The question of the relation be tween the sun and the dragon is inexhaustible, whether one approaches it from the Chinese or from the European angle, and all the writer is trying to do is to suggest that there are reasons for thinking that the Chinese concep-ways tried to ward off the evil by shouting, pounding on gongs or fir ing off guns. In some traditions the dragon has come to be identified with this sun-devouring. beast, Although the°animal that pursues the sun in Chinese folk-lore is most Hat, Prxine, riga of the dragon was brought ints the country by prehistoric im: grants from the West. Some con: fusion and inconsistency hat into the various dragon conceptions and they have in the sun myths of the scattered Indo-European peoples, so that both in China and heathen Occident, the dragon did not always appear to be another manifestation of the sun god, but enemy to light, the gods and humanity. Alien influences and environment would account for much warping of the earlier myths. The heat of the sun dace not seem equal ly a blessing in all ct'mates or at all times, and it is not difficult imagine that a people who had hrd bitter experience with floods or with
the enemy of the frondly sun.
gor dignant being ati would come to think preserves the identity of the sun spirit and the subterranean wat spirit, another presents the idea of the dragon as the would-be Jesteoyer of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.