes them lose their
lives.5l9) The belief that otters are powerful water-spirits is another that
is distributed over a wide area, as we may see from examples of Korean and
Annamese legends concerning such otters given in Chapter I.520)
Boy water-gods Thirdly, the idea that the kappa, as the Chinese ideographs ifg indicate,
are shaped like little boys is to be found everywhere in Japan, and the names
given them in different regions, beginning with the most general one of kappa
derived from kawa-wappa (river-boy), and comprising such widely varying
examples as the kawarambe or kawakozo of Owari province and the valley
of the River Tenryu, the kazoa-koboshi and kawara-kozo of Ise, kawa-zwaro
of Chikuzen, gdrappa of Higo, gazvara and gazvaro of Hyiuga, kamuro of
the Okinawan Islands, and, to give another set of examples, the kau-ko, kazoa-
k6, gau-ko, or gon-go of Bizen and Bitchu, derived from the same source as
the kaza-ko (river-child) of Izumo province, the ga-tar6 of Harima, which
belongs to the same group as the kazca-taro (river-boy) used in provinces round
Kyoto and in some of the provinces in Kyuishiu,all express the same idea.521
There are numerous legends and folk-tales in Japan of a spirit-child appearing
out of the water and doing some good to mankind, such as the myth of the
little god Sukuna-hiko-na-gami, and well known Japanese folk-tales such
as that of Uriko-hime, of Momo-taro, and others preserved in remote villages
like the story of Kabu-kire-warashi of the Ou region and Hana-tare-kozo-
sama of Higo. The theme of these stories, taken up in connection with the
515) Sou-shen-chi,11
516) Pao-p'u-tzu, Nei-p'ien (p^~), 17, T'6ng-she (1j).
517) Yanagita, 1914, p. 43 (ed. 1942, p. 55).
518) ibid., pp. 28-29 (ed. 1942, pp. 36-37).
519) ibid., p. 43 (ed. 1942, p. 55).
520) Cf. notes 83, 84, pp. 18-19.
521) Yanagita, 1914, pp. 41, 39 (ed. 1942, pp. 52-53, 50); Kappa-Zokuden,pp. 971-972, 976,
977.
 CHAPTER III Monkeys and Water-gods 119

question of the chiisa-ko (little child) type of legends and the more general
one of mother-and-son deities, is the subject of a new interpretation by Mr.
Yanagita of a truly international significance, and which is probably the most
suggestive and the richest in original ideas, and most capable of being de-
veloped indefinitely in the field of comparative ethnological research, that
has been put forward by him in his studies of Japanese folklore.522' Of course,
it is beyond the scope of the present essay to venture into an examination of
the problem involved, and leaving this for some future occasion,523) we shall
content ourselves with saying that in Mr. Yanagita's opinion, the Japanese
kappa is no other than a degenerate survival of these spirit-children and child-
gods of the water-world. The Ryuigu-kozo (" Dragon Palace Boy ") who is
supposed to have appeared out of the great pond of Kurumeki in Inasa-gun,
Totomi province, and helped a farmer to till his field, has something in
common with the chiisa-ko whom a beautiful woman of the water-world gave
to an old man who was cutting wood, and the Nyoi-doji whom Tawara T6da
brought back from the Dragon Palace underneath the sea, and similar legends
of kappa helping man which exist in connection with ponds called Koz6-ga-
fuchi (" Little boy's pond ") all over Japan prove that this Ryuigui-kozo is
himself kappa and nothing else.524) Legends of divine boys coming down
from heaven and alighting by some piece of water, and water-gods manifesting
their divine nature in their childhood, are found widely distributed from
Korea to China,525)and we also find in China water-monsters having the form
of little boys which remind us of the kappa. The zang-liang (Mj) which The wang-liang
is defined as a water-god in commentaries on the Tso-chuan and the Huai-
nan-tzui26) is described by Huai-nan-wang as having " the form of a child
aged three, of a reddish-black colour, with red eyes, long ears, and beauti-
ful hair."527' In the Pen-ts'ao-kang-mu, there is the following description
522) Cf. Kaijin-shodo (.tJJ~_ "Boy Sea-gods "), Momo-tarono tanjo (" The Birth of Morro-
tar6 "), Tanishi no choja (WEVfC_--- "The Rich River-snail "), Uriko Orihime (JR-i ffi
"Uriko, the Weaver Princess")-The above contained in Yanagita, 1942 a; Raishin-
shinko no hensen($q{f4i~ "Metamorphoses of Thunder-god Worship "); Matsuo-
kenji no monogatari(f#,Efijo.tr-? "The Story of Matsu6-kenji "), Utsubo-buneno hanashi
( ?5ut'J-?Xp- "The Story of the Utsubo-boat ")-contained in Yanagita, 1940; Issun-boshi-
dan (-]"'J=j "The Mannikin ")-contained in Yanagita, 1946; Utsubo-buneno Ojo (
i
C'tJ-?aD*A " The Princess in the Utsubo-boat ")-contained in Yanagita, 1938; Sumiyaki
Kogoroga koto \~Ji_[S;5'; "Kogor6, the Charcoal-burner ") contained in Yanagita,
1925; Yanagita, 1920; Yanagita, 1928.
523) An outline of the author's own study of these problems is given in Ishida, 1948 a.
524) Yanagita, 1942 a, pp. 111 ff.
525) Mishina, pp. 159-163 ; Shu-i-chi, 1; Huang Chih-kang, p. 101, etc.
526) Ch'un-ch'iuTso-shih-chuan,3rd year of Hsiian-kung, commentary by Tu; Huai-nan-tzu, 12,
Tao-ying-hsiin.
527) We read in the Shuo-wenthat: " The wang-liangare spirits of mountains and rivers. Huai-
nan-wang says that the wang-lianghave the appearance of children three years old, etc."
 120 THE KAPPA LEGEND

The shui-hu of the shui-hu (7TJf "water-tiger"): "According to the Hsiang-mien-chi

(~?-"), there is a river called the Su-shui (97}C) in Chung-lu-hsien (Fr
/tSJ ) which flows into the river Mien-shui (S7iK). In this river Su-shui
is a being shaped like a child of three or five years of age, its body covered
with scales like those of a carp which no arrow may pierce. This being
appears on the sands and suns itself in autumn. Its knees resemble the
claws of tigers. It often hides in the water with only its knees showing, and
when children begin playing with them, it bites them. If one captures it
alive and plucks its nose, it may be made to work for a short while. This
being is called shui-hu."528)
The ho-shui-kuei The name shui-hu was imported into Japan and became another name for
the kappa. According to Mr. Chou Tso-jen (J4IfA), there is also a legend in
his native town Shao-hsing (gJ__) in Chekiang province about a water-spirit
in the form of a child called ho-shui-kuei (i7J,1 "river-water demon").529)
The following passage also occurs in the K6-Yamato-Honz6 of Naomi Ryiu,
a Japanese work published in 1755, under the heading, " Sui-un (7J~K, Chin.
shui-yiin), called in Japanese kazcaro or gaza-taro," a passage which is given
in the work as being a quotation from the Chinese Yu-ming-lu:
The shui-yun "The shui-yiin is also known as yiin-t'ung (gj3*) and shui-ching (7}TJ
'water-spirit'). Its height is from 3 to 6 ch'ih, varying according to spec-
imens. It has ears, nose, tongue and lips, and a bowl on its head capable
of holding from 3 to 5 sheng [pint] of water. It is full of courage so long as
there is water in the bowl, but loses its fierceness if the water is spilled. The
Mongols call it shui-hu."'530
Mr. Okada Tatebumi, probably quoting from the K6-Yamato-Honzo,
as
gives this passage in his work, Dobutsukai Ryo-i-shi, published in 1927,
occurring in the Yu-ming-lu, and points out the marked resemblance between
the shui-yiin and the kappa,531land now Mr. Chou Tso-jen quotes the passage
from Mr. Okada's work in one of his essays and compares the ho-shui-kuei
of his birthplace with the Japanese kappa and the shui-yiin in the Yu-ming-
lu.532' The present writer has not been able to trace the particular passage
in the Yu-ming-lu of Liu I-ch'ing of the Sung dynasty, but if the author of
the K6-Yamato-Honzo really saw it in some different text of the Yu-ming-lu
a
Bowl on the head imported from China into Japan, the description of the shui-yiin as having
bowl on its head capable of holding from 3 to 5 pints of water, and its being

