e;
she also was the vulture (Mut); and in the earliest version she did the
slaughter with a knife or an axe with which she was animistically
identified.

But Osiris also was the weapon of destruction, both in the form of the
flood (for he was the personification of the river) and the rain-storms
from heaven. But he was also an instrument for vanquishing the demon,
when the intoxicating beer or the sedative drink (the potency of which
was due to the indwelling spirit of the god) was the chosen means of
overcoming the dragon.

This, in brief, is the framework of the dragon-story. The early Trinity
as the hero, armed with the Trinity as weapon, slays the dragon,
which again is the same Trinity. With its illimitable possibilities for
dramatic development and fantastic embellishment with incident and
ethical symbolism, this theme has provided countless thousands of
story-tellers with the skeleton which they clothed with the living flesh
of their stories, representing not merely the earliest theories of
astronomy and meteorology, but all the emotional conflicts of daily
life, the struggle between light and darkness, heat and cold, right and
wrong, justice and injustice, prosperity and adversity, wealth and
poverty. The whole gamut of human strivings and emotions was drawn
into the legend until it became the great epic of the human spirit and
the main theme that has appealed to the interest of all mankind in
every age.

An ancient Chinese philosopher, Wang Fu, writing in the time of the Han
Dynasty, enumerates the "nine resemblances" of the dragon. "His horns
resemble those of a stag, his head that of a camel, his eyes those of a
demon, his neck that of a snake, his belly that of a clam, his scales
those of a carp, his claws those of an eagle, his soles those of a
tiger, his ears those of a cow."[134] But this list includes only a
small minority of the menagerie of diverse creatures which at one time
or another have contributed their quota to this truly astounding
hotch-potch.

This composite wonder-beast ranges from Western Europe to the Far East
of Asia, and as we shall see, also even across the Pacific to America.
Although in the different localities a great number of most varied
ingredients enter into its composition, in most places where the dragon
occurs the substratum of its anatomy consists of a serpent or a
crocodile, usually with the scales of a fish for covering, and the feet
and wings, and sometimes also the