Page:Chinese Life in the Tibetan Foothills.djvu/222

210 The inﬂuence of the dragon is very far reaching; the saying runs (飛龍在天), fei lung tsai t‘ien, the ﬂying dragon is in heaven.

Ti mei lung shên is the dragon’s pulse of the earth; the geomantic inﬂuence.

Hai lung wang, the dragon of the deep, who has his dwelling in the depths of the sea.

The wicked dragon: 惡龍難絆地頭蛇. The wicked dragon has difficulty in tripping up local snakes. A wicked emperor cannot overcome public opinion.

Another saying is, When [sic] the dragon moves a step even the grass renews its spring appearance.

Clouds follow the dragon and wind the tiger.

When a sage appears all nature stares.

If a snake bites a man there is a medicine to heal it, but if man bites man there is none. This latter half of the proverb refers to being wrongly involved in the law courts, a thing difficult indeed to heal; but a real human bite is also very difficult to cure, and they are not uncommon among the many quarrels of the people.

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