Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Dragons(2)

In Japan, we have a lot of words about dragon. "Nobori-Ryu" means dragon who go up to sky, "Haku-Ryu" means dragon who is messenger of God called "Tentei", "Han-Ryu" means dragon who coiled itself up and doesn't ascension yet, "Sen-Ryu" means dragon who lurk in pond or deep, "Mizuchi-Ryu" means who doesn't change into dragon. There are many words another these.
Why Japanese has a lot of words about dragon? Because it make root in Japan or Japanese life, I think. (In deed, in Alaska, there are so many of words about snow. Their life is bound up with snow.) In China, dragons have attribution of water. When people had drought, they prayed to dragon to cause rain. Japanese image of dragon is same as China. They were agricultural people. So their life was bound up with water. It means dragon who symbolize water is important existence. So it is good existence for Chinese and Japanese.

1 comment:

Manami said...

I amazed that there are a lot of names of dragons.
I wonder where do you get those imformations about dragons.