L Aufsätze

N a i-1 u n g T in g , M a comb , Illinois

The Holy Man and the Snake-Woman

A Study of a Lamia Story in Asian and European Literatlire*

For years, oriental scholars have held that Keats's Lamia and the Chinese
Legend of the White Serpent are based on the same story, and posited a
common source for both in Indian, presumably Buddhist, literature. The
theory was apparently started by the influential Japanese critic Kuriyagawa
Hakuson, who became impressed with the obvious resemblance between the
tale transmitted from Philostratus to Keats through Burton and a Japanese
short story inspired by the Legend of the White Serpent.1 His theory has
since become almost generally accepted by Chinese critics,2 although none of
them has succeeded in locating the hypothetical Indian source. In the West,
no Sinologist or critic acquainted with the Chinese versions seems to have
advanced views similar to those of oriental scholars.3 N. B. Dennys, who
translated a passage from one of the versions of the Legend of the White
Serpent and mentioned the rest of the work in a brief, none-too-accurate
Statement in 1876, remarked that the Chinese tale reminded him only of the
"well known Linton worm or dragon".4 Other scholars who may not have
heard of the Chinese versions, however, have referred to the universal character
of this lamia story. Henry Eckford maintainad in 1885 that the story of
Keats's poern "does not stand alone, but belongs to a wide-spread family of
tales more or less closely similar".5 Unfortunately, the examples he gave to
support his contention pertain mostly to Aarne and Thompson's Type 400
(The Man on a Quest for His Lost Wife).6 Mario Praz, in his fascinating essay
0
The writer of this paper is grateful to the American Council of Learned Socie-
ties for a grant-in-aid, whidi cnablcd him to do a part of the rescardi during the
summer months of 1964.
1
Kuriyagawa Hakuson, Juji gaito o yuku (Chinese translation by Lu Chiao and
Tu Chieh under the title Tsou hsiang shih tzu chieh t'ou [Shanghai, 1928], pp.
47—63),
2
in whidi he discusses Ueda Akinari's "Jasei no in" in Ugetsu monogatari.
See inter alias Chao Ching-shen, T'antzti k'ao cheng (Shanghai, 1938), pp. l—44;
Tien Han, Tien Man san wen chi (Shanghai, 1936), pp. 90—96; Ma Chien, "Chung
ying hsüeh hui chung wen hsi chü tzu t'i san tz'u kung yen ti i i," Hsin tao jih pao,
October 30, 1953; Lü Fang, "Pai she diing yü hsi la shen hua," Hua chiao jih pao,
October 27, 1952; Takeshiro Kurashi, "On the Metamorphosis of the Story of the
White Snake," Sino-Indian Studies, V (Liebental Festschrift, 1957), 138—146. (This
writer learned of the last entry from Professor Paul M. Thompson.)
3
The present writer has consulted with Professor James Hightower, Dr. George
Bishop, and Professor Arthur Waley about this Statement.
4
5
N. B. Dennys, The Folk-lore of China (London, 1876), p. 104.
Henry Eckford, "The 'Lamia' of Keats," Century Magazine, n. s. IX (December
]885),
6
pp. 243—250.
Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale (FF Communication,
no. 184, Helsinki, 1961), p. 128.

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"La Belle Dame Sans Merci", asserted that "there have al\vays existed Fatal
Women both in mythology and in literature". Although he did not specifically
mention this story, some of the Fatal Women he discussed and described
evidently have the characteristics of the lamia.7 Recently, E. G. Fettet seems
also to have suggested that the plot of Keats's Lamia, like that of his La
Belle Dame Sans Merci, is "archetypal".8
This paper is an attempt to study all the available versions äs well äs some
of the important analogues of this lamia story in Asia and Europe. It does not
claim to be a definitive study in Quellenforschung, or to have discovered a
prototype of the accounts of both Philostratus (who first recorded the tale
in Europe)9 and Feng Meng-lung (who probably first published i t in China).10
The present writer has also searched for the alleged Buddhist source which
has eluded so many scholars of Buddhist literature.11 Among the Buddhist

7
Mario Praz, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," in his The Romantic Agony, tr. Angus
Davidson, 2d ed. (London, 1951), pp. 189—271, passim. Cf. especially pp. 210, 212
(comparing a Fatal Woman to a serpent), p. 240 (calling her "Lamia re-transformed"),
and also pp. 209, 210, 228 and 244 (referring to her vampirism).
8
E. C. Fettet, On the Poetrv of Keats (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 215, 229-231.
9
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, tr. F. C. Conybeare (Loeb Classics,
Cambridge, Mass., 1948), I, 403—409.
10
Feng Meng-lung, Ching shih t'ung yen (Ordinary Discourses for Admonishing
the World; Hong Kong, 1958), pp. 421—428. For possibly earlier versions, see Cheng
Chen-tu Chung kuo su wen lisüeh shih (History of Chinese Folk Literature, Peking,
1959), p. 352. See also infra, n. 130.
11
Sameul Beal (Buddhism in China, London, 1884, pp. 258—259) holds that the
Chinese Legend of the White Serpent "is founded on a Buddhist story called
'Nagananada,' which was probably written at the time of Siläditya Raja, A. D. 650,
in India." Professor Paul M. Thompson, who has investigated this reference, has
kindly told this writer that it can only mean either Nägänanda, a play written by
King Hasavardhäna (fl. 606—647) but based on a very different plot, or the story
of Ananda and a Matanga girl in the Tripitaka. The latter indeed bears some
resemblance to later versions of the legend, including the one translated into French
äs Blanche et bleue, seemingly the only version known to Beal. Its resemblance to
the earliest Chinese version by Feng Meng-lung and to the account of Philostratus,
however, is much less apparent. The present writer will treat the tale of Ananda and
the Matangi äs an analogue (see infra, p. 31). He wishes also to add that the use of
the snake äs a symbol of lust in this lamia story is far frorn a common fcaturc in the
writings of ancient Buddhists whose attitude towards snake-worship was far more
tolerant, or even conciliatory. The Bodhisattva, we know, was said to have been a
Naga in one of his reincarnations. In the Tripitaka (Ta tsang diing, Taipei, 1956—59,
facsimile of Tokyo, 1922—33 edition, 100 vols.), the snake Stands often for ill
will—from mild grudge to intense hate: Tripitaka (inter alias), III, 4, 481, 787; IV,
69, 228, 250, 304, 395, 429, 519—520, 535, 595, 713; XV, 272; XXV, 333; XXXI, 847,
XXXII, 301—302, 311, 325, 548; XXXIV, 534, 541, XLVI, 948; LIII, 318, 872;
LIV, 140; LVII, 105, 392; LXV, 68; LXXIV, 740; LXXVI, 177; LXXIX, 305;
LXXXVIII, 431, 478, 639; LXXXIX, 174, 328, 329, 358, 778; XC, 303, 359, 379;
XCI, 150, 152, 355, 365; XCII, 64, 125—126; XCIII, 663; XCIV, 12, 400, 410;
XCV, 709, 1001, 1135; XCVII, 780. Many people who sinned against envy or pride
were said thus to become serpents in their next reincarnation. See Ibid., III, 116,
338; IV, 407—408, 417, 540; XVII, 56; XLVII, 274; L, 713; LI, 81, 210, 726, 806,
807—808; LIII, 217, 720, 868; LIV, 91, 144, 297, 499; LX, 95, 349 481; LXI, 793;
LXII, 10, 153; LXXIV, 745; LXXVII, 309; LXXX, 644; LXXXI, 306, 328; LXXXII,
360. Sometimes it is a symbol of the world perceptible by the senses, desires of
various kinds, or just worries: Phenomenal world (diing chieh): Ibid., XI, 467,
826; XVI,, 369; the four elements (ssü ta): Ibid., II, 313; IV, 286, 503, 533; XI, 825;

