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The Evolution of the Dragon By: Grafton Elliot Smith (1871-1937) |
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BY G. ELLIOT SMITH, M.A., M.D., F.R.S. PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
ILLUSTRATED
Manchester: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY London, New York, Chicago, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras 1919
PREFACE.
Some explanation is due to the reader of the form and scope of these
elaborations of the lectures which I have given at the John Rylands
Library during the last three winters. They deal with a wide range of topics, and the thread which binds them
more or less intimately into one connected story is only imperfectly
expressed in the title "The Evolution of the Dragon". The book has been written in rare moments of leisure snatched from a
variety of arduous war time occupations; and it reveals only too plainly
the traces of this disjointed process of composition. On 23 February,
1915, I presented to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society
an essay on the spread of certain customs and beliefs in ancient times
under the title "On the Significance of the Geographical Distribution of
the Practice of Mummification," and in my Rylands Lecture two weeks
later I summed up the general conclusions.[1] In view of the lively
controversies that followed the publication of the former of these
addresses, I devoted my next Rylands Lecture (9 February, 1916) to the
discussion of "The Relationship of the Egyptian Practice of
Mummification to the Development of Civilization". In preparing this
address for publication in the Bulletin some months later so much
stress was laid upon the problems of "Incense and Libations" that I
adopted this more concise title for the elaboration of the lecture which
forms the first chapter of this book. This will explain why so many
matters are discussed in that chapter which have little or no
connexion either with "Incense and Libations" or with "The Evolution
of the Dragon". The study of the development of the belief in water's life giving
attributes, and their personification in the gods Osiris, Ea, Soma
[Haoma] and Varuna, prepared the way for the elucidation of the history
of "Dragons and Rain Gods" in my next lecture (Chapter II). What played
a large part in directing my thoughts dragon wards was the discussion of
certain representations of the Indian Elephant upon Precolumbian
monuments in, and manuscripts from, Central America ( Nature , 25 Nov.,
1915; 16 Dec., 1915; and 27 Jan., 1916). For in the course of
investigating the meaning of these remarkable designs I discovered that
the Elephant headed rain god of America had attributes identical with
those of the Indian Indra (and of Varuna and Soma) and the Chinese
dragon. The investigation of these identities established the fact
that the American rain god was transmitted across the Pacific from India
via Cambodia. The intensive study of dragons impressed upon me the importance of the
part played by the Great Mother, especially in her Babylonian avatar
as Tiamat, in the evolution of the famous wonder beast. Under the
stimulus of Dr. Rendel Harris's Rylands Lecture on "The Cult of
Aphrodite," I therefore devoted my next address (14 November, 1917) to
the "Birth of Aphrodite" and a general discussion of the problems of
Olympian obstetrics. Each of these addresses was delivered as an informal demonstration of
large series of lantern projections; and, as Mr. Guppy insisted upon the
publication of the lectures in the Bulletin , it became necessary,
as a rule, many months after the delivery of each address, to rearrange
my material and put into the form of a written narrative the story
which had previously been told mainly by pictures and verbal comments
upon them. In making these elaborations additional facts were added and new points
of view emerged, so that the printed statements bear little resemblance
to the lectures of which they pretend to be reports. Such
transformations are inevitable when one attempts to make a written
report of what was essentially an ocular demonstration, unless every one
of the numerous pictures is reproduced... Continue reading book >>
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Genres for this book |
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Myths/Legends |
Religion |
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