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Hey there!
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I’m Mike Rugnetta, this is Crashcourse mythology
and today we continue our look at mythical
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creatures with one of the most popular beasts
of all time: [[[Thoth stands up very straight.]]]
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Dragons!
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Aaaand also serpents – but mostly DRAGONS!
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[[[Thoth slightly disappointed.]]]
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Hide your thatched roofed cottages and get
ready for some burninating.
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Intro
To talk about dragons, we gotta start with
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snakes.
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In myth, snakes often serve a function similar
to more terrifying creatures.
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They’re etymologically similar, too.
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In fact, the Latin word draco is used for
both dragons and snakes.
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In the Judeo Christian tradition, the most
important serpent is that apple-shilling,
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well… snake... from the garden of Eden.
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Fun fact: he didn’t really start out as
a snake; he had legs until the Lord punished
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him by making him slither on his belly.
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No more scampering for that guy.
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In the Babylonian stories of creation, we
learn about the enormous snake Tiamat, which
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we’ve mentioned before.
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Across the Ancient Near East, we find a number
of snakes associated with goddesses: Ishtar
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in Mesopotamia, Wadjet in Egypt, and even
Athena in Greece, when she wasn’t hanging
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out with owls.
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Somewhere along the way snakes start sort
of morphing into dragons.
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Not… literally.
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That would be dope tho.
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I mean in their stories.
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Babylon had guardian dragons called Mušḫuššu,
with a serpent’s head and body, the front
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feet of a lion and a poisonous scorpion’s
tail.
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In Biblical Babylon, king Nebuchadnezzar kept
a dragon in the temple of the god Bel and
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suggested that Daniel, a noble youth of Jerusalem,
worship it.
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Daniel said that he preferred to worship the
Lord and that he could kill the dragon even
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without a weapon.
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Daniel killed it by feeding it cakes of boiled
pitch, fat and hair, which made it explode.
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For this mess, the king threw Daniel into
the lion’s den.
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In the Persian Book of Kings, the hero Rostam
kills a dragon that can make itself invisible.
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He does this with the help of his trusty horse,
Rakhsh.
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According to the long epic poem: “when Rakhsh
saw the strength of its massive body bearing
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down on Rostam, he laid back his ears and
sank his teeth into the dragon’s shoulders.
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He tore at the dragon’s flesh, and the lion-like
Rostam was astonished at his ferocity.”
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Dragons play a significant role in Welsh mythology,
as well.
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Wales even has a red dragon on its flag.
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And this isn’t just any dragon -- it appears
in the nation’s cultural epic, the Mabinogion.
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Ages ago the red dragon was living peacefully
on the British Isles.
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And then one day, an all-white dragon invades
and attempts to seize control of Britain.
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The red dragon defends its territory, and
the two become locked in a fierce battle.
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The noise of their fighting is terrible!
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It causes crops to fail and women to miscarry,
so the British king Lludd digs a huge pit
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and fills it with mead.
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Turns out dragons, at least British ones,
can’t resist mead.
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And so they drink the pit dry and fall into
a deep sleep.
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With the two beasts unconscious, Ludd and
his men rush to imprison them.
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Over in England, St. George is famous for
slaying a dragon, though the story takes place
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in Silene, likely modern-day Libya.
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There, the country is being tormented by a
dragon, and the only way to appease it is
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to sacrifice a sheep and a virgin ... every
day.
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And this goes on for quite some time, but
when the King’s daughter is the chosen virgin,
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St. George appears.
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Seems like maybe he could have shown up a
little bit earlier, but in any case he’s
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here now.
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He charges the dragon and wounds it with a
lance.
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Then, he asks the princess for her garter
and throws it around the dragon’s neck.
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After this, the dragon is so docile that it
follows the princess back to the capital where
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St. George kills it in the town square after
making all of the people promise to convert
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to Christianity.
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Man sometimes mythological stories feel a
LOT like mad libs…
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GEORGE defeated a DRAGON with a GARTER and
got the PEASANTS to respect MY BUTT-HEY, STAN.
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COME ON.
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Nearby, in Germany, we meet another famous
dragon, Fafnir, who actually started out life
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... as a dwarf prince.
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In German mythology, Fafnir and his brother
Regin kill their father, the dwarf king, to
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steal his gold.
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Then Fafnir takes the gold from his brother
and turns into a dragon to guard it.
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Fafnir is killed and his crimes are avenged
by the great hero Sigurd (AKA Siegfried).
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No word on whether he used a giant ice spear
or brought Fafnir back to life as Ice Fafnir.
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Also, QUICK ASIDE: if you’ve pulled a caper
that requires you to transform into a dragon,
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things probably AREN’T gonna turn out well
for you.
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We can find even more tales of dragons, and
some of a slightly different variety, by moving
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to Asia.
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According to Lihui Yang and Deming An, authors
of the Handbook of Chinese Mythology, the
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dragon “is the controller of the rain, the
river, the sea and all other kinds of water;
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symbol of divine power and energy; great helper
of heroes; and bearer of gods and demigods.”
