Note 9 — Chapter VII · Dragon Folk-stories
Reading edition
In China the dragon’s kupua (to use the Polynesian term) figures in various stories. We meet with the “Red Cloud herb”, or the “Dragon Cloud herb”, which cures diseases. It is the gift of the dragon, and apparently a dragon kupua. Other curative herbs are the “dragon-whisker’s herb” and the “dragon’s liver”, a species of gentian, which is in Japan a badge of the Minamoto family. The “dragon’s spittle” had curative qualities, the essence of life being in the body moisture of a deity. The pearl, which the dragon spits out, has, or is, “soul substance”. The plum tree was in China connected with the dragon. A story tells that once a dragon was punished by having its ears cut off. Its blood fell on the ground, and a plum tree sprang up; it bore fleshy fruit without kernels.9 When in an ancient Egyptian story the blood of the Bata bull falls to the ground two trees containing his soul-forms grow in a night.10