528) Pen-ts'ao-kang-mu,42.
529) Chou Tso-jen, p. 218.
530) Ko-Yamato-Honzo,10.
K6-Yamato-
531) Okada, pp. 41-42. Mr. Komiya Toyotaka quotes this passage from the
Honz6 and expresses the opinion that there is perhaps an unknown text of the ru-ming-lu in
which it occurs.-Komiya, pp. 257-258.
532) Chou Tso-jen, p. 218.
 CHAPTER III Monkeys and Water-gods 121
full of courage so long as there is water in the bowl, only becoming dispirited
when the water is spilled, and another passage which the author claims to be
a quotation from the Hsiang-mien-tsa-chi: "Then the scales on its head
become rent and it loses its courage. The natives call it shui-hu . . . This is
the same as the shui-yiin,"533 are so many proofs that the same sort of popular
belief as that of the Japanese kappa having a bowl on its head existed also in
China, and the words, " The Mongols call it shui-ching," furnish us with
further interesting material for study in comparative ethnology. But if this
Japanese writer of the Tokugawa period had purposely added to or transformed
the original texts, in giving reins to his imagination stirred by memories of
the Japanese kappa, then, since there is the example of a great Chinese scholar
being taken in by such a piece of Japanese literary pleasantry, we are faced
with a problem of a completely different order of interest. This shows how
important it is to give all material a thorough sifting before deciding on its
authenticity, and we propose to wait for the results of further research before
expressing an opinion on this particular problem.
Lastly, we should like to take up the question of the relationship between Monkeys
the kappa and monkeys. The area in which the kappa are called
enko or enko stretches from Izumo, Iwami, Suho, Nagato and other
provinces in the western part of Chugoku district to the provinces
of Iyo, Tosa etc. in Shikoku,534) and the Chinese ideographs MI (en-ko,
monkey) are used for the word in the Utnyshi mentioned above.535) Many
of the people in Kyuishu also who report that they saw kappa say that they
resembled monkeys in size and form, and even in their cries.536) There are
also many instances of water-monsters which would certainly be considered
as kappa at the present day being called kazca-zaru (" river-monkey ") or
fuchi-zaru (" deep water monkey ") in documents of the Tokugawa period.537)
For instance, we read that in Totomi, wherever the kawa-zaru made their
appearance horses died out, and that when Ara Genzaburo, a retainer of the
M6ri clan, dived to the bottom of the Kama-ga-fuchi, a deep part in a river
near Yoshida in Aki province, to chastise a fuchi-zaru that lived there and did
harm to men and beasts, he first caught hold of the monster's neck and shook
it, and when the water contained in a hollow on its head was spilled, Ara was
able to capture the monster without any further difficulty.538) Place-names
like Saru-ga-fuchi ("(Monkey Deep ") and Enk6-fuchi (" Deep of monkeys ")
are to be found all over Japan, and eight such examples from Iwami, Tosa,

533) Ko-Yamato-Honzo,10.
534) Yanagita, 1914,p. 48 (ed. 1942,p. 61).
535) ibid., pp. 28-29 (ed. 1942, p. 36).
536) ibid., p. 48 (ed. 1942, p. 61).
537) ibid., p. 49 (ed. 1942, p. 62-63).
538) ibid., pp. 49-50 (ed. 1942, p. 63).
 122 THE KAPPA LEGEND

Shimozuke, Musashi, Echizen and Mimasaka are given in the Santo-min-

dan-shu.5391 The Saru-sawa-no-ike (" Monkey Pond ") in Yamato, Saru-
Monkeys by the be-no-fuchi (" Monkey Deep ") in Wakasa, and Saru-ga-fuchi in Mimasaka
waterside all have legends connected with them that have to do with water and
monkeys.540) The story of the monkeys of Saru-sawa-no-ike joining their
hands together and trying to catch the moon reflected in the pond from a
branch of a tree, and all of them drowning in the attempt, is an instance of
stories in Buddhist texts being imported into Japan and preserved in the form
of legends connected with the place-names of the country,541)but there is also
a belief that the monkeys, who are the messengers of the god of the Hiyoshi
shrine, alight by the shores of Lake Biwa and examine the water, and when
it is at its purest, inform the god of the fact, so that the purification cere-
monies may be performed. This idea led subsequently to the appearance of
monkeys in ceremonies held for praising the garden of a house, with the object
mainly of extolling the quality of the water found within the premises.542)
These facts leave no room for doubt that monkeys which are animals having
a natural relationship with water, and usually found living near it, played
an important part in the formation of the kappa legend by being made to
transfer their abode from the waterside into the water itself in the course of
ages, in the imagination of men.
Monkeys are con- On the other hand, the idea also exists that monkeys are the enemies of
sidered as the the kappa. The kappa are supposed to lose their power of movement on
enemies of the kappa
seeing a monkey, and monkeys are believed to do anything to capture a kappa
when they see one, so that jugglers who live by making monkeys do tricks are
said to cover the faces of monkeys in their keeping as a precaution when they
are crossing rivers.543) The people of Edo also seem to have had the idea that
keeping monkeys is an effective means of safeguarding oneself from the miischief
wrought by the kappa.544' When a favourite page of Kato Kiyomasa was pulled
into the River Yatsushiro by the kappa and drowned, the warrior chief made
plans for an expedition against the kappa and collected together an army of
monkeys in his domains. This terrified the kappa, and Kusen-b6, the chief
of the nine thousand kappa, asked a Buddhist priest to act as intermediary,
and by swearing never to do harm again to human beings, barely managed to
appease the angry general.545' But since we are concerned with popular be-
liefs, the enmity between the kappa and monkeys by no means preclude the

539) ibid., p. 50 (ed. 1942, p. 64).

540) ibid., p. 51 (ed. 1942, p. 65).
541) Schiefner and Ralston, p. 353 (Kah-gyur, IV, f 249).
542) Orikuchi, 1930, p. 1030.
543) Yanagita, 1914, p. 48 (ed. 1942, p. 61).
544) ibid., p. 49 (ed. 1942, p. 62).
545) ibid., p. 48 (ed. 1942, pp. 61-62).
 CHAPTER III Monkeys and Water-gods 123

possibility of union between these two. Sacred oxen sacrificed to water-gods

are identical with these water-gods, and chiao-dragons which pull horses into
the water become dragon-horses themselves. The superiority enjoyed by
monkeys in their fights against the kappa recorded in old documents is only
a proof of the ideological identity of these two sorts of creatures.
The question next arises, whether we may not find instances of a similar
relationship existing between monkeys and water-spirits in the folklore of
nations adjacent to Japan. So far, the present writer has only been able to
find one such an example in Chinese folklore.
There is a well called Chih-ch'i-ching (i11it: "Well of Chih-ch'i ") The water-monster
in Hsii-i-hsien (ff^S)) in the northeastern part of Anhui province. About Wu Chih-ch'i

this well, the following passage occurs in the Anhui-t'ung-chih: "The well
Chih-ch'i-ching is also called Sheng-mu-ching (N-U/ " Well of the Holy
Mother "). It is behind the temple Kuei-shan-ssi (lfiLj) in the north-
eastern part of Hsii-i-hsien, and the great Yii imprisoned a water-god in this
well. The well is covered by a pavilion built over it."546' This well in which
Yii imprisoned a water-god is worthy of consideration. Li Chao of the T'ang
dynasty says in his Kuo-shih-pu, quoting from the Shan-hai-ching, that, "A
water-beast caused much mischief and Yii chained it. The beast was called
Wu Chih-ch'i," and T'ao Tsung-i of the Ming dynasty, also quoting
from the Shan-hai-ching, says in his Cho-keng-lu that, "A water-beast
caused much mischief, and Yii chained it under the mountain Chiin-shan
(^]l). -The beast was called Wu Chih-ch'i."547 These particular passages
cannot be found in the text now extant of the Shan-hai-ching, but a legend
of Yii chaining up a water-beast would seem from these quotations to
have been included from a period of considerable antiquity in tales of his
successful struggle to control the rivers. But what is of even greater
interest to us is the fact that since about the time of the T'ang dynasty,
legends came to be told in which this water-beast chained up by Yii appears
in a form resembling that of a monkey. The T'ai-ping-kuang-chi gives
one such legend as occurring in the Jung-mu-chien-t'an.548'
In A.D. 798 Li Kung-tso (42ft4) of Kansu set out on a boat on the rivers
Hsiao-shui (37J) and Hsiang-shui (#I7Jk)in Honan province. On this trip he
met by chance Yang Heng (g-&), who was engaged in a military expedition to
the south, and the two went ashore and lodged in a Buddhist temple, where,
as they watched the moon rise over the river, Yang told Li the following
story: "During the Yung-t'ai ( 7j) era, Li T'ang (4)) was governor of
Ch'u-chou (?)H). About this time, there was a fisherman who went one
night to fish at the foot of the mountain Kuei-shan (&ili), and his hook caught
546) Anhui-t'ung-chih,33, Yu-ti-chih (yt,4), Shan-ch'uan (_JL|); Huang Chih-kang, p. 168.
547) Huang Chih-kang, p. 168.
548) T'ai-ping-kuang-chi,467.
124 THE KAPPA LEGEND

