ut the
conflict involved in this identification is less obtrusive than it is
either in America or in India. In Dravidian India the rulers and the
gods are identified with the serpent: but among the Aryans, who were
hostile to the Dravidians, the rain-god is the enemy of the Naga. In
America the confusion becomes more pronounced because Tlaloc (Chac)
represents both Indra and his enemy the serpent. The representation in
the codices of his conflict with the serpent is merely a tradition
which the Maya and Aztec scribes followed, apparently without
understanding its meaning.

In China and Japan the Indra-episode plays a much less prominent part,
for the dragon is, like the Indian Naga, a beneficent creature, which
approximates more nearly to the Babylonian Ea or the Egyptian Osiris. It
is not only the controller of water, but the impersonation of water and
its life-giving powers: it is identified with the emperor, with his
standard, with the sky, and with all the powers that give, maintain, and
prolong life and guard against all kinds of danger to life. In other
words, it is the bringer of good luck, the rejuvenator of mankind, the
giver of immortality.

But if the physiological functions of the dragon of the Far East can
thus be assimilated to those of the Indian Naga and the Babylonian and
Egyptian Water God, who is also the king, anatomically he is usually
represented in a form which can only be regarded as the Babylonian
composite monster, as a rule stripped of his wings, though not of his
avian feet.

In America we find preserved in the legends of the Indians an accurate
and unmistakable description of the Japanese dragon (which is mainly
Chinese in origin). Even Spinden, who "does not care to dignify by
refutation the numerous empty theories of ethnic connections between
Central America" [and in fact America as a whole] "and the Old World,"
makes the following statement (in the course of a discussion of the
myths relating to horned snakes in California): "a similar monster,
possessing antlers, and sometimes wings, is also very common in Algonkin
and Iroquois legends, although rare in art. As a rule the horned serpent
is a water spirit and an enemy of the thunder bird. Among the Pueblo
Indians the horned snake seems to have considerable prestige in
religious belief.... It lives in the water or in the sky and is
connected with rain or lightning."[158]

Thus we find stories of a dragon equipped with those distincti