Yinglong


Yinglong is a winged dragon and rain deity in ancient Chinese mythology.

Name

This legendary creature's name combines yìng 應 "respond; correspond; answer; reply; agree; comply; consent; promise; adapt; apply" and lóng 龍 "Chinese dragon". Although the former character is also pronounced yīng 應 "should; ought to; need to; proper; suitable", yinglong 應龍 definitively means "responsive dragon; responding dragon" and not "proper dragon".

Classical usages

The Chinese classics frequently mention yinglong 應龍 "a winged rain-dragon" in myths about the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, especially the Yellow Emperor and his alleged descendant King Yu. The examples below, limited to books with English translations, are roughly arranged in chronological order, although some heterogeneous texts have uncertain dates of composition.

''Chuci''

The Chu Ci "Songs of Chu" mentions Yinglong helping King Yu 禹, the legendary founder of the Xia dynasty, to control the mythic Great Deluge. According to Chinese mythology, Emperor Yao 堯 assigned Yu's father Gun 鯀, who was supposedly a descendant of the Yellow Emperor, to control massive flooding, but he failed. Yao's successor, Emperor Shun 舜, had Gun executed and his body exposed, but when Gun's corpse did not decompose, it was cut open and Yu was born by parthenogenesis. Shun appointed Yu to control the floods, and after succeeding through diligently constructing canals, Yu divided ancient China into the Nine Provinces.
The Heavenly Questions section characterizes as "a shamanistic catechism consisting of questions about cosmological, astronomical, mythological and historical matters", and "is written in an archaic language to be found nowhere else in the Chu anthology" excepting "one or two short passages" in the Li Sao section.
The Chuci commentary of Wang Yi 王逸 answers that Yinglong drew lines on the ground to show Yu where to dig drainage and irrigation canals.

''Classic of Mountains and Seas''

The Classic of Mountains and Seas 山海經 records variant Yinglong myths in two chapters of "The Classic of the Great Wilderness" section. The "Responding Dragon" is connected with two deities who rebelled against the Yellow Emperor: the war-god and rain-god Chiyou 蚩尤 "Jest Much" and the drought-demon Kua Fu 夸父 "Boast Father".
"The Classic of the Great Wilderness: The East" mentions Yinglong killing both Chiyou "Jest Much" and Kua Fu "Boast Father", and describes using Yinglong images in sympathetic magic for rainmaking.
Guo Pu's commentary mentions tulong 土龍 "earth/clay dragon", "The earthen dragons of the present day find their origin in this."
"The Classic of the Great Wilderness: The North" mentions Yinglong in two myths about killing Kua Fu "Boast Father". The first version says Yinglong killed him in punishment for drinking rivers and creating droughts while chasing the sun.
The second mythic version says the Yellow Emperor's daughter Ba 魃 "Droughtghoul" killed Chiyou "Jest Much" after Yinglong failed. Ba is a drought-demon analogous with Kua Fu.
Based on textual history of Yinglong, Chiyou, Kua Fu, and related legends, Bernhard Karlgren concludes that "all these nature myths are purely Han-time lore, and there is no trace of them in pre-Han sources", with two exceptions. Ba, who is "a very old folk-lore figure", already occurs in the c. Spring and Autumn period Classic of Poetry, and Yinglong, "who directed the flow of rivers and seas", occurs in the c. Warring States period Tianwen.

''Huainanzi''

The Huainanzi uses Yinglong 應龍 in three chapters. Ying also occurs in ganying 感應 "resonance; reaction; interaction; influence; induction", which Charles Le Blanc posits as the Huannanzi text's central and pivotal idea.
"Forms of Earth" explains how animal evolution originated through dragons, with Yinglong as the progenitor of quadrupeds. Carr notes this Responsive Dragon is usually pictured with four wings, perhaps paralleling four legs.
All creatures, winged, hairy, scaly and mailed, find their origin in the dragon. The yu-kia produced the flying dragon, the flying dragon gave birth to the phoenixes, and after them the luan-niao and all birds, in general the winged beings, were born successively. The mao-tuh produced the ying-lung, the ying-lung gave birth to the kien-ma, and afterwards the k'i-lin and all quadrupeds, in general the hairy beings, were born successively. …

Wolfram Eberhard suggests this "otherwise unknown" maodu "hairy calf" alludes to the "water buffalo".
"Peering into the Obscure" describes Fuxi and Nüwa being transported by yinglong 應龍 and qingqiu 青虯 "green qiu-dragons", while accompanied by baichi 白螭 "white chi-dragons" and benshe 奔蛇 "speeding snakes".
They rode the thunder chariot, using winged dragons as the inner pair and green dragons as the outer pair. They clasped the magic jade tablets and displayed their charts. Yellow clouds hung inter-woven and they were preceded by white serpents and followed by speeding snakes.

