ABSTRACT
The dragon is not a conception of the Chinese mind alone-not even as a rain god. Dragons, or creatures very like them, are mentioned in the
Bible. Dragons ornamented the gates of the the Kings of Thebes and Delphi, as they did those of the Emperors of China. They were prominent in the palace of Sennacherib. They appear in many European myths and legends, to wit, the story of Perseus who rescued Andromeda from a dragon, the story of Siegfried who killed the dragon at Worms, the story of St. George and the Dragon-to quote only a few examples. In addition to these national dragons, we have records of similar monsters whose traditions are attached to cities or rivers, as, for example, the dragon of the Nile, the dragon of Naples, the dragon of ArIes, of Marseilles, of Norwich, etc.1