on something in the water and would not come up. He was a good diver,
and so he went down into the water swiftly to a depth of 50 chang (500 ch'ih),
and there saw a great iron chain encircling the base of the mountain. He
tried to find the end of the chain, but could not, and he informed Li T'ang
of the matter. T'ang ordered fifty or sixty fishermen and others who could
swim well to pull up the chain, but they were not able to, and so above fifty
oxen were collected together to lend them aid. Then the chain shook, and
began to give way, and although it was quite calm at the time, great waves
rose up and astonished the bystanders ... Upon this, there appeared at the
end of the chain a creature shaped like a monkey with a white head, long mane,
snowy white fangs and golden claws, and it leaped up on the shore. Its height
was about 5 chang, and the way it crouched resembled a monkey. But its
eyes were closed, and not moving at all, it looked as though it was blind.
Water ran down from its eyes and nose like a stream, and the slaver from its
mouth was foul and evil-smelling, so that no one could venture near the crea-
ture. After a long while, it stretched its neck and yawned, and then suddenly
opened both its eyes. They shone like lightning, and looking round at the
people gathered about, it showed signs of rising up in great rage. All who
were there fled, and the beast, slowly dragging the chain and the oxen attached to
it, entered the water and was never seen again. There were many men of
note in Ch'u there, and they were all as terrified as T'ang, looking at each other
in perplexity, and not knowing what to do with such a creature. Since then,
fishermen sometimes saw the place where the chain was, but no one ever
saw the beast again."
In the spring of A.D. 813 Li Kung-tso visited what used to be the
kingdom of Eastern Wu, and going with Yuan Kung-hsi (;,4sVA), the
governor of the region, on a boat on the Lake Tung-t'ing, he climbed the
mountain Pao-shan ( [Lj) and stayed at the cell of a Taoist sage, Chou Chiao-
chiin (M^). The two went into a sacred grotto to look for writings of the
sages, and obtained-the 8th book of an early text of the Yiieh-tu-ching (~~4~),
but the ideographs being of a strange, antiquated form, and the sequence
not being clear on account of the material on which they were written being
much damaged by insects, they had great difficulties in deciphering the text.
Finally, they managed to do so, and they came upon the following passage in
the book:
" Yii went three times to the mountain T'ung-pai-shan (fJMtI) to re-
gulate the course of rivers. But each time a great wind rose, thunder came,
and the rocks echoed and the trees groaned. The spirit of the earth watched
jealously over the rivers, that of the heavens sent forth his armies, and nothing
could be done. Yii grew angry, and summoned Kuei-lung (MI), whereupon
the spirits of T'ung-pai-shan and other mountains bent down their heads
before him and placed themselves at his orders. So Yii made Hung Meng-
 CHAPTER III Monkeys and Water-gods 125
shih ($a$Z), Chang Shang-shih (5ti.), Tou Lu-shih (5EM ), Li Lou-
shih (3Vg:) capture the god of the Rivers Huai and Wo, who was named
Wu Chih-ch'i. This god was eloquent in conversation,and knewall the deeps
and shallows of the rivers Yangtsekiang and Huai-ho, and the situation
of fields and marshes. He was shaped like a monkey, had a flat nose and a
high forehead,a green body, white head, golden eyes and snowy white fangs.
His neck, when stretched, was a hundred ch'ih long, his strength exceeded
that of nine elephants, and he was so agile and swift in his movementsthat it
was difficultto have him within sight and hearingfor any length of time. Yii
turned him over to T'ung Lii (j0), who was not able to masterhim, then to
Wu Mu-yu (,i7Et), who was not able to master him either, and then to
Keng Ch'en (~), who mastered him. The god had been surroundedby
the spirits Ch'i-p'i (S), Huan-ho (B|M) and other spirits of trees, rivers,
mountains and stones for thousands of years, but Keng Ch'en drove them
all away, passed a great rope round the neck of the god, bored a hole in his
nose to hang a golden bell, and led him to the foot of the mountainKuei-shan
of the southern side of the River Huai. Ever since that time, the river has
flowed in peace to the sea."
WhatLi T'ang saw,and YangHeng told to Li Kung-tso, thereforecoincides
with what is written in the Yieh-tu-ching,and so the water-monsterwith
the shapeof a monkey,which draggedinto the waterfifty oxen duringthe reign
of the T'ang dynasty, is supposed to be the same as the water-godWu Chih-
ch'i whom Yu caused to be chained up at the foot of Mount Kuei. This
legend is still preservedin the district round Hsii-i-hsien in Anhui province,
where the River Huai flows into the lake Hung-tse-hu (~A,^ ), and fishermen
even today are said sometimes to catch a glimpse of the chain attachedto the
monster at the bottom of the river.549) The legend of the golden ox in the
waterattachedto a golden chain given in the last chaptermay also have some-
thing in common with this other legend as to its source.
The legend of Wu Chih-ch'i, the water-god shaped like a monkey,who SungWu-k'ung
was put in chains at the foot of Mount Kuei, may have been the prototype of
the story in the Hsi-yu-chi, which was written much later, of the Buddhaim-
prisoningthe monkey hero Sung Wu-k'ung under the mountain Wu-hsing-
shan (ffriih), and placing on the top of the mountain magic words written
in golden charactersto bind the monkey,550) but since Sung Wu-k'ung,a stone
monkey come to life, is said to have dived into the water and explored the
grotto Shui-lien-tung (A7J</piJ) in the mountain Hua-kuo-shan(H :dl), and
making himself king of the monkeys, spent his mornings on Hua-kuo-shan
and his evenings in Shui-lien-tung, passing in this way 300 years, we can say

549) Dor6, vol. 10, p. 103.

550) Hsi-yu-chi, 7 and 17.
 126 THE KAPPA LEGEND

that he himself has a close relationship with water.551) As we have already

pointed out before, the actual fact of monkeys having the habit of living in
numbers near the water was probably an element in the formation of the idea
of the monkey-like kappa of Japanese folklore, but since such examples are
only found rarely among the peoples of countries adjacent to Japan, it would
be premature to assume a direct relationship between the Japanese kappa
and the Chinese Wu Chih-ch'i. Such being the case, we should try and see
Monkeys, horses if there are not other more cogent factors which could have brought the kappa
and the kappa and monkeys together, and it was Mr. Yanagita who, by looking towards the
horse and demonstrating the close relationship existing between this animal
and the kappa, and at the same time clearly showing the ties which bound
horses to monkeys (Cf. Fig. 13, 14, 15, 17), gave the final answer to the pro-
blem in his theory concerning the legend of the kappa trying to lure horses
into the water. His studies of such questions as monkeys kept in stables,
jugglers who employ monkeys, komahiki-sen or fancy coins bearing effigies of
monkeys leading horses (Fig. 16), and the origin of the Japanese No-farce
Utsubo-zaru (" Monkey's skin for decorating quivers "), are among the most
brilliant contained in his Santo-mindan-shu, and leaving to his learned pen
all such problems connected with Japanese folklore, we propose to consider the
question before us from the broader standpoint of comparative ethnology.
The ideological association of monkeys with horses is not found distributed
all over the world as in the case of the relationship between oxen and horses
and water-gods which we have studied in the last two chapters. As far as
the present writer is aware, it is confined more or less to regions in East Asia
covering Japan, China and India. Moreover, from the zoological distribution
of monkeys, and the position occupied by them in the religious life of peoples,
it is more than probable that the origin of the idea is to be sought for in India,
where monkeys are found in greatest number, and which country has always
formed the centre of the religious worship of monkeys. In fact, to give the
beliefs, tabus, magical practices and legends concerning monkeys contained
in the mythology and folklore of this country would be enough to fill a volume
by itself.
Visnu The god Visnu of the R.gveda taking the form of kapi (" monkey ")
or Vrsakapi (" Pluvial monkey ") was beheaded by Indra, and the word
Hari which is commonly used for this god not only means a monkey at the
same time,552)but in the Mahdbhdrata, it is also the name of the parent of horses
and monkeys.553) In fact, one of the ten great incarnations of Visnu is Kalki
(" White Horse "), and it is said that the Hindus expect him to appear one day
mounted on a white horse, and holding in his hand a shining sword to restore

551) ibid., 1.
552) RgvedaSanhitd, X, 86, 5: Wilson (tr.), vol. 6, p. 233; Gubernatis, vol. 2, pp. 99-100.
553) Mahabhdrata,ch. LXV, 65: Dutt (tr.), vol. 1, p. 94.
 CHAPTER III Monkeys and Water-gods 127
the world to its original purity.554) But in a Buddhist suitra translated into
Chinese by Pu-k'ung (T;) of the T'ang dynasty, directions are given for
painting the image of Hayagriva (" horse-headed ") Vidyaraja, the Buddhist
version of the god Visnu, in which occur the words, " To paint the Hayagriva
Vidyaraja, his body must be the colour of fire, and he must look as though
angered, with a nose shaped like that of monkeys etc." Although the original
Sanskrit szutrahas been lost, the translation provides us with one more evidence
of the antiquity of the relationship between horses and monkeys.555)
Gandharvas, who are regarded by some scholars as the equivalent of the Gandharvas
Greek Centaur, and whose appearance in Indian mythology date from the
age of the Vedas, are semi-divine beings who are the musicians of the heavenly
world, preside over marriage, are fond of women, extremely jealous of their
wives, the water-spirits called Apsarases, and guard with miserly care the
medicinal herbs and the drink of the gods, soma, which is found in the water.
But these characteristics have much in common with those of the ass in Indian
mythology, and a comparison with the Avesta is said to prove the identity
of Gandharvas with the ass.556' At the same time, the monkey often takes
the place of the ass in Indian mythology, and Gandharvas also were sometimes
represented as monkeys.5571 Moreover, these Gandharvas, who were so
closely associated with the water-world, are said to have driven the horses of
the sun, and there was even a tribe of low caste people called Gandharvas
who sold incense and juggled, and went about dancing and making horses
and monkeys perform tricks, begging money of the people. The beauty of their
women is often said to have attracted the attention of the nobility.558)
Mr. Minakata Kumakusu says in reference to them that " The tribe of
Gandharvas in ancient times, when begging their living by exhibiting incense
etc., often made horses dance, and it is probably for this reason that their
patron god was given the form of a horse and .. .made the god of incense,
music and marriage. The wives of such low class people often assist at
marriages in India and elsewhere even today, and the genitals of horses and
asses being conspicuously exposed, they have been commonly chosen as
symbols of marital harmony and of propagation," and concerning the close
relationship between horses and monkeys he says also,
" This is probably a relic of low caste people like the Gandharvas, who
made horses and monkeys perform tricks, keeping these two sorts of animals
554) Edwardes and Spence, pp. 186-187.
555) Taisho-Zokyo,vol. 19, no. 950, p. 199 a: cf. Nanjo Catalogue,no. 1024. In a different
Chinese version of the same sutra translated by Bodhiruci (Nanjo Catalogue,no. 532), how-
ever, these words " with a nose shaped like that of monkeys " do not occur.-ibid., no. 951,
p. 231 a.
556) Gubernatis, vol 1, pp. 53, 369, 370; 365-366, 379.
557) ibid., pp. 368, 382.
558) Minakata, 1918, p. 193.
 128 THE KAPPA LEGEND