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works that he has gone through to no avail is the complete set of the Tripitaka.
He has also done some reading in, and consulted extensively with experts
of, Near Eastern literature without any result. Realizing that the sources of
such a wonder tale lay most probably in folk traditions, the present writer will
try instead to analyze the components of tliis lamia story, to probe their origins
in ancient folklore, and to study their ways in a number of recorded folktales
äs well äs religious tales. An attempt will also be made to infer the life histoiy
of this story. The primary purpose of this paper, nevertheless, is to compare
the development and the characteristics of the Western group with those of
the Eastern group, to show what the story has meant to writers of different
races and different ages, and to draw a few conclusions from such observations.
Strangely, in spite of the fact that the Western group has been closely analyzed
by experts on Keats and Coleridge, and the Eastern group has been quite
thoroughly investigated in China, no serious attempt has yet been made to
set the twain side by side. A study of the various ways in which closely similar
story elements are handled by, and in turn influence, authors of disparate
ethnic backgrounds, this writer hopes, will not only throw light on the various
productions involved and bring the respective cultures in füll relief, but also
help to improve understanding among men.

I. Roots in Asian Folklore

The following is an outline of the accounts of Philostratus and Feng Meng-
lung, showing the story elements which the two have in common, and some of
the important redactions in Feng:
1. A none-too-distinguished young man goes to the country.
2. He meets there a very beautiful girl. (In Feng, also her maid).
3. She claims to be a respectable woman and enchants him with her beauty.
4. He goes with her to her house and finds there good furniture, servants, etc.,
all conjured up by magic.
5. She is, however, a snake-woman.
6. He presumably develops a stränge look on his face.

XV, 222, 311, 337; XVI, 424; XXV, 145; LIV, 467; LXV, 139; the five desires
(wu yü): Ibid., I, 763, 774; III, 567, 637, 750, 762, 782—783; IV, 20—21; XV, 287;
XVIII, 335, 445, 471; XXX, 983; XXXII, 145; XLVI, 210; LIV, 140, 296; greed:
Ibid., IV, 21, 289; XIV, 72; XVII, 474; gluttony; XLVI, 606; LXXXV, 564; and
the four worries (ssü fan nau or ssü Jitw): LXXIX, 259, 475; LG, 587. It sometimes
represents prurience (äs in Ibid., XVII, 355, 436; XV, 273; XLVI, 210), which is
often described äs much more dangerous than the snake. (ibid., X, 790; XXV, 165,
166; LIV, 109, 133; LXII, 117; also Dictionary of Buddhism [Fu hsüeh ta tzu tien,
Taipei], I, 461, 462, 573), and is often compared to a fowl (Tripitaka, XIV, 215,
301; XXXII, 301, 325; L, 181; LIII, 318; LIV, 164; LXXIV, 745). To be sure, in
one sector of the underworld, the soul of an incorrigible woman-chaser is doomed
to climb a huge tree bristling with thorns of iron in the hope of reaching a beautiful
maiden perched on a stem high above, but after suffering innumerable lacerations,
cnly to find her turn into a serpent (ibid.f LXXIV, 747). In a different Version of the
same tale, however, she does not become a reptile, but simply vanishes into thin air.
(Dictionary of Buddhism, III, 2055.)

10'

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7. A saintly man with supematural power discovers from the appearance of the
youth that he is living with a demoness. (In Feng, she also reveals her snake form to
a few other men than her husband.)
8. This saintly man, from whom she has tried to stay away and to \vhose teaching
she is violently opposed (in Feng, another saintly man), finally helps the youth to
overcome her.
9. She at first accuses the holy man and begs for mercy; then confesses her plot
and leaves the youth.
10. The youth becomes or remains a disciple of his deliverer, and presumably
stays away thenceforth from sensual pleasures.
From the above outline of the story, it is obvious that the two accounts
do not completely agree in essential details. For the sake of convenience,
the above list without the redactions in the parentheses (outline of Philostra-
tus's account) will henceforth be called A, and the version with the redactions
(outline of Feng's account) B.
To every reader acquainted with ancient literature, many of the elements
listed above are obviously among the oldest and most familiär in the writings
of men. The female spirit who provides wealth and luxury but enfeebles men
at the same time (Motifs F402.1.6 and N817.02) may be traced back to the
Babylonian goddess Ishtar.12 Ishtar, goddess of nature, life, sexual love, hörne,
war, fever, fertility, etc., was held in both admiration and fear;13 so were
many other "earth-goddesses" in other oultures, who shared her characte-
ristics.14 The double nature of such goddesses, due partially to the curious
mixture of desire and fear for sexual love in the mind of primitive man, lay
at the root of this tale — äs well äs other similar tales15 — and accounted for
its curious development in both England and China.
The above outline, of course, shows clearly that the female spirit in question
is no longer a goddess, but a demoness. Such changes are again familiär to
students of folklore, since a demon was often derived from a god to represent
one of the god's less beneficent aspects.18 Among Ishtar's less respectable
descendants, we are told, was Lamia.17 How the child-snatcher came to be a
serpent and a seductress, howeveir, does not seem to have been very well
understood. Ishtar, of course, was often associated with snakes18 äs well äs
12
Theodor H. Gastor (tr. and ed.), The Oldest Stories in the World (New York,
1952), pp. 29—30.
13
Semitic Mythology (Mythology of AU Races, vol. V), pp. 13, 21, 29 ff, 98, 143,
368; Stephen H. Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar (Oxford, 1944), pp. 59, 73.
14
15
G. Contenau (tr. with annotations), L'epopee de Gilgamesh (Paris, 1939), p. 251.
For the theory that the fear of exhaustion inspired such tales, see Ludwig
Laistner, Das Rätsel der Sphinx, I (Berlin, 1889), 61. An explicit Statement of such
fear can be found in the Dinkard (Sacred Books of the East, XXXVII, 112), which,
though not compiled until the ninth Century of our era, allegedly contains very
ancient
16
materials.
M. D. Conway, Demonology and Demi Lore, I (New York, 1879), 14.
17
18
Semitic Mythology, p. 365.
Ibid., pp. 29 f, 108, 367; Langdon, p. 114. For the affiliation of other ancient
goddesses with the snake, see E. O. James, The Ancient Gods (New York, 1960),
pp. 54, 99—100; Richard Kohl, "Das Melusinenmotif," Niederdeutsche Zeitschrift
für Volkskunde, XI (1933), 220—221.

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other animals. The change may have also been due to the identification of
Lilith äs a serpent,19 the attribution of lewdness to Lilith because of the
pretensions of temple harlots to being "lilitu",20 and then the confusion of
Lilith and Lamia.21 It must be observed, though, that the lamia of this story
i s not a Lybian beast,22 or a beautiful human face grafted on the body of a
serpent or a sow, or the legs of a goat and a horse (Motif B 29.1). She is not a
winged creature.23 She does not look like an Indian Nagi, who is almost
alvvays represented äs having one or more snake heads, and said to become
a reptile again when asleep, angry, affected by excessive heat, or copulating.24
She evidently has no reptilian features (unless when overpowered or trying to
frighten assailants, äs will be shown later), and her husband is not aware of
her frightful origin before his meeting with the sage. The attiring of super-
natural enchantresses in ophidian garbs, M. O. Howey has pointed out, was
"an intermediate stage which marked their transition from the visible to the
invisible".25 The iamia of our story, therefore, obviously represented a forward
stride from the physical serpent to a myth.
Since the appearance of a female spirit in the wild and her relation with a
man are more common in folklore than her struggles with a saintly man, story
elements l—6 may seem to be the older elements in the tale. The antagonism
between a sage and a deonon, however, is also a very ancient theme. Even before
the rise of dualism, demons were often supposed to oppose gods and could be
exorcised, though they still belonged to the divine order.26 In Babylonia, R. C.
Thompson has told us, incantations were read to expel female demons (Ardat
Lili or "Handmaid of the Night-Phantom") who had "had union" with men.27
Story elements 7—9, in fact, are indispensable to this story. Without the
interference of the saintly man before the supposedly nefarious designs of the
lamia are brought into effect, this story would lose its distinctive feature.
Since many elements of our lamia story are ancient and common motifs,
and since no prototype of both the earliest Western version and the earliest
Eastern version has yet been discovered, one may naturally wonder whether
the accounts of Philostratus and Feng Meng-lung are but oikotypes—similar

^9 Conway, II, 96.

20
Maximilian Rudwin, The Devil in Legend and Literature (London, 1931), p. 103n.
21
Conway, II, 92, 99; Edward Topsell, The Historie of Fovre-foated Beastes
(London, 1607), 454; A. M. Killen, "La legende de Lilith," Revue de littorature com-
paree, XII, 288.
22
Topseil, loc. dt.
23
M. Oldfield Howey, The Encircled Serpent (London, 1926), p. 331. A similar
portrait of the lamia may also be found in G. L. Kittredge, Witdicraft in Old and
New England (Cambridge, Mass., 1929).
24
Tripitaka, LIII, 121, 831, 954; LIV, 48, 114; LVI, 670; LXI, 775; LXII, 430;
LXIV, 175, 582. Also Eduard Chavannes, Cinq cent contes et apologues extraits du
Tripitaka chinois, I (Paris, 1910), 360.
25
Howey, p. 328.
26
Semitic Mytliology, p. 373.
27
R. C. Thompson, "The Folklore of Mossul," Proceedings of the Society of
Biblical Archaeology, XXVIII (1906), 82; also his The Devils and Evil Spirits of
ttabylonia, I (London, 1903), xxviii.

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tales which arose spontaneously in different countries from a common back-

ground in folk beliefs. Such a theory, convenient äs it may be, would have to
get around several serious objections. First, since the Chinese are not Indo-
European, they may not have had the same primitive traditions äs the Greeks.
Second, althou-gh most of the motifs are common, the way in which they are
combined in this tale and the result of such a combination are surely very
uncommon. The lamia, though supposedly a Symbol of lust and harboring
evil intention, is obviously devoted to her husband. AI though she is a bitter
enemy to philosophical or religious teachings, no mention is made of her
having harmed any person. Still she is discovered äs a snake-woman, and
punished accordingly. Such is the gist of the story which, to the knowledge of
the present writer, is unique. It seems very unlikely that such a unique plot
could rise automatically in lands far removed from one another, even if they
shared a common heritage. Third, even if such a unique plot can be sponta-
neously invented by different peoples, there must presumably be some qualities
which these peoples, and these peoples only, share together; otherwise we
would have to admit that tales just happen to come into being by chance.
Now, this iamia story perhaps first appeared in Greece in the second Century,
then in Western Europe (äs recorded by Walter Map)28 and in China during
the twelfth Century. What qualities do the cultures of second Century Greece,
twelfth Century Western Europe and twelfth Century China—and these
cultures only—have in common? Fourth, äs will be pointed out later, this
lamia story does not appear to have ever thriven in Ancient Greece. It has
become very populär in China, but had to be radioally modified a few centuries
ago to suit Chinese culture. Therefore, it cannot have risen naturally in either
country.
Because of the above considerations, the present \vriter is inclined to
feel that the accounts of Philostratus, Walter Map and Feng Meng-lung are
variants of the same tale, rather than spontaneous inventions completely
independent of one another. Their common prototype may have been a
religious and didactic tale which first circulated in West or Central Asia in
the centuries immediately before or after the time of Christ among a peoplo
who had rejected ophilatry. Such a prototype, admittedly, has not yet been
found. Nevertheless, since most religious tales were based on ordinary folktales,
if we can find a folktale with most of the story elements of A and B combined
in almost the same way and narrated in the same Order, we may have some
ideas of what the hypothetical prototype may have been like. Such a folktale
is the King and the Lamia, or AT Type 411.
The King and the Lamia was first listed äs a type in the Types of Indic
Oral Tales,29 which mentions seven versions, all from the Kashmir-Punjab area.
Of these seven versions, one (Knowles, Proverbs, pp. 184—86) does not
28
29
See infra, p. 33.
Stith Thompson and Warren E. Roberts, Types of Indic Oral Tales (FF
Communication, no. 180; Helsinki, 1960), p. 61. Professor Roberts has read an earlier
draft of this paper, for which this writer is most grateful.

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resemble our lamia story closely and must be mied out. Three of them are the
same, and will be analyzed below äs representing the type.30 Two of thern
are almost the same and will be referred to henceforth äs variant l.31 The
other will be referred to äs 2.3J In addition to these variants, the present
writer has discovered two other variants: one recorded in India (specific
locality not indicated), henceforth referred to äs S;33 and another recorded in
Armenia, henceforth referred to äs 4.sl Professor Doctor Kurt Ranke has kindly
informed the present writer about three other versions. One of them,
originating in Uzbek and received directly from Professor Doctor Kurt Ranke,
will be called variant 5.35 The two other somewhat truncated versions, both
received with English translations from Dr. Elisheva Schönfeld of Israel, will
be called variant 6 (from Afghanistan) and variant 7 (from Persia).36 The
following synopsis, divided into three main parts äs in the Types of Indic Oral
Tales, shows also most of the significant redactions:
I. (a) A king (a peasant in 3, a shepherd in 4, a man in 6) goes hunting (no mention
of hunting in 3). (b) In the wild he meets a beautiful young girl. (A deer leads
him to her in l and 2.) (c) She says that she is the handmaiden of the Emperor of
China37 (the daughter of a king of China in l, a deserted wife in 2, no attempt
to explain her origin in 3, 4 and 5), and dazzles him with her beauty. (d) He takes
her to a magnificent palace (simply hörne in 3 and 4), loves her very much, and
hves with her happily at first (not mentioned in 3). (la, b, c and d omitted in 6
r«nd 7). (e) She is, however, a snake-woman (an ogress who sucks blood in 2, a
woman with a theriomorphic, or animal-shaped, soul in 3). (f) The king gradually
develops a stränge look on his face (pains in his stomach in l, physical weakness
in 2 and 5, a pale complexion in 6, no mention in 3, 4 and 7).
II. (a) Through the escapade of a yogi's servant (a yogi in l, omitted in other
versions), the king becomes acquainted with a yogi (yogi's teacher in l, a fakir in
2 and 4, a holy man in 3, a vizier in 5, a dervish in 6, a Jewish merchant in 7).
(b) The divine suggests that the woman living with the king is a lamia (an evil

30
F. A. Steel and R. C. Temple, "The Snake-woman and King Ali Mardan," in
their Wide-awake Stories (London, 1884), pp. 189—195; F. A. Steel, "The Snake-
woman and King Ali Mardan" in her Tales of the Punjab (London, 1894), pp.
178—184; F. A. Steel, "King Ali Mardan Khan and the Snake-woman/' Indian
Antiquary, XI (Bombay, 1882), 230—232. Summary in Emmanuel Cosquin, Etudes
folkloriques (Paris, 1922), p. 361.
31
J. Hinton Knowles, "The Philosopher's Stone," in his Folktales of Kashmir
(London, 1893), pp. 233—239; Zainab Ghulam Abbas, "The Chinese Princess," in his
Volk Tales of Pakistan (Karachi, 1957), pp. 129—136.
32
"The King and the Evil Spirit," North Indian Notes and Queries, III (Feb.,
1894), 195. (Item 414). Referred to in Cosquin, loc. cit.
33
John Lodcwood Kipling, Beasts and Man in India (London, 1921), pp. 305—306;
Howey, pp. 332—333.
34
August Freiherrn von Haxthausen, Transkaukasia (Leipzig, 1856), pp. 124—126;
Theodor Benfey, Pantschatantra (Leipzig, 1859), I, 256—257. Summarized in J. Kohler,
Der Ursprung der Melusinensage (Leipzig, 1895), p. 5; and refered to in Cosquin,
loc. cit.
35
In Uzbeskie Narodnye Skazki, I (Tashkent, 1960), 252—254. This writer is
indebted to Mrs. Lee D. Rowe for the translation.
36
"How the Husband Rid Himself of a Wife—a Snake," Israel Folklore Archive,
2037; "Snake-wornan," Ibid., 4888.
37
The unknown maiden claiming Chinese origin is a quite familiär feature "in
Musalman tales." Knowles, p. 234 n; Steel and Temple, p. 331 n.

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spirit in 2). The king at first becomes quite angry (in l and 2, the divine does
not specify what type of demon she was until after the test. In 3, the peasant's
reaction is not mentioned. In 5, the husband is sceptical; in 6, frightened). (c) Then
he accepts the divine's advice to give her very salty food at dinner without allowing
her a chance to drink water. (In 6, he cuts his finger). (d) At night, he sees her
change back into her snake form to leave the palace and drink in a lake. (In 2, she
Stretches her hand to fetch water from the ocean; in 3, a serpent creeps out of her
body; in 4, she extends her neck. In 5, she turns into a snake but does not go out.
In 6, she crawls out äs a snake for unstated reasons).
III. (a) Upon the advice of the divine, the frightened king builds a large oven
(a house shaped like an iron cage in 5), heats it, asks her to bake bread, and pushes
her into it when she has no suspicion of his intentions. (In 5, he lures her in, locks
the house, and sets fire to it). (b) She struggles and tries in vain to get out. (No
reference to struggling in l, 2, and 6; in 4, she begs, asserts her love, and accuses
the fakir of trying to get her ashes. In 7, she teils her man to throw the Jew also
into the oven.) (c) Among her ashes is found a philosopher's stone. (Omitted in 2
and 5; in 6, she turns into a golden crown; in 7, the husband finds two dough
balls, which give him an endless supply of gold.) (d) The husband is supposedly
lelieved (äs in l, 2, 3 and 5), or so distressed that he leaves and is never seen
again (äs in 4).
This tale, one may observe, contains almost all tbe story elements of both
A and B, though with obvious variations. Element 4 alone is missing because
the husband, like the hero in many other vvonder tales in India, is a king
and can provide for his luxuries. Variant 4 is especially close to our lamia
story, äs the hero therein is also a poor man and the lamia, when cornered,
also implores his mercy, charges the sage with malicious design,etc. (element 9).
The youth's leaving the world, though for a very different reason from that
in A and B, in a way supplies story element no. 10, which is lacking in the
other versions. The lamia in all versions of this folktale, it must be added,
is also completely free from snake features except when she retransforms
herseif, although it has taken her years to acquire such magical powers.38
On the other hand, this tale differs from both A and B in its lack of an
outstanding moral. It was evidently told only because of its marvellous
episodes. There is no hint of the anti-religious, or anti-philosophical, attitude
of the lamia, or the moral dilemma of her husband. The murder of the lamia
is not readily justifiable—readers of variant 4 may in fact have second
thoughts—and the appropriation of her jewel (Motif B 101.7) is regarded
äs a matter of course. According to Indian folklore, one must add, a serpent
will not yield its stone until after its death.80
Although, in view of the insufficiency of data, it appears almost impossible
to locate the original homestead of the King and the Lamia, from the distribu-
tion of the variants now accessible to the present writer, one may hypothesize
that it first appeared somewhere near Kashmir. The archetype of the tale,

88
Steel and Temple, loc. dt. Her age is also given äs 200 in R. C. Temple,
"Lamia or ," Indian Antiquary, XI (August 1882), p. 232; 300 in Knowles,
p. 237 and Abbas, p. 134; and 60 in von Haxthausen, p. 125.
39
Kipling, p. 305. A general discussion of the serpent's stone may be found in
Emmanuel Cosquin, Les contes Indiens et l'occident (Paris, 1922), pp. 256—281.

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 The Holy Man and the Snake-Woman 153

datable probably several centuries before the Christian era, perhaps contained
a fe\v of the details found only in the peripheral variant (4),40 such äs the
lamia's plea for mercy when she is at bay, her accusation of the holy man,
and her husband's disappearance after her death. It probably also described
the demoness äs betraying her original shape first and then becoming
destroyed. The demoness was perhaps already a snake-woman, because
although her identity is given äs an ogress in 2 and a woman with a
theriomorphic soul in 3, 2 and 3 are both somewhat confused versions.
Besides, a snake in the shape of a woman is a remarkable detail that cannot be
easily forgotten.41 The ardietype may have been äs follows:
A man meets a beautiful girl in the country. She claims to be from a good family,
and he takes her hörne. They live together very happily; but she is in fact a snake-
woman, and he becomes somewhat ill. Then one of the holy men he has met teils
him that he is living with a lamia and, in order to convince the incredulous husband,
suggests that the latter use a trick to cause her to reveal her original form. The trick
works and the husband is taught by the divine to destroy her with fire. When she
cannot escape, she pleads for mercy and accuses the holy man of harboring sinister
design. Among her ashes is found a precious stone. Her husband henceforth lives
like a recluse.
From many internal evidences, one may also infer that the King and the
Lamia may have been derived from a rakshasi story. Many of the striking
details in the King and the Lamia are also diaracteristic of, and would have
fitted better into, a tale about a rakshasi—a far more populär type of
enchantress in Indian folklore. For instance, the more specific references
to the malaise of the king in all versions and the vampire-like activity of the
seductress in variant 2 have come probably from the geneoral belief in the
rakshasi's blood-sucking operations—a diaracteristic rarely attiibuted to the
snake in ancient Indian folklore.42 The two themes which are very different
from corresponding themes in A or B (II c and d; III a) are both very common
motifs in Stupid Ogre tales. Pushing a demon into an oven when she is
unaware (III a) is an essential feature of Type 1121 (Motif G 512.3.2.1) in
which the victim is always an ogress. In his £tudes folkloriques, E. Cosquin
has already discussed the manner in which this motif is used in the King

40
For Aarne's theory that a trait which is found in only one version comes down
probably from the ardietype, see Stith Thompson, The Folktale (New York, 1946),
p. 433. For the view that tales collected on the periphery may be close to the
archetype,
41
see Ibid., p. 438.
42
Ibid., p. 433.
Tripitaka, IV, 25, 280; XI, 250; XIV, 567, 743; LIV, 405; LXXXVIII, 41, 665;
XC, 458; XCII, 8; XCIII, 736; XCIV, 391. The rakshasa and the rakshasi are also
frequently referred to äs lustful. See Ibid., LI, 27; LIII, 860, LIV, 465; LVI, 169;
LXXIV, 75, 739—740. For maglignant spirits after the "seven drops of sweet Juice
in a human body," the consumption of all of which will cause death, see Ibid.,
XXXIV, 925; LXI, 526; LXXXIX, 428, 444; XCIV, 320. For the rakshasi, see William
Crooke, The Populär Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (London, 1896), I,
246 ff.; Indian Mythology (Mijtolo&ij of All Races, vol. VI), pp. 155—156, 245;
Verrier Elwin, Folk-tales of Mahakoshal (London, 1944), p. 65; Frank Hamel, Human
Anirnals (London, 1915), p. 151.

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154 Nai-tung Ting

and the Lamia.*3 The other episode, discomfiting the demoness by giving her
too much salt to eat (II d), is also often associated with the stupid ogre or
ogress. Since salt was once considered a holy substance44 and might be used
to discomfit witches,40 giving the lamia too much salty food may mean
weakening her power, s variant 5 seems to suggest. The unpleasant taste
of having consumed very salty food, however, is also often capitaiized in
folktaJes s a means to outwit an ogress (Motif K 337).^ In at least one version
of Type 1121, the two motifs (G 512.3.2.1 and K 337) are combined to glorify
a boy.47 The apparent dullness of the lamia vvhich causes her life, one may
add, is also a traft oftener associated with an ogress than with a snake. In
lying to her intended victim with a straight face and making a complete
fool of him until thwarted by a third party, the lamia also takes after the
rakshasi.48
Colonel Temple, an expert in Kashmiri folklore, has pointed out the close
relationship between the lamia and the rakshasi in Northern Indian folk
belief.49 In another article, he has even posited that the Indian lamia stories
originated in stories of primitive giantesses, including the rakshasi.50 His theory
not only seems to support our hypothesis that the King and the Lamia may
have originated in a rakshasi tale, but it also helps to explain why of the
four significant analogues of our lamia story which the present writer has
noticed (significant in the sense that, like the King and the Lamia, they may
all have descended from ancient Indian sources), three have the ogress or
the ghulah (synonyms for the rakshasi) for their heroine. In the other one,
the temptress is human. In order to show the similarities between these
analogues and our lamia story and to illustrate the types of changes usually
made in a folktale when it is converted into a religious tale, a summary of
a non-religious version of each of the three analogues will be presented first;
and then that of a religious version. Of the fourth analogue, the present
43
Cosquin, Etudes folkloriques, pp. 360—361.
44
Kittredge, p. 167, and also pp. 49, 101, 147, 171; R. L we Thompson, The
History of the Devil (London, 1929), p. 159; Eliphas Levi, The History of Magic
(London, 1913), pp. 104, 195, 504; John G. Bourke, Scatalogic Rites of All Nation*
(Washington, D. C., 1891), p. 397; Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough
(London, 1917—20), II, 149, VIII, 93; T. Sharper Knowlson, The Origins of Popul r
Superstitions
45
and Customs (London, 1930) pp. 167—168.
Motifs D 1039.2; F 384.1; G 254.2; G 271.3; G 272.16. Folklore Journal, IV
(Jan.-March.,
46
1886), 24; Bourke, p. 403.
See also Motifs K 1045, J 2524; Type 1328 A; and Stanislas Julien, Contes et
apologues
47
indiens (Paris, 1860), pp. 148—149.
George Stephens and H. Cavallius, Old Norse Fairy Tales (London, 1882), pp.
152—156. In another tale in the same volume, a boy uses the same method to cheat
a witch
48
(p. 215), but does not bake her in her oven.
49
As the rakshasi in AT Type 462. See infra, p. 30.
R. C. Temple, "Folklore in the Legends of the Panjab," Folklore, X (1899),
pp. 389, 424—425. Among the authorities who have identified the lamia with the
ogress is William R. Halliday, Greek and Roman Folklore (New York, 1963), p. 56.
It may be interesting to add that in an appendix to the Ocean of Stories (tr. by
C. H. Tawney, ed. N. M. Penzer, London, 1926, VI, 280), the lamia whom Menippus
married
50
in Philostratus's tale is called "a female of the Rakshasi type."
Temple, "Lamia or Ëáìßá," pp. 232—235.

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writer has only discovered rcligious versions, one of which will be briefly
described and analyzed.
The first of these analoglies is the Outcast Queens and the Ogress Queen
(Type 462).51 Shorn of irrelevant details, one of its representative versions
—Maive Stokes, Indian Folk Tales (London, 1880), pp. 173—92—may be
summarized äs follows:
I. (a) A king returns from a hunting trip. (h) He sees a beautiful girl crying by
the roadside. (c) She claims to have lost track of her husband. (d) He takes her to
his palace and marries her. (e) Actually she is a rakshasi.
II. (a) She devours the animals in the palace and lays the blame on the other
seven queens. (b) The other seven queens are driven out, with their children. One
prince, however, survives.
III. (a) The prince grows up, incognito, to become a guard in his father's palace.
(b) The rakshasi suspects him and gives him difficult tasks. (c) The prince performs
the tasks through die help of many benefactors, including a fakir. (d) Finally, he
manages to kill the rakshasi.
The religious version is found in the Jataka:3'
The Bodhisattva, while on his \vay to Takkasila, passes through a forest where
ogresses, h'ving in grand splendor in camps, entice passengers and destroy them.
All five of his followers ignore his warning, pursue pleasures of the senses, and
become the monstresses' dinners. He alone holds out. An ogress follows, claiming
to be his deserted wife. Then he arrives in Takkasila and goes into a rest-house,
which she cannot enter. Thus she Stands on the threshold. The king passes by, is
impressed with her beauty, takes her to his palace, entertains her, and makes her
a queen. She asks for and gets control of the palace. Then she teils other ogresses
to move in and they devour all humans in the palace. The people discover the
havoc the next day and make ihe Bodhisattva their king because he alone can
resist temptation.
Of the story elements listed on pages 147—148, one may notice, this tale has
only story elements l, 2, 3 and, in a modified way, also 5 in part I. In parts II
and III, it resembles A and B only in the advice by a holy man and the
destruction of the demoness (story eloments 7 and 8). Story elements 4 and 10,
however, are both prcsent in die didactic version in the Jataka, where the
ogress is also able to conjure up luxuries and the Bodhisattva presumably
finally convinces the people of Takkasila of the truth of his teaching.
Another analogue may be found among accounts of an ogress or witch
wife eating corpses at night (Motif G 21), a tale that has been especially
well known in Rus-sia.53 Here is one of its versions in the Ocean of Startes,54
a version that obviously has no didactic purposes:

51
Thompson and Roberts, p. 67. Besides the versions listed, there are also a
Mongolian variant, "The Pig's Head Soothsayer," in Kachel Harriette Busk, Sagas
from the Far East (London, 1873), pp. 55—70, and a Chinese (Tai) version in Chia
Chih and Sun Chien-ping (ed.), Chung-kuo min chien ku shih hsüan (A Collection
of Chinese Folktales), II (Peking, 1962), pp. 394-^397.
52
The Jakata, ed. E. B. Cowell (Cambridge, England, 1895), I, 232—237.
53
See Hesaisdw Blätter fih Volkskunde, XXVIII (Giessen, 1930), 212.
54
Ocean of Stories, I, 111. (Chapter X, tale no. 5, "Story of Sridatta and
Mrigankavali.")

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156 Nai-tung Ting

I. (a) Sridatta leaves for another town with his friend. (b) On the road, he sees
a woman weeping. (c) She claims to have lost her way. (d) The two take her along.
That night, all three stay in a desert town. (e) She is a spirit who has become a
rakshasi because of a hermit's curse.
II. (a) At dead of night, Sridatta wakes up to find the woman feasting on the
flesh of his companion whom she has already murdered. (b) He draws his sword
and she assumes the form of a rakshasi.
III. (a) He slays her. (b) She becomes now a heavenly spirit and teils of her crimes
and sufferings. (c) The curse is now lifted and she resurrects his companion.
The religious version is preserved in the Chinese Tripitaka*5
A man, sneaking after his beautiful wife at night, sees her turn into a rakshasi
and gourmandize on corpses in a graveyard. He returns to bed and, soon afterwards,
she comes back in her usual, radiant form. He has great difficulty in suppressing his
desire and reminding himself of the Buddhist teaching that beauty is delusive and
skin-deep.
The version in the Ocean of Stories keeps only story elements l, 2, 3, and
parts of story elements 5, 8 and 9. Its exhibition of the primitive confusion
of the demoness and the goddess and its complete freedom from ethical
concern make it an interesting contrast with the abridged religious version.
The lattesr, incidentally, not only supplies story element 10, but also echoes
the King and the Lamia in the description of a man who follows his wife to
the wild at dead of night only to discover her äs a demon.
The third analogue is the Prince and the Lamia, included in some editions
of the Book of Sindibad. The following is a synopsis of an apparently non-
religious version in Mischle Sindbad:56
I. (a) The son of a king goes hunting with a vizier. (b) He follows a deer alone,
soon loses sight of it, but sees instead a beautiful young girl. (c) She appears to be
of noble descent and claims to have fallen from the back of an elephant (d) He
takes her along and they stop at a ruin. (e) She is, however, a ghulah, or an ogress.
(f) The prince overhears her confess her plot to other demons and boast about
her success; he becomes afraid.
II. (a) She comes back, sees fear on his face, and asks for the reason. (b) He
says that he is afraid of a "companion". (c) She suggests that the prince may pray
to Cod to be dclivered of such n companion.
III. (a) He prays for strength to be delivered of her. (b) Thereupon she falls to
ground and he manages to escape.
In the Syriac and Greek version,57 which may have been touched up by a
religious raconteur, the "vizier" is called "a philosopher/' When the prince

55
56
Tripitaka, LIII, 1015. There is also a non-didactic version (XV, 221).
Misdile Sindbad, ed. Paulus Cassel (Berlin, 1888), pp. 109—110. Professor B.
E. Perry ("The Origin of the Book of the Sindibad" Fabula, III, l ff.), however,
has demonstrated that the tales in the Book of the Sindibad could be traced back
to 57Hellenistic and Near Eastern sources.
Domenico Comparetti, Researches Respecting the Book of Sindibad (London,
1882), pp. 62—63. Other versions of the tale may be found in Ibid., pp. 131—133;
The Book of the Sandibad, ed. W. A. Clouston (Glasgow, 1884), pp. 50—56, 150—153;
Paraboles de Sendabar, ed. E. Carmoly (Paris, 1849), pp. 87—^89; The Thousand
and One Nights, ed. and tr. Edward W. Lane, I (London, 1859), 81—82. There
seems to be some similarity between this tale and Mortc D''Arthur, XVI, eh. 11—12.

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admits fear in II b, the ghulah suggests that he bribe his "companion";

but the prince replies that the latter cannot be corrupted.
This tale, though possessing only story elements l, 2 and 3, and parts of
story elements 5, 8 and 9, closely parallels the second variant of the King
and the Lamia in its opening passage. Story element 10, though, is again
implied especially in the Syriac version, where the prince learns not only of the
danger of sex, but also the uselessness of wealth in a crisis.
In the last tvvo analogues and also the Jataka version of the first analogue,
one rnay note, the hero under temptation has to rely on his own wisdom
and magical power. The fourth analogue, however, introduces a holy man
to thwart the enchantress, and thus agrees with our lamia story in having
three, not just tvvo, principal characters. This analogue appears in a number
of different versions in the Tripitaka. The foilowing synopsis is based essen-
tially on the shorteist and perhaps earliest of these versions, in a sutra trans-
lated into the Chinese by a Parthian prince probably between 147 and 167
A. D., with a few relevant complementary details from another sutra slightly
later in date:58
I. (a) Ananda asks for water from a girl, who falls in love with him. (b) She teils
her mother, a Matangi, her decision to marry no other man but Ananda. (c) Her
mother talks with Ananda, but the latter insists on celibacy. (d) The girl, however,
will not be dissuaded, but asks her mother to exercise her magic power. (e) The girl
and Ananda had been husband and wife in fif ty prior re-incamations.
II. (a) By magical power, the mother detains Ananda in her house. (b) Ananda
refuses to yield to the charms of the girl; thus the mother threatens to cast him
into a fiery pit. (c) Ananda prays to the Buddha, who sends a messenger to deliver
fiim. (d) But the girl will follow Ananda wherever he goes, or cry by his door when
he refuses to come out.
III. (a) Upon Ananda's request, the Buddha summons the girl. (b) The Buddha
first tests the girl's determination by asking her to cut off her hair. (c) Then the
Buddha convinces her that physical beauty is but skin-deep, and that the body
consists only in filth. (d) She becomes converted to Buddhism and later rises to
arhatship.
The differences between this tale and our lamia story are obvious. Being
human and harboring no sinful design, the girl is reprehensible only because
her mother resorts to enchantment and she herseif knows but conjugal, not
heavenly, love. When taught Buddhist doctrines, she even becomes an arhat.
Nevertheless, in its emphasis on the Intervention of a master to save his
disciple and the confrontation between the holy man and the temptress,
tliis tale resembles both A and B. Besides, it also has story elements l and 2
and parts of 8, 9 and 10. The other accounts of the tale in the Tripitaka are
all longer and more complex. Some of them differ from the above version in
some important details. In a sutra by Chinese monks, the Major Surigama™

58
Tripitaka, XIV, 895—896. Other versions are in XIX, 106—122; XXI, 399—419;
XXIV, 863—364.
59
Ibid., XIX, 106—122. Also Samuel Beal, A Catena of Buddhist Scriptures
(London, 1871), pp. 288—289; and Arthur Waley, Yuan Mei (London, 1956), p. 78—79.

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for instance, the girl herseif is the magician, and she is finally reprimanded
in public by a Buddhist deity. Such modifications apparently increase the
similarity between this tale and A.
The above analogies can not only serve to indicate the various ways in
vvhich the different elements of aur lamia story were combined in antiquity
to form different folktales and hence the other possible origins of our lamia
story. They can also illustrate the process through which an ordinary folktale
is turned into a didactic tale. First, the contrast between the sacred man and
the demoness has to be sharpened. Second, marvellous episodes have to be
retrenched in order that the storyteller may concentrate on the main theme.
Tliird, somewhere in the tale (usually tovvards the end), the moral has to be
explicitly drawn. When the trial archetype of the King and the Lamia äs given
on page 153 feil into the hands of a religious man, similar modifications, one
may well imagine, also took place. The saintly raconteur vvould put the holy
man face to face with the lamia to increase the tension. In order to give more
prestige to the holy man, he would perhaps omit details unfavorable to his
hero, such äs using tricks to catch the lamia and gleaning precious objects
from her remains. Some irrelevant, marvellous details would perhaps be
omitted to make the moral more conspicuous. The first religious version may
have been vague about the ways in which the lamia is tricked into revealing
her identity and then becoming destroyed, since using salt to outwit a demon
and pushing the latter into an oven were both familiär motifs reminiscent of
other tales totally different in meaning. The lamia, though, had to be described
äs inimical to the ethical teachings and religious activities of the holy man,
and her victim, after a period of infatuation, would have to return to the
proper fold.
Such a version would come very close to A and could have been the prototype
of Philostratus's tale. With a few additions in a later variant,? such äs a maid
for the lamia and the latter's revelation of her true form to a few other men
than her husband, we would have the main plot of the accounts of Walter
Map and Feng Meng-lung.

II. Development in European Literature

The tale of Apollonius's triumph over a lamia äs told in Philostratus's Life
of Apollonius may be summarized äs follows:
I. (a) A poor but handsome Student of philosophy (Menippus the Lycian) vvalks
alone on the road between Cenchrae and Corinth. (b) He meets a young woman
"good-looking and extremely dainty". (c) She claims to have come from Phoenicia,
and to have fallen in love with him for a long time. She invites him to her house
to hear her sing and to drink. (d) He goes with her, evidently falls in love with
her, and plans to marry her. (e) She is, however, a lamia and is "fattening Menippus
with pleasures before devouring his body". (f) Presumably, the effect of her Company
becomes visible in the youth's appearance.
II. (a) A philosopher (Apollonius) looks over the youth, inquires into his private
life, and declares that the latter is "dierishing a serpent". (b) The philosopher goes to
their wedding banquet in a hall decorated with gold and silver, and asks to see the

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 The Hohj Man and the Snake-Woman 159

bride. All the magnificence that surrounds Menippus, he says, is but an Illusion.
(c) When he sees her, he calls her "an empusa, such äs are commonly called lamias
and mormolukias".co
III. (a) She asks the philosopher to "cease his ill-omened talk" and derides philo-
sophy. (b) The philosopher makes all the glamorous objects in the house disappear.
(c) She "pretended to weep, and prayed him not to torture her nor to compel her
to confess what she really was", (d) He persists; therefore, she finally admits that
she is an empusa and confesses her evil plot. (e) Menippus, presumably, returns to
the ranks of Apollonius and learns to keep away from worldly pleasures.
The didactic intention of this tale is very obvious. Neo-Pythagoreanism,
which possessed many of the characteristics of a religion, appears herein much
more militant than Buddhism. Instead of waiting for the demoness to vanish
äs Gautama has done in the tale from the Jataka (supra, p. 155), Apollonius
searches her out, and humlliates and demolishes her in public. The principal
eharacters undoubtedly possess allegorical significances. Philostratus is reason,
apparently harsh and stern, but actually beineficent and thus in-
dispensable. The lamia, who detests philosophers and "delights in the rites
of Aphrodite," is sensual life, apparently enjoyable but actually deleterious.
The sage does not rely on magic weaponis or tricks at all for his triumph. He
first gives correctly the name of the demon (demons are usually supposed to
possess a multitude of names),61 thereby weakening her power. Then he compels
her to admit that she is an empusa, thereby vanquishing her completely. This
belief in the magical power of vvords (Motif G303.16.19.9), though still
preserved in some modern religions, also has an origin in folklore. To a primi-
tive man, Edward Clodd teils us, "to know the name is to put its owner,
whether he be deity, ghost or mortal, in the power of another, involving risk
of härm or destruction to the named."02
The most puzzling fearure of this version, however, is its obvious uncer-
tainty regarding the exact identity of the demoness. That she was meant to
be a snake-woman appears quite clear from Apollonius's assertion that Menip-
pus is "cherishing a serpent."03 Yet, Philostratus also followed populär usage
in calling her an empusa, whidi certuinly was not a reptile. This confusion

<;
This Quotation is from the translation of J. S. Phillimore (Oxford, 1912).
According to Joseph Fontenrose, Python (Berkeley, Calif., 1959), p. 116, "Lamia is
identified vvith Empusa, Mormo. . . Lamia are called