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To see these Chinese Dragons in action, we’re
going look at a story of creation for dragons
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and humanity alike in the Thoughtbubble.
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Long ago, the earth was divided into five
parts.
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Birds lived in the east, ruled by the phoenix.
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Beasts lived in the south under their king
the tiger.
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The west was home to insects, ruled by the
bee.
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And the north was occupied by fishes and shrimp
under the benign rule of the giant turtle.
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A monkey, with six arms and three heads, lived
in the center.
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And one by one the kings of the other four
regions would visit this monkey and have sex
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with her.
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Eventually, the monkey became pregnant and
after 9,900 years she gave birth to ninety-nine
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eggs.
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All of the eggs, except the biggest one, were
stolen by the kings of the other four realms.
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The monkey guarded that last egg until it
hatched.
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Out of this egg came ... the python.
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His mother ordered him to retrieve the other
ninety-eight eggs, and so off he went on his
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quest, defeating and devouring birds, beasts,
insects, fishes AND shrimp that got in his
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way.
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But as he ate all that protein, the python
changed appearance.
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He grew wings.
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His head turned into a bull’s head with
deer horns and a pig’s mouth.
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He grew hawk’s legs attached to his serpent’s
torso.
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He became ... not a python ... but a dragon.
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The tiger, the bee, the phoenix and the turtle
were so frightened that they returned the
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other eggs to him without question.
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The dragon then broke every egg in turn, each
one giving birth to a new creature.
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All of them spread out across the earth, except
the last two.
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Out of those emerged man and woman, and from
these two people all of the other humans were
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born.
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Thanks, Thoughtbubble.
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So it’s been a while since we’ve had a
nice creation story.
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Maybe you can see just how different this
dragon is from the ones in the Western tradition.
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The deer horns and the pig mouth are… notable,
for instance.
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Chinese dragons have lots of variation.
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In some stories the dragon has a horse’s
head, its eyes are sometimes those of a rabbit.
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Sometimes it has the scales of a fish and
the abdomen of a clam.
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Sometimes tiger paws and sometimes eagle claws.
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The Chinese dragon also has a special relationship
to water - which we’re going to see in this
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next story.
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Once, a black dragon is born to a poor human
family in Shandong province, which is a pretty
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serious shock to his human mother.
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It’s such a shock that when he starts to
breastfeed, she faints.
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And I mean, can you really blame her?
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When his father comes home and finds his wife
unconscious with a strange dragon baby, he
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grows angry and hits the baby dragon with
a spade, cutting off part of its tail.
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The injured dragon is so upset that he bursts
through the roof and flies away.
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Many stories say he goes to northeast China
and settles in the Black Dragon River where
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he becomes the river’s god.
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He takes his mother’s name, Li, and becomes
Short-Tailed Old Li.
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Years later, back in Shandong province, Short-Tailed
Old Li’s mother dies.
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The dragon flies back to visit her grave,
which he does every year on the same date,
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May 13, to pay his respects.
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Each time he returns he brings rain, and so
from then on, he’s worshipped as a rain
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god.
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Throughout Chinese myths, dragons are associated
with rain and storms.
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Wherever a dragon appears, there are clouds.
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Because of this, the Chinese developed a number
of rituals to get dragons to show up, and
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make it rain during droughts.
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One of these is to throw a tiger’s bone
into a pool where a dragon lives.
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Tigers are the enemies of dragons, and so
their bones should irritate them, causing
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them to fly up wildly from the pool, thus
triggering a storm.
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If you don’t have any tiger bones, you can
also try throwing your garbage into the dragon
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pool.
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Dragons are notoriously fastidious and their
inability to deal with the mess could force
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them to bring rain and wash the pool clean.[1]
Dragons are also used as symbols of royal
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power.
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From Chinese Imperial Palaces to British heraldry,
kings love to see themselves as harnessing
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the power of dragons.
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The Japanese royal family even claimed descent
from dragons.
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Daenerys Targaryen's claim to the Iron Throne
stems from her status as the mother of dragons.
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And yet, there are important differences between
dragons in the east and the west.
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In the west, dragons are almost always monsters
with fiery breath waiting to be offed by heroes
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or gods.
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Killing a dragon is an important rite of passage
for many western heroes, sorta like a violent,
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scaly bar mitzvah with swords and fire breath.
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But, in Asian myths, dragons are often benign.
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Yes, they’re powerful and fearsome, but
they bring rain instead of fire, which is
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usually great news for agrarian people.
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At least ... in moderation.
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And most uniquely, in Chinese mythology, sometimes
it’s the dragon that gets to be the hero.
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Next time we’re going to round out our monster
mash with an episode on those witches of eastwick,
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those maidens of malevolence: HAGS.
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________________
[1] Handbook of Chinese Mythology p. 108
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[2] Rosen, p52
[3] Rosen p. 52 and Daniel 14: 23-27
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[4] Ferdowsi, A. Shanameh: The Persian Book
of Kings.
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Penguin 2006 p. 155
16722
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