in the same place for the sake of convenience."559

Monkeys kept in The custom of keeping monkeys in stables to protect horses is still practised
stables in Northern India today, and an old proverb says, " The evil of the stable is
on the monkey's head."560' The earliest material for the study of this custom
seems also to date back to the age of the compilation of the Buddhist sutras,
and in the Parrot Jdtaka in the Ma-ho-seng-chih-lii (la4fftfiAt) translated
into Chinese by Fa-hsien (S,) and others under the Eastern Chin dynasty,
although in this case also, the original Sanskrit text has been lost, there is a
passage which relates how a king once became very much attached to a baby
monkey presented to him by one of his ministers, and how, although it had a
beautiful fur and jumped and gambolled about while it was young, and was
petted by all, the fur became ragged as it grew up, so that no one liked it any
longer to look at it, and it learned to prick up its ears and stretch its mouth
to frighten the children, and in the end the king tired of it, and commanded
it to be tied to one of the pillars in the stable.561
Monkeys used to In one of the versions of Panchatantra, there is the following story of
cure horses how monkeys were used to cure horses that had been badly burned:
Once in ancient times, King Chandra kept a herd of monkeys for the
amusement of the princes his children. The king of the herd was a wise
monkey, and seeing a ram enter the kitchen from time to time and annoy the
cook, foresaw that one day, the cook would throw a burning brand at the ram,
from which its wool would catch fire, and the ram running into the stable
would set fire to it, the horses become burnt, and all the monkeys be killed
to cure the horses' burns. He warned the other monkeys of the event, but
they would not listen to him, and so he went away by himself into the woods.
The event took place just as he had predicted, and the king summoned surgeons
who were well versed in the works of Salihotra, the veterinary surgeon, and
ordered them to attend to the horses. They answered, "Just as the sun
comes out and scatters the darkness, so all maladies of horses caused by
burns are made to disappear by using the marrow of monkeys. These were
the words of our master, Salihotra. We beg thee therefore that this remedy
be employed immediately, before the horses die." The king at once ordered
the monkeys kept for the princes to be killed, and hearing of this, the king
of the monkeys who had escaped to the woods entered into a league with a
Raksasa that lived in a pond, and luring the king and his suite to the place,
caused them all to be devoured by the Raksasa.562'
There is a similar story told of Kuo P'o of the Chin dynasty, who
lived just about the time of the compilation of the Panchatantra, who

559) ibid., pp. 193, 196.

560) Crooke, vol. 2, p. 49.
561) Taisho6-Zokyo,vol. 22, no. 1425, p. 258 b, c.
562) Panchatantra, bk. V. no. 10: Benfey (tr.), 2. Theil, S. 346-352, esp. 348-349.
 CHAPTE"RIII Monkeys and Water-gods 129
caused a dead horse to be resuscitated by means of a monkey. Chao Ku (jBI),
a general of the Eastern Chin dynasty, i? grieving over the death of his favourite
horse, when the Taoist Kuo P'o arrives and instructs him as follows:
" Let twenty or thirty of your sturdiest men, each carrying a bamboo
pole, go eastward from here for thirty li, and there they will come to a hill
covered with trees in the likeness of a temple grove. When they have arrived
there, let them beat about the wood with their bamboo poles; and they shall
obtain a creature which let them bring home quickly. If they succeed in
capturing this creature, the horse will at once be brought back to life. Hearing
this, fifty of the general's bravest men set out, and came to a great wooded
hill just as P'o had said, and a creature that looked like a monkey, but was
not one, ran out of the trees. The men ran after it and caught it, and brought
it back hugging it. The creature saw the dead horse from afar and struggled
to get near it, and P'o ordered the men to let it go. The creature at once ran
towards the head of the horse, and breathed into its nose, and after a while
the horse rose up and began to gallop about. The creature had disappeared,
and Chao Ku richly rewarded Kuo P'o."563)
But the custom of keeping monkeys in stables makes its appearance Monkeys are good
in Chinese documents much later than this. According to the I-chien-chih for horses
written by Hung Mai of the Sung dynasty, Meng Kuang-wei (JS),
who went as governor to Wu-ling (ASMi)in Hupei province in the 8th year
of the Cheng-ho (&fip) era (A.D. 1118) during the reign of the Emperor
Hui-tsung of the Sung dynasty, was a great lover of horses, and always kept
monkeys in his stable. It seems to have been said at the time that monkeys
and horses were naturally inclined towards each other.564) It is also said that
a man obtained an ugly monkey about 2 ch'ih high in I-ling (jAI), I-ch'ang-
hsien (_L, ), in Hupei province, and brought it home and kept it in his
stable, and when next year the monkey died, the horses died also.565) There
is another story of the Sung dynasty of one Wang, who lived in Yin (al) in
Chekiang province, and being a horse-dealer, kept a monkey. It is said that
his wife lay asleep one summer afternoon overcome with wine, and the monkey
ravished her, from which union were born two children.566) To give one or
two more examples from the writings of the Ming dynasty, we read in the
Wu-tsa-tsu: " A man living in the capital kept a monkey in his stable, and
the monkey would jump up on the horse's back wherever it had the chance
to, and never tire of teasing the horse, plaiting its mane and clinging to its
neck. The horse never seemed to mind this at all. One day, the monkey was
on the horse's back, and the horse becoming excited, broke loose from its

563) pt. 2; Sou-shen-chi,3; Chin-shu, 72, Kuo P'o-chuan.

Sou-shen-hou-chi,
564) I-chien-chih,
Hsin (v), pt. 1.
565) ibid., Ting (-), pt. 9.
566) Chien-hu-chi,Jen (:), 4.
 130 THE KAPPA LEGEND

halter, and rushed out with the monkey on its back. The monkey seemed to
be enjoying all this extremely. The horse was passing under a beam, when
it suddenly reared, and the monkey was hit by the beam and its head smashed,
and it fell down dead. Those who were watching were astonished by this."5671
In the Ch'ien-ch'ieh-chii-lei-shu edited by Ch'en Jen-hsi of the Ming
dynasty we read: " There is a picture in the palace Tzi-chi-kung (gj)
at Ch'u-chou (,j^,) of a monkey playing with a horse, swinging a rope. The
monkey shakes the rope, surprising the horse, and the groom not knowing
what is the matter, whips the monkey from behind. It is said that, monkeys
have a good effect on horses, and here the monkey is suffering for it. I have
caused the following poem in the spirit of the picture:

The monkey gambols, the horse is surprised.

The groom cannot understand the friendship between monkeys
and horses.
The monkey is only acting according to its nature, nor can blame
be attached to the horse.
The intention is to avoid causing harm, and yet harm is done."5681

Monkeys drive The custom of keeping monkeys in stables from the idea that they are
away disease good for horses seems to have had for its original motive the preservation of
horses from disease. J. Crawfurd, an Englishman who went on an embassy
to Siam in 1812, saw two white monkeys kept in the stables where were the
king's white elephants. He asked the grooms the reason for this, as he writes
in his diary, and he was told that it was to prevent the elephants from becoming
ill.569) In Chinese documents of the Middle Ages, we often come across
the same statements regarding monkeys kept in stables in company with horses.
In the Wu-tsa-tsu already mentioned, we read that " Monkeys are kept in
stables, so that horses may not become ill,"57) and a passage in the Pen-ts'ao-
kang-mu says, "If those who rear horses keep these animals (monkeys) in
stables, it will prevent the horses from becoming ill."157' In the I-chien-
chih and the Ch'i-chiieh-liao-tsa-chi, both written under the Sung dynasty,
we come across passages saying that breeders of horses in Shu often kept
monkeys in stables to maintain their horses in good health,572)and in many
books dealing with diseases of horses and other such subjects, we are told that
monkeys drive away disease, or that the skins of monkeys have power over the
diseases of horses, or that they keep away evil and cure scabies, or that monkeys

