Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/411

12 s. i. MAY 20, i9i6.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

405 le poisson se nomine ChampaS M. Abel des Michels ecrit ('Luc Van tien,' p. 66, note): 'Dans la province de Thai Nguyen (Tong-king) est un golfe oii se trouve un grand rocher, au pied duquel un jeu de la nature a form6 trois degres assez hauts, et disposes comnie les marches d'un escalier. D'apres une croyance populaire, Ton verrait tous les ans, a des 4poques determiners, plusieurs especes de poissons s'y r^unir et lutter a qui bondira par dessus. Ceux qui seraient assez heureux pour arriver jusqu'au degr6 de plus eleve" seraient, apres y avoir sjoum6 un certain temps sans prendre aucune nourriture, transform es en animaux terrestres. A ces epoques fixes, connues des habitants, un grand nombre d'entre eux s'y rendraient pour ramasser les poissons qui, ne pouvant franchir les trois degres, se brisent la tete contre le rocher.' II s'agit d'ailleurs dans tout ceci d'un fait naturel transform^ en tegende, de la monte de certains poissons pour faire leur frai. Peut-etre ce poisson est-il 1'alose, le sam lai, si recherch^ dans 1'Extreme Orient, qui peiietre dans les fleuves en mai et retourne a la mer en septembre . . ." Pp. 194-5.

This Tongkingese belief is evidently a duplicate of the above-mentioned Chinese opinion, which runs as follows in its original records :

" Chang Hwa's ' Poh-wuh-chi,' written in the third century A.D., states that annually near the end of the spring the crowds of carps as well as ' yellow-fish '* come to the bottom of the cataract of Dragon's Gate and vie with one another to ascend it. After all, no more than seventy-one fishes are able to effect the ascension. On the safe arrival of each of them at the head of the falls, it would suddenly become rainy and stormy, and a spontaneous fire would burn out its tail to turn it into a dragon. Another book, ' Sin- shi-san-tsin-ki,' written in the fifth century, relates that, out of the assemblage of large carps beneath Dragon's Gate, only a few are meta- morphosed to dragons after ascending it, whereas the majority of several thousands that has been unable to do so remains as fish, each marked on its front and stripped of the branchial arches." ' Yuen-kien-lui-han,' torn, ccccxxxvii.

" It is commonly said a carp could turn itself into a dragon, which should appear not necessarily true. Indeed, this fish is endowed with a mystic nature enabling it to leap an unusual distance both in rivers and in lakes. Now the fall of Dragon's Gate is so high and precipitous as to be utterly insurmountable to all manners of fishes ; yet a carp can ascend it, whence the popular belief in its dragonish metamorphosis. Hu Shin [at the close of the first century] said : ' Every third moon of the year, the wet-fish [a sturgeon] ascends the river, and is turned into the dragon, should it succeed to pass over the torrent of Dragon's Gate.' But he did not. mention the carp hi this connexion. In the * '.Tang-yun,' published in 750, we are told, ' Mount Fung, otherwise named Mount Lun-mun (Dragon's Gate), stands in Fung- chau. A huge fish, after ascending it, is trans-

" Chinese, Hwa.n^-yii. This is a sturgeon, Acipenser mantchuricus, Basil, according to O. F. von Mollendorff (Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, vol. xi. p. Ill, Shanghai, 1877).

formed into a dragon, but in case it is incompetent to the task it repeatedly strikes its forehead against the rocks, and gives out much blood, making all the water red.' It does not specify the carp neither. Hence we should understand the popular opinion to be groundless." Sie Chung-Chi, ' Wu-tsah-tsu,' c. 1610, torn. ix.

Notwithstanding this learned refutation, the Chinese idea of the carp's transformation was early introduced to Japan, where, having given birth to many a legend and folk-lore, it remains to this day much swaying the mind and usage of the people. So they deem the carp as a symbol of promotion. On the fifth day of the fifth moon, festivity is observed in honour of male children ; every family possessed of any such plants about its house a flag figured with a huge carp ascending a waterfall, a happy expression of the parental hope that the child should grow a distinguished man. Down to the period of Genroku (1688-1703), there existed the so-called Dragon's Pond on a hilltop in the province Oomi. Tradition says that several times a carp leaped out of it, clambered to the summit of a rock south-east thereof, struck it repeatedly with its tail until the latter was torn asunder, and then,, becoming a flying dragon, it ascended to heaven (Sogawa, ' Oomi Yochi Shiryaku,' finished in 1734, torn. Ixxix.). And, though now apparently devoid of any attaching legends, the standing of a dragon-god's shrine in the so-called Carp's Fen near the Temple of Kasuga at Oohara, prov. Yama- shiro, points to a similar association having

fiven rise to it (Byakue, ' Sanshu Meiseki hi,' 1702, torn. x.). For the account and explanation of the allied Chinese, Japanese, and Indian belief in the metamorphoses of snakes into dragons, see my article on ' The Origin and Development of the Dragon ' in The Taiyo, vol. xxii. No. 1, p. 178, Tokyo,, January, 1916.

However, the carp Japanese animal held ascending to heaven, following in Kikuoka's ' Shokoku Rijindan,' written in the eighteenth century, torn. ii. : " In the sea of Neyaura, which is situate on the boundary line of the two provinces Echigo and Dewa, there is to be seen a tall, round, gigantic rock more than 600 feet in diameter. It is called Neya no Hokotate (Erect Spear of Neya). Popular tradition says, should any hermit-crab climb up to its top, it would be thereby enabled to ascend to heaven. But of course the goal is so unattain- able that all that try it fall down from the midway as is evident from a vast heap of their empty shells as numberless as the grains of sand."

KUMAGUSTJ MlNAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan. .,

is not the only to be capable of Thus, we read as