links in the chain of events which made the pearl and
the spirally-coiled arm of the octopus the sign of thunder.[171]

It seems quite clear to me that de Visser's pearl-moon theory is the
true interpretation. But when the pearl-ball was provided with the
spiral, painted red, and given flames to represent its power of emitting
light and shining by night, the fact of the spiral ornamentation and of
the pearl being one of the surrogates of the thunder-weapon was
rationalized into an identification of the ball with thunder and the
light it was emitting as lightning. It is, of course, quite irrational
for a thunder-god to swallow his own thunder: but popular
interpretations of subtle symbolism, the true explanation of which is
deeply buried in the history of the distant past, are rarely logical and
almost invariably irrelevant.

In his account of the state of Brahmanism in India after the times of
the two earlier Vedas, Professor Hopkins[172] throws light upon the real
significance of the ball in the dragon-symbolism. "Old legends are
varied. The victory over Vritra is now expounded thus: Indra, who slays
Vritra, is the sun. Vritra is the moon, who swims into the sun's mouth
on the night of the new moon. The sun rises after swallowing him, and
the moon is invisible because he is swallowed. The sun vomits out the
moon, and the latter is then seen in the west, and increases again, to
serve the sun as food. In another passage it is said that when the moon
is invisible he is hiding in plants and waters."

This seems to clear away any doubt as to the significance of the ball.
It is the pearl-moon, which is both swallowed and vomited by the dragon.

The snake takes a more obtrusive part in the Japanese than in the
Chinese dragon and it frequently manifests itself as a god of the sea.
The old Japanese sea-gods were often female water-snakes. The cultural
influences which reached Japan from the south by way of Indonesia--many
centuries before the coming of Buddhism--naturally emphasized the
serpent form of the dragon and its connexion with the ocean.

But the river-gods, or "water-fathers," were real four-footed dragons
identified with the dragon-kings of Chinese myth, but at the same time
were strictly homologous with the Naga Rajas or cobra-kings of India.

The Japanese "Sea Lord" or "Sea Snake" was also called
"Abundant-Pearl-Prince," who had a magnificent palace at the bottom of
the sea. His daughter ("Abundant-Pearl-Princ