567) Wu-tsa-tsu,9.
568) Ch'ien-ch'iieh-chi-lei-shu, 111.
569) Crawfurd, p. 97 and a wood-cut on p. 103.
570) Wu-tsa-tsu,9.
571) Pen-ts'ao-kang-mu,51, pt. 2.
572) Cit. by Eberhard, 1942, S. 28; Ch'i-chiue-liao-tsa-chi,pt. 2.
 CHAPTER III Monkeys and Water-gods 131
tied in stables avert evil and prevent a hundred diseases,573)all of which clearly
spring from the same idea as the custom of keeping monkeys in stables in
India and Siam. Such being the case, the story in the Hsi-yu-chi of the Sun Wu-k'ung, the
monkey hero Sun Wu-k'ung being given the post of keeper of the celestial keeper of the celes-
stables, his remaining at his post for half a month, and then, being told the tial stables
lowliness of his position by his colleagues, going into a great rage and return
ing to his mountain Hua-kuo-shan,574' may not perhaps be regarded solely as
a product of the author's imagination.
Although the relationship between monkeys and horses such as we have The monkeyan-
described may have its origin in India, it is interesting to note that there are cestorof the
materials which lead us to suppose that the idea spread to China through Tibet, Tibetans
or at least by the medium of tribes of Tibetan origin. In the Manibkah-
hbum, which is one of the oldest of Tibetan Buddhist texts, there is a legend
of the founding of Tibet in which the king of the monkeys, as the
incarnation of Avalokitesvara-Bodhisattva, appears in Tibet and marries
a Raksasi, and so becomes the ancestor of the Tibetans.575' The legend is
thought to have its source in the ancient Bon religion of the Tibetans, to which
a coating of Buddhism has been added, but similar legends of monkey ancestry
are to be found among tribes of Tibetan origin, or tribes having close con-
nections with such tribes, inhabiting the southwestern regions of China.576'
To begin with, in the Tang-hsiang-chuan (lf g " History of the Tangut ")
of the Sui-shu, the first official history to be written concerning the Tangut,
a Tibetan tribe living in Ch'inghai province today, there is a passage which
says, " The Tangut Ch'iang (-) are descendants of the San-miao (_ f).
They are divided into the Tang-ch'ang (EM) and Pai-lang ( :jg), and all
consider themselves as having sprung from monkeys,"577) which shows that the
legend given above was one which originated among the Tibetans themselves.
In the Sou-shen-chi, a work dating back to a far earlier period than Manibkah-
hbum or the Sui-shu, there occurs the following passage concerning the regions
of Ssuich'uan or Shu:
" An animal lives on a high mountain in the southwestern part of Shu, Chia-kuo or ma-hua
which resembles a monkey in appearance. It is about 7 ch'ih in height, and
does well all that men can do. It is fleet of foot and pursues human
beings,
and is called chia-kuo (51g ). It is also called ma-hua (,ft), and also chiieh
573) Yanagida, 1914, p. 66 (1947, p. 84).
574) Hsi-yu-chi, 4.
575) Aoki, pp. 78-80. According to the legend recorded by Koeppen, Avalokitesvara-
Bodhisattva, the patron saint of Tibet, turns himself into the monkey Brag ssrinpo (rock-
monster) and comes to Tibet, where a female air-demon has turned herself into the she-
monkey Brag ssrin mo, and the two meeting became the ancestors of the Tibetans.-Koeppen,
Bd. 2 (Die lamaischeHierarchieundKirche), S. 44-45.
576) Aoki, pp. 80-82.
577) Sui-shu, 83, Hsi-yu-chuan(mj3f_A). There is a similar passage in the Pei-shih, 96.
 132 THE KAPPA LEGEND

(;). It looks out for young women going along the road, captures them and
goes away, without anyone knowing of it... It mates with these women, and
those who do not conceive are not allowed to return to their homes all their
lives. After ten years, they come to resemble the being in appearance, be-
come troubled in their brains and lose all desire to go home. Those women
who conceive, the animal carries in its arms to their homes, the children that
are borne having a human appearance. The mothers who do not bring up
these children die, so they all take care to do so, and when these children grow
up, they do not differ in any way from human beings. They all call them-
selves Yang (;p), and so there are many in the southwestern part of Shu
today who have Yang for their surname, most of them being the descendants
of these chiao-kuo or ma-hua."578)
The Yang family The families with Yang for their surname are found not only among the
and the Pai-ma-ti Yao tribes of Kuangsi and Hunan, the Miao tribes of Ssich'uan and Yunnan,
and the Sung-wai Man (pfA49) of Yunnan who are probably of Tibetan origin.
There is also a powerful family in the western part of Ssich'uan province,
calling themselves the descendants of the Pai-ma Ti (,Jii "White Horse
Ti "), whose surname, it is said, was Yang since the time of the T'ang dynasty
and still is today.579) The Ti, like the Ch'iang, are an ancient tribe of clearly
Tibetan origin, and during the days of the Former Han dynasty, there was a
tribe of the Ti calling themselves Pai-ma (" White Horse ") among the so-
called Southwestern Barbarians who occupied regions around what is now
Ch'eng-hsien (jiiJ) in Kansu province.580) In the 6th year of the Yiian-ting
(j;,Cl) era (111 B.C.), during the reign of the emperor Wu-ti of that dynasty,
they surrendered to the Chinese and Wu-tu-chiin (tS?fS) was set up in
those parts, and it is recorded that in the 1st year of the Ti-chieh (fi~ti) era
(69 B.C.), under the emperor Hsiian-ti, Pai-ma Ch'iang of Wu-tu rose in
rebellion,581) while it is a matter of history that the chiefs of the Ti who set
up and maintained the kingdom of Ch'ou-ch'ih (4L4t) in those regions from
the end of the Han dynasty into the Liu-chao (" Six Dynasties ") called
themselves Yang.582) That there should be branches of the Ch'iang and
the Ti of Tibetan origin who should call themselves " White Horse,"
and that there should be even today a Yang family, said to be descended
from the chia-kuo or ma-hua which resembled monkeys, tracing their origin
back to the Pai-ma Ti, cannot be dismissed as so many coincidences in view
of the relationship between monkeys and horses. Furthermore, the fact of
578) Sou-shen-chi,12.
579) Eberhard, 1942, S. 28-29.
580) Shih-chi, 116, Hsi-nan-i-chuan (Xpf{~j); Ch'ien Han-shu, 28, pt. 2, Ti-li-chih (tiNS),
Wu-tu-chiin (fBj$); ibid., 95, Hsi-nan-i liang-yuehch'ao-hsien-chuan(PF~~/ff _f{O).
581) Hua-yang-kuo-chih,Shu-chih (,i).
582) Chiu T'ang-shu, 40, Ti-li-chih, 3, Lung-yu-tao (;igt); Toyo-rekishiDai-jiten, art. " Ti"
and " rang-ti."
 CHAPTER III Monkeys and Water-gods 133
these tribes inhabiting the western part of Ssiich'uan province reminds us of
the passage in the Sou-shen-chi already quoted which says, " There are many
in the southwestern part of Shu (i.e. Ssich'uan) today who have Yang for
their surname," and the statement in the I-chien-chih that breeders of horses
in Shu often kept monkeys in stables for the protection of their horses.
In the Yeh-jen-chien-hua written during the reign of the Sung dynasty Yang Ch'ien-tuof
there is a story of one Yang Ch'ien-tu (;gfJ), a native of Shu, who made his Shu
living by keeping a monkey and making him perform tricks. One day, a
monkey in the stables of the palace broke loose, and ran up the palace
buildings and we are told that Yang, by the command of the lord
of Shu, used his own monkey to recapture the truant.583) This Yang
must have been by profession something like the Japanese jugglers with their
performing monkeys, and the story indicates that the region of Shu, the sur-
name Yang, and the monkeys kept in stables must have been associated with
each other from ancient times. Attention might also be drawn to the fact
that the word ko-jan (31), which is given in the Kuo-shih-pu as meaning a
variety of monkeys, is often used as a tribal name of the Lolo whose language
is of Tibeto-Burman origin, and who live in large numbers in the south-
western part of Ssuch'uan province.584)
In the Mongolian epic Gesir Khan, a work containing markedly Tibetan
elements, there is a story of the divine horse Kyang Geu Karkar re-
cognizing a demon disguised as a great monkey ravaging a field at night,
and killing him with a single kick of his hoofs.585 This may, or may not
be, another example of the ideological association of monkeys with horses.
One must avoid any hasty judgment in the matter, and the idea is only
suggested here as a possibility.
It is interesting to find this relationship between monkeys and horses A jade bit carved
expressed in designs on. articles of harness and other objects. In the Yu- in the formof
yang-tsa-tsu, following a passage about the steed Chiieh-po-yu ( jg|) monkeyswith
beloved of the Emperor T'ai-tsung of the T'ang dynasty, and which had been armsentwined
presented to him by the king of Ku-li-kan (*,fl$), we read that: " In the
treasure-house of the emperors of the Sui dynasty, there was a piece of jade
carved in the likeness of monkeys with arms entwined, the arms forming a ring,
so that it could be used as a bit. The Emperor T'ai-tsung later went out
riding with it in company with his courtiers, but he was displeased with the
design and broke it with his whip."586'
The shape of the gem described here is not quite clear, but we can under-
stand at least that it was intended to be used as a bit. But what is even

583) Teh-jen-chien-hua;Yang-yu-tu N;:/,t, according to T'ai-ping-kuan-chi,446.

584) Eberhard, 1942, S. 29.
585) Phalipau, p. 166.
586) Tu-yang-tsa-tsu,2.
 134 THE KAPPA LENGED

Monkeys on more interesting is the fact that the same motif of monkeys, this time
horseback mounted on horseback, just as in the passage in the Wu-tsa-tsu quoted
above, is found in designs of pendants of the northern Eurasian nomadic
peoples, who lived beyond regions where monkeys are to be found. The
example shown in Fig. 18 a was found at Minussinsk in Siberia, and has
been judged to belong to the 2nd millenium A.D.,587' but the shape of the
horse in a, as well as that shown in b,588' resembles the horse figure on the
stone sculptures of the Han dynasty. The example shown in c comes from
Yekaterinovka in European Russia and is thought to date back possibly to
the beginning of the Christian era.589' If that is the case, we are led to the
conclusion that the composite idea of monkeys and horses must have spread
to the equestrian peoples of the north through Tibet or China at a very early
date. Among the burial offerings of the T'ang dynasty, there is a figure
of a monkey crouched on the saddle of a camel,590)and the monkey on horse-
back, based on the legend of Po-lo (fVl), a famous connoisseur of horses,
is one of the motifs of the Koga figures made in Nagasaki prefecture, Japan,
which have a history dating back to the Bunroku era (1592-1595).591 The
Komagata (" Horse-shape ") shrine on the slope of Mount Onikoshi in Taki-
zawa village, Iwate prefecture, was formerly known as the S6zen shrine, and
there are old records which show that festivals were held here on the first day
of the horse in February and May 5th in the 2nd year of the Keicho era (A.D.
1596). The image of the chief deity of the shrine is a wooden figure about
1 foot high, and looks like a monkey on horseback.59) On Mt. Tsurumaki
in the province of Izu, there was a monument called Komagata, erected in
A.D. 1599, on which also a monkey was shown on horseback.593'
Monkeys drawing In this way, as Mr. Yanagita so clearly demonstrates in his Santo-mindan-
horses shu, the idea of relationship between monkeys and horses, including that of
keeping monkeys in stables, was introduced into Japan at a pretty early date,
and gave rise to the profession of jugglers with performing monkeys whose
original function was to come to stables to make monkeys dance there,
and to pray for the safety of the horses, and the motif of monkeys drawing
horses by the bridle came to figure in designs of fancy coins, in the votive
tablets put up at shrines (Fig.14, 16), and in charms for the protection of
stables (Fig. 15, 17).594) Thus, Mr. Yanagita's theory that the monkey, an

587) Salmony, 1933, pl. 35, no. 7, and p. 83.

588) Bleichsteiner, S. 52, Taf. 4, Fig. 6.
589) Tallgren, 1932, pp. 27, 31, Fig. 36.
590) Siren, S. 28, Fig. 40 (Ostasiatiska Samlingarna, Stockholm).
591) Sumi, p. 272.
592) Yanagita, 1912, p. 602.
593) Tanki Manroku, p. 492.
594) Yanagita, 1914, pp. 61-78 (ed. 1942, 78-100).
 CONCLUSION 135
animal naturally associated with water from its habit of living near it, holding
the horse by the bridle, must have been drawn into the water by the water-
god together with the horse, and having been turned into a kappa, became
one of the factors in the formation of the legend of the kappa trying to lure
horses into the water, increases in probability when we study in connection
with it the material offered by the folklore of the countries adjacent to Japan.
Also, that the idea of monkeys being the enemies of kappa, as seen in the story
of Kat6 Kiyomasa planning an expedition against Kusenbo, the chief of the
kappa, should exist side by side with the popular belief that the kappa are
monkeys, is a fact that is most suggestive, when we consider it in relation to
such other material for study as the legends, beginning with that in the Jdtaka,
and found in India, China and Japan, of crocodiles, turtles and sea-dragons Crocodiles and the
trying to obtain the liver or heart of a monkey as an effective medicine either liver of monkeys
for their own sickness or for that of their wives, and failing in their attempts
to that end to lure monkeys into the water.595) Neither is the fact that the
monkey, the protector of stables, becomes in the form of a kappa the enemy of
horses at all incongruous, when we consider the dual qualities of good and evil
possessed by the gods in popular belief, and the character of a foreign god in-
troduced from abroad which the monkey-god possesses in Japanese mythology,
all of which has been thoroughly discussed by Mr. Yanagita in his work.596'

CONCLUSION

In the foregoing 3 chapters, we have given at least in rough outline the Summary
cultural background to Japanese legends concerning the kappa luring horses
into the water, by examining in each chapter respectively horses, oxen and
monkeys in their relationship to water-gods. The question dealt with may
be summarized as follows:
Mr. Yanagita, starting from the fact that legends concerning the kappa
of the type in which the kappa attempt to lure horses grazing by the waterside
into the water, and fail to do so, are to be found all over Japan, has pointed
out in his Santo-mindan-shu the possibility of the existence of a group of inter-
related popular beliefs, which gave rise not only to these legends, but to the
idea that the progeny of dragons or water-gods may be obtained by pasturing
mares by the waterside, and to the Japanese legends of such famous horses as

595) Jdtaka, nos. 57, 208, 342: Cowell (ed.), vol. I, pp. 142-143, vol. II, p. 110, vol. III, pp.
87-88; Taisho^ Zkyo. vol. 3, p. 19 b, c, pp. 76 b, c-77 a; Panchatantra,bk. IV; Fa-yuan-chu-
lin, 54, Cha-wei-pien(nftg ), 60; Konjaku-monogatari-shu, Tenjiku-Shintanno Bu, 5, no. 25;
Shaseki-shu, 5, pt. 1; Yanagita, 1941, pp. 4-6.
596) Yanagita, 1914, pp. 78-80 (ed. 1942, pp. 100-102).
 136 THE KAPPA LEGEND

Ikezuki and Surusumi appearing out of, or at least from the neighbourhood
of some piece of water. In the present essay, we have compared this Japanese
material with similar material in the Eurasian continent in general, and at-
tempted to trace them to their common source in the cultural history of
Fine steeds obtained mankind. The popular beliefs and customs, for instance, founded on the idea
by the waterside that fine steeds may be obtained by putting mares to pasture by the water-
side are by no means peculiar to Japan, nor did they originate there. Among
the material relating to this motif recorded by the present writer in Chapter
I of this essay alone, collected from all parts of the world, there are two such
examples from Shantung, two from Shansi, four from Ssiich'uan and one
each from Kueichou, Ch'inghai and Kansu as regards China, besides examples
from Mongolia, Ta-yuan, Kashmir, Tokhara, Kurdistan and Northern Europe,
while similar legends of water-stallions are quoted from the Chinese Pieh-kuo
tung-ming-chi written under the Han dynasty and the Arabian Nights. The
fact is significant. We have sought to explain the origin of these legends at
least in part by the cattle-breeding custom actually practised in Asia of causing
the females of domesticated cattle to breed with their wild male counterparts
to obtain a sturdy progeny. But in this type of legends, it is not only that the
Water-gods in the stallions live generally in the water, or that water-spirits perform the part
form of horses of stallions, but it often happens that divine horses, or water-spirits in the
form of horses, actually appear out of the water. Examples of this latter motif
alone, apart from those already given, and other numerous Chinese legends
concerning dragon-horses, are to be found over a wide area extending from the
Chinese provinces of Hopei, Shensi, Kansu, Hupei and Ssich'uan to Annam,
and, west of these regions, from Sinkiang to Russian Turkestan, Armenia,
Georgia, and beyond these, in nearly every corner of Europe. Such a fact
cannot be explained by the cattle-breeding customs of the nomadic peoples
alone.
Oxen and water The investigation of this problem led the present writer to that of the
relationship between oxen and water. Popular beliefs and folklore associating
oxen with water are, in their case also, to be found not only in Japan but in
nearly the entire extent of the Eurasian continent with the exception of the
Arctic region. In China and its neighbouring countries, for example, legends
of two oxen fighting in the water, while being most numerous in Ssich'uan,
occur also in Shensi, Shansi, Anhui, Kiangsu and Kuangtung, and southward
of China in Annam. Legends of golden oxen dwelling under the water occur
in Kuangtung, Fukien and Kiangsi, and from Anhui in the north to Annam
in the south, and with regard to legends of iron oxen (rarely, stone oxen or
copper oxen) employed to quell floods, we have given three examples each
from Honan and Hopei, and one each from Kiangsi, Anhui, Hunan, Hupei,
Ssuch'uan, Shensi and Shansi. As for water-spirits in the form of oxen who
live in the water, examples are to be found from Hunan, Hupei, Kiangsu, and
 CONCLUSION 137
the Yellow River basin to Shansi, Kansu, Mongolia, Central Asia, and even
as far as Siberia. In Europe also, popular beliefs concerning strange oxen
appearing out of the water, and water-spirits keeping beautiful herds of oxen
in pastures at the bottom of the water are the common property of nearly all
the European peoples including the Celtic, the Germanic, the Slavic, and
the Finno-Ugric peoples. The area of distribution of these legends is of
corresponding extent.
Given these facts, we are next faced with the problem of whether horses Ox-worship
and oxen were together given the character of water-gods and water-monsters
from the beginning, or whether one of the two became associated with the
water-world first, and the idea was then extended to the other. In regard
to this problem, the history and prehistoric archaeology of the ancient pre-
Aryan cultural zone along the southern border of the Eurasian continent from
India to the Eastern Mediterranean furnished the present writer with the
decisive clues to its solution. This sphere of culture had as a common charac-
teristic the worship of the Great Earth Mother as the symbol of fertility, while
the breeding and religious worship of oxen were also practised from prehistoric
times. Furthermore, this worship of oxen was based on the idea of regarding
these animals as something sacred as the embodiment of the magical power
of fertility, which fact associated them with the primitive Earth Mother as
the symbol of generation, and those elements inseparable from the female
principle in religious worship, the moon and the power of fertility of the earth.
Cultural history has made it clear that this complex combining together the The moon, the
moon, the earth, the female principle, oxerr,and the power of fertility is founded earth,the female
in plant-growing and agriculture, and so it was natural that water, the source principle, oxen, the
of life to agricultural peoples, became associated closely in its in
turnitswith oxen, power of fertility
turn
and water
as with the moon, the Earth Mother and so forth, in this religious complex
which might be defined ethnologically as agricultural, matriarchal and lunar
mythological. In this way, we may reconstruct from a vast store of material
the process by which oxen, representing the primary principle of fertility and
growth, came to be offered in sacrifice to the river-god as animals sacred to
water-gods, or by which water-spirits themsevels came to assume the form of
oxen.
On the other hand, horses were domesticated and reared on the steppes The southward
of Inner Asia, and there served in the development of a nomadic and equestri- advance of the
an culture of a different nature from that of the agricultural peoples to the horse
south. We find traces of this northern culture infiltrating southwards into
Egypt and Mesopotamia already in the Neolithic Age, but apart from the ass,
horse-breeding itself was practised neither in the ancient Orient nor pre-
Aryan India, until long after the beginning of the so-called historic age. That
is to say, the horses were not known to the ancient Egyptians before the in-
vasion of the Hyksos in the middle of the 18th century B.C., and the invasion
 138 THE KAPPA LEGEND