Gao Yu's Huainanzi commentary glosses yinglong 應龍 as a "winged dragon" and qiu 虯 as a "hornless dragon".
"The Art of Rulership" parallels the yinglong with the tengshe 騰蛇 "soaring snake" dragon. "The t'eng snake springs up into the mist; the flying ying dragon ascends into the sky mounting the clouds; a monkey is nimble in the trees and a fish is agile in the water." Ames compares the Hanfeizi attribution of this yinglong and tengshe metaphor to the Legalist philosopher Shen Dao.
Shen Tzu said: "The flying dragon mounts the clouds and the t'eng snake wanders in the mists. But when the clouds dissipate and the mists clear, the dragon and the snake become the same as the earthworm and the large-winged black ant because they have lost that on which they ride.

Other texts

Yinglong occurs in various additional Chinese texts. For instance, the Records of the Grand Historian, Book of Han, and Book of the Later Han histories.
The early third century CE Guangya dictionary defines yinglong "winged dragon" as one of the principal dragons. "If a dragon has scales, he is called jiaolong ; if wings, yinglong ; if a horn, qiulung ; and if he has no horn, he is called qilong ".
The early sixth century CE Shuyiji 述異記 "Records of Strange Things" lists yinglong as a 1000-year-old dragon. "A water snake after five hundred years changes into a jiao, a jiao after a thousand years changes into a long, a long after five hundred years changes into a jiulong and after a thousand years into a yinglong ".

Comparative mythology

The yinglong mythically relates with other Chinese flying dragons and rain deities such as the tianlong, feilong, hong, and jiao.

Flying dragons

Visser mentions that texts like the Daoist Liexian Zhuan often record "flying dragons or ying-lung drawing the cars of gods or holy men". Besides the Huainanzi mentioning a pair of yinglong pulling the chariot of Fuxi and Nüwa, analogous examples include legends of Huangdi ascending to heaven on a dragon and Yu riding a carriage drawn by two flying dragons. Carr compares pairs of Yinglong with motifs on Chinese bronzes showing two symmetrical dragons intertwined like Fuxi and Nüwa.
Porter interprets the tail of the terrestrial Yinglong, which "uses its tail to sketch on the land a map of channel-like formations whereby the floodwaters were allowed to drain", as the tail of the celestial dragon Scorpius, which is "situated precisely where the Milky Way splits into two branches". The Shiyiji 拾遺記 retells the Yu flood-control myth in terms of the Four Symbols, namely, the Yellow Dragon or Azure Dragon and the Black Tortoise. "Yü exhausted his energy creating channels, diverting the waters and establishing mountains as the yellow dragon dragged its tail in front and the black turtle carried green-black mud in back."

Rain dragons

"All traditions about Ying-lung are vague", writes Eberhard. Although the legendary Yinglong dragon helped Yu to control floods, "Yü was frequently bothered by dragons", most notably the flood-deity Gonggong's minister Xiangliu 相柳. Eberhard, based on Sun Jiayi's identification of Xiangliu as an eel, concludes that Yinglong was an eel as well:
Eberhard concludes that Yinglong and the mythic elements about Yu "testify to the connection between Yü and the cultures of the south, which differ from Yü myths of the Ba culture". Carr cites Chen Mengjia's hypothesis, based on studies of Shang dynasty oracle bones, that Yinglong was originally associated with the niqiu 泥鰍 "loach".
Yinglong representations were anciently used in rain-magic ceremonies, where Eberhard says, "the most important animal is always a dragon made of clay". Besides controlling rain and drought, the Yinglong Responsive Dragon did something else: "With his tail he drew lines in the earth and thus created the rivers … In other words, the dragon made the waterways – the most important thing for all cultivators of rice.