of the Punjab by the Aryans with their horses, as also the importation of horses
by sea into the world of the Minoan civilization in Crete, are now definitely
regarded by historians as events occurring even later, in or about 16th century
B.C. With regard to Mesopotamia alone the question is a little more compli-
cated, but it is clear that the horse, coming from the north, became generally
known in these regions and over the whole of Southwestern Asia to play more
or less a decisive part in human life only after a similar wave of horse-rearing
peoples from Inner Asia had swept down southward about the time of the
invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos and the Punjab by the Aryans. But long
before this, the ox was not only being reared by the agricultural peoples along
the southern border of the Eurasian continent, but temples in Egypt, Sumeria,
and Babylonia, the palace at Cnossus, and the cities of Mohenjo-Daro and
Oxen replaced by Harappa were filled with sacred oxen. And as the horse advanced into this
horses area and took its place in the society of men, the position hitherto occupied
by the ox, and the part played by it in religion and mythology of these regions
came gradually to be either shared, or taken over altogether by the horse. The
present writer, following the studies of Prof. Koppers, has been able to trace
the workings of this process in an analysis of the mysteries of the Asvamedha,
the ceremony of horse-sacrifice of Ancient India, and in the metamorphosis
undergone by the vahana of Indra, the god of thunder and rain. With the
brilliant example before him set by Miss Harrison, who has so ably demon-
strated the progress of Poseidon, the Greek sea-god, bull-god, and horse-god,
from his beginnings as the Minotaur, the Cretan king-god, to the heights
of Mount Olympus, the present writer has also assumed that long before
Poseidon came to be regarded as a horse-god, he was worshipped in the
form of a bull as an earth-god, fertility god, agricultural god, and a god of
the nether regions.
Western Europe With reference to Western Europe and Eastern Asia, it is not so easy
and Eastern Asia to determine, from the results of researches in prehistoric archaeology, the
order of appearance in these regions of the ox and the horse, and the opinions
of scholars differ in this point. But, although it might be premature to assert
that here too, the domesticated horse was introduced by the exodus of nomadic
peoples from the interior of the continent, it is fairly certain that in the begin-
ning at least, the horse was employed mainly for transport and in war, whereas
Oxen and the animal first used in ploughing and which in that way became associated
agriculture with agriculture, was not the horse but the ox, just as it happened in the regions
along the southern border of the continent. So that, for example, such
customs of Chinese peasants as whipping clay oxen to greet the coming of
spring, and sacrificing oxen to the earth-god she must date back to
a remote antiquity, while the belief among the peoples of Eastern
Asia which represents in the form of oxen water-gods, river-gods,
thunder-gods and chiao-dragons who exercise power over water, and the
 CONCLUSION 139

popular belief existing in various parts of Europe of water-spirits in the form

of oxen inhabiting seas, rivers, lakes and marshes, and others keeping herds
of oxen in pastures underneath the water, must belong to an order of ideas
more primitive than that of water-spirits in the form of horses, and probably
date from a period of greater antiquity. Judging from the fact that legends
in which the horse appears in close relationship with water are frequently
found among the peoples of Iranian origin who inhabited those regions serving
one might say as the connecting point between the eastern and western parts
of the Eurasian continent, in which such legends are widely distributed, the
present writer conjectures that at least a portion of the ideas concerning water-
horses, and beliefs in which water-gods combine the characteristics of horse-
gods, may have been carried at a comparatively late period by peoples of Ira-
nian origin from the Orient into the eastern and western parts of the Eurasian
continent. In China particularly, the group of ideas connecting together Dragon-horses cum
water-horses, dragon-horses and celestial horses existed from ancient times celestial horses
versusriver-oxen
chiefly in the western and northwestern parts of the country and thence further
cum earth-oxen
west towards Central Asia, whereas that of river-oxen and earth-oxen is found
distributed from China proper towards Southwestern China and the Indo-
Chinese peninsula, and there are grounds for thinking that legends of " water-
oxen " in Mongolia, Siberia and elsewhere were carried there by the advance
northwards of the ox from the south. We may regard this as reflecting the
fact that the horse and the ox originated in two different cultural milieus, one
northern and the other southern. The present writer has advanced a step
further from this in surmising that the group of ideas concerning dragon-
horses and celestial horses was first recorded in documents by ruling tribes
or classes of northern origin who built up a state in the valley of the Yellow
River, whence the ideas gradually sank to the level of popular beliefs, while
those connected with river-oxen and earth-oxen sprang originally from the
beliefs and customs of the agricultural population, were long preserved in
such a form, and then adopted into national ceremonies observed by kings
and nobles.
To summarize, the present writer is of the opinion that the close relation-
ship between water-gods and oxen and horses, examples of which are found
in the folklores of the entire Eurasian continent, began with the central
position
occupied by the ox in the fertility rites of agricultural societies, and then,with
the introduction of the horse into these agricultural regions from the
steppes
of Inner Asia, it either took its place by the side of the ox, or
replaced it entire-
ly, and so these horses became spirits and monsters inhabiting seas and rivers,
marshes and lakes, or came in their turn to be sacrificed to
water-gods.
Whether coincidences between such legends are the result of diffusion, or
due to independent development from a common cultural basis, must be looked
Continuity of the
into historically in each particular instance, but this has been beyond the human culture
 140 THE KAPPA LEGEND

scope of the present essay. But in either case, it is possible to see through
these phenomena how the various cultures of mankind form, both in time and
space, a continuous entity. And if we now turn back to the Japanese islands,
having as our background such a knowledge of culture historical and compara-
tive ethnology, it will be seen that the legends concerning the kappa trying
to lure horses into the water are essentially nothing more than a particular
type of the legends dealing with the association of horses with water-spirits
which are to be found all over the Eurasian continent.
But the origin of the kappa, a water-monster peculiar to Japan, and the
process by which these legends of their trying to lure horses into the water
came into being, contain many problems which, starting with the child water-
god, the forerunner of the kappa, are capable of being pursued indefinitely
in the domain of ethnology. In the present essay, the elucidation of the nature
Monkeys of the kappa as a whole has been left for further research, and only the re-
latiojships between monkeys and water-gods, and between monkeys and
horses, which have a direct bearing on these legends of the kappa trying to
lure horses into the water, have been dealt with in Chapter 3. The idea of the
association of monkeys with horses, an example of which are the monkeys
kept in stables, is to be found from ancient times in all parts of Eastern Asia,
from India to China and Japan. At the same time, monkeys themselves as
animals which by nature frequent places near the water have a tendency to
be treated as water-spirits. In the Japanese islands, whereas the ox and the
horse appeared in and out of the water-world either as the incarnation of water-
gods, or as animals held sacred to these water-gods, just as in other regions
of the Eurasian continent, some of the Japanese water-gods, in their de-
generate form, became peculiar monsters resembling monkeys, and did their
best to lure oxen and horses, particularly horses, into the wafer. Such is
the origin of these legends of the kappa (river-child) or enko (monkey), a
water-monster peculiar to Japanese folklore.
The above is a summary of the main subjects dealt with in this essay, but
many interesting problems of cultural history and ethnology were discussed
in connection with these subjects, some of which we give below.
God of thunder 1) The combination of oxen, the earth, the moon, the female principle,
and rain water, and the world of the dead is found nearly everywhere in the agricultural
zone in the southern part of the old continent, but the worship of the god of
thunder and rain, which is closely connected with oxen and the moon, was
also added to this lunar mythological complex, assumed a particular form, and
with the exception of a comparatively small region, spread over a vast area
to
stretching from Eastern Asia to Europe. A characteristic of the god common
all the regions in which he was worshipped, is his destruction of an evil dragon,
and he is often represented as riding on an ox, and later, a horse. In Eastern
Asia, the dragon which is a water-god, is at the same time the god of thunder
 CONCLUSION 141
and rain, and also closely connected with oxen and horses.
2) From Southeastern Asia to the southern part of China, the sacrifice Megalithic culture
of oxen, the whipping of clay oxen in spring, bull-fights, and other such re-
ligious customs connected with oxen having the character of a fertility rite,
seem to have spread in close association with the wave of megalithic culture,
together with such other customs as head-hunting and skull- and ancestor-
worship. Legends in Ssich'uan concerning stone oxen and stone rhinoceroses
which hold water-spirits in subjection may have some connection with this
particular culture.
3) Examples of the idea that water-spirits have an aversion for anything Taboo of iron
made of metal, particularly iron, are to be found nearly all over the world,
from Nordic legends of the Nakk to Eastern Asiatic ones about chiao-dragons
and the kappa, but Chinese legends of iron oxen quelling floods, and setting
up iron pillars to which to chain chiao-dragons, probably indicate, together
with legends found in South China of golden chains and golden oxen at the
bottom of lakes and rivers, a prolongation into the metal age of the stone
oxen and stone pillars of the megalithic culture. So that, the idea of using
iron objects as a charm against water-gods may have sprung originally from
stone oxen employed for the same purpose, which in their turn may have
possessed at first a sacrificial character.
Among these statements, there are some that must be regarded as prema-
ture conclusions, and there are others which only indicate the loci of the pro-
blems concerned, while leaving its development for future discussion. But
even within the scope of this restricted essay, it has been possible to point out The need of vision
the fact that much of the Japanese legends preserved from ancient times have from the standpoint
of world-history
connections, not only with the neighbouring cultures of Eastern Asia, but
with the cultures of peoples living in regions far removed from Japan. So
that, in studying problems of Japanese Volkskunde, it is always possible to
enhance one's apprehension of their culture historical significance by adopting
the methods of comparative ethnology. A Japanese thinker of the end of the
Tokugawa period has stressed the fact that the waters of the river flowing under
the Nihonbashi bridge in Edo finally merge with the River Thames in London.
In the currents of human culture also, there are aspects resembling the
streams that flow through the ocean. If it should be possible, then, to prove
that even behind such local, peculiarly Japanese phenomena as the kappa,
there lurks something which, flowing darkly along the depths of the civili-
zation of man, connects with the sea-god Poseidion of the Mediterranean
and Nakk, the Nordic water-spirit, the importance of the contribution this
would make towards opening up our eyes to the continuous oneness of human
culture would be indeed incalculable.
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--, 1925, Kainan Sh6ki SlpJd'Ea (" In SouthernJapan "), Tokyo.
, 1929, Nippon no Mukashi-banashiB*0I:0: S ('<Japanesefolk-tales "), Tokyo.
, 1935, T6no Monogatari ;fJ (" Storiesof the Tono district"), rev. 3rd ed., Tokyo.
, 1938, Mukashi-banashito Bungaku : ij_. (" Folk-tales and literature"), Tokyo.
--, 1940, Imo no Chikara n cJ-j (" The power wieldedby women"), Tokyo.
, 1940a, Rei Shutsugenno Chi r, ,kj~ (" Wheredivinebeings appear"), Minkan Densho, vol.
5, no. 7.
--, 1942, Momotarono Tanjdo]L]f6SIS[ (" The birthof Momotaro"), rev. ed., Tokyo.
, 1946, Monogatarito Katarimonofjtj Li ! (" Tales andprofessionally-recitedstories"), To-
kyo.
Yeh-jenchien-huaRJA (" Stray conversationsof the commonfolk ") by Ching Huan 3 (Sung
dynasty), contained in Wu-chaohsiao-shuota-kuan E/%JN~2 S (" A collectionof storiesof the
Five Dynasties"), Sung-j6n pai-chia AJ.i'W*.
ren-chingsui-shih-chi.,A .e Calenderoffestivals in Peking ") by Tun Ch'ung #,i5 (Ch'ing
("
dynasty): Japanese translation with commentary by Ono, Sh6nen /J\;gJ] f , Pekin Nenju-
gyoji-ki :t8+rT fTgi?, Iwanami Bunko ed., 1941.
Tiian-chung-chi-Z5.; by Kuo ; (Chin dynasty), according to the text in ii-han-shan-fang
chi-i-shu5iXi4 tg .
riian-shih 7; (" History of the iian dynasty"), compiled by Sung Lien 5[a (Ming dynasty),
210 vols.
Yu-hsiangLieh-hsiench'ian-chuan ;if'j/!j{f , (" Completeillustratedbiographiesof Taoist sages")
by Li P'an-lung ]ffgg and Wang Shih-chen F'-3:[tg (Ming dynasty).
Yule, H. and Cordier, H., 1903, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, 3rd ed., 3 vols., London.
Yu-ming-luMCI by Liu I-ch'ing V ], according to the text in the Lin-lang-pi-shihts'ung-shu
"0,t V> I_ 3.
ii-ti-chi-sheng ~ ~,S, compiled by Wang Hsiang-chih F._S (Sung dynasty), 200 vols.
Yu-yang-tsa-tsug f by Tuan Ch'eng-shih a.j5 (T'ang dynasty), 2 pts.
Zen-an Zuihitsu iSi (" Essays by Zen-an "), 1850, 2 vols., by Asakawa Kanae cjlJI]ft, con-
tained in Hyakka Setsurin, Sei-hen '1Qff ;4 iEt,f.
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the Kappa
of the late Tokugawa period
 1

Fig. 1 Kappa caught on the beach near Mito,

Hitachi province (p. 117). Zen-anZuihitsu

Fig. 2 Horse and water combined

in a Permian idol (p. 27)
Tallgren, 1928, Fig. 10

Fig. 3 Assyrian boat used about 700 B.C.

and depicted in the palace of Sargon
(p. 28). Howey,p. 148

?
ig
6 4~~~~
I A..
~?~~~~~~ ? I- ll

Fig. 4 Hippocampi depicted on the wall of Min-ui near Kizil, Chinese Turkestan (p. 17).
Griinwedel, Fig. 237b
2

a) From a bas-relief found

at Bregenz, Tyrol.

b) From a bronze statuette

found in Wiltshire.

Fig. 5 Celtic horse-goddess Epona, may originally be a deity of springs or rivers,

conceived as a spirited steed (p. 36). MacCulloch, 1918, P1. XV
 3

Fig. 6 Poseidon on horseback, on a fragment of 7th

century B.C. Corinthian pottery (p. 41).
Harrison, Fig. 2

4P

Eia01

Fig. 7 Poseidon as bull-god, on a black figured

amphora in the museum at Wiirzburg (p. 42).
Harrison,Fig. 3
4

Fig. 8 Spirals and serpents

engraved on each side of
a piece of mammoth tusk,
discovered at Malta near
Irkutsk (p. 56).
Hentze, Fig. 59, 60

Fig. 9 Horse-headed Oshira-

sama, Hirota village,
Kise-gun, Iwate prefecture
(p. 69).
Oshira-sama Zuroku, PI. 43

Fig. 10 Unicorns combined

with a pipal tree. A sealing
from Mohenjo-Daro (p. 97).
Marshall, Vol. 3,
P1. CXII, No. 387
 5

Fig. 11 She-rain with the rain-bow over her. A rock-painting

by the Bushmen, from a cave under the great precipice of
Klein Aasvogelkop, Rouxville District, Orange Free State (p.
60). Stow and Bleek,PI. 34

Fig. 12 The rain-bull, with two sorcerers who own it, a snake
called kanga wai, spotted. The shield-looking thing is said to be
a water's thing, but what they do not know. A rock-painting
by the Bushmen, from a small cave on the banks of the Sand
Spruit, Basutoland District (p. 60). Stow and Bleek,P1. 67 a
6

Fig. 13 Monkey holding a horse. The oldest known picture in Japan representing
the association of monkeys with horses, sketched on the lower panel of a miniature
tower containing some " bones of Buddha," in the temple Sh6my6-ji, Kanazawa,
Sagami province, in A.D. 1296. Preserved in the Kanazawa Bunko (Cf. p. 126).
Photographed by Mr. Kond6 Kihaku. Cf. Kond6, pp. 36-38
 7

Fig. 14 Monkey drawing a horse, carved in relief on a votive picture

dedicated in A.D. 1589 to the Sann6 Shrine, Hikita village, Musashi
province (Cf. p. 126). Shinpen Musashi Fudoki-ko
8

-a-tS-S N; /If-JSf
^ ^v^
. , , /: I . " -

Fig. 15 Charms to be pasted in a stable, issued by a shrine in Kiso

province (Cf. p. 126). Collection of Mr. Yanagita Kunio
 9

Fig. 16 Komahikisenor fancy coins

bearing effigies of monkeys lead-
ing horses (p. 126).
Collection of Mr. Nukui Ginjir6

Fig. 17 A charm to be pasted in

a stable, issued by the O.hiko
shrine, Harima province (Cf. p.
126).
Mr. Yamanaka Emi's collection
of Shinto and Buddhist charms
10

Fig. 18 Monkeys mounted on horseback found in designs of

northern Eurasian nomadic peoples (p. 134)

a) Pendant drop from Minussinsk, Siberia.

Later than 10th century A.D.
Salmony,1933, P1.XXV, No. 7

h) Pendant drop. Site unknown. Collec-

tion of Mr. Exner, Vicnna.
Bleichsteiner,1939, Taf. IV, Fig. 6

c) Pendant drop from Yekaterinovka.

i"F _aBiBllT^^ Tallgren,1932, Fig. 36.

c
 Fig. 19 Kappa from the river Chikugo-
gawa, Kyushu
Suiko Koryaku

Fig. 20 Skull supposed to be that of the

famous steed Surusumi, hung on a
pillar in the house of the family
Kumagai, Izumitani village. Suruga
province, said to protect the house
from fire, and heal or tame sick
or too high-spirited liorses when
tethered to the pillar (Cf. p. 69).

Shunkoku Zasshi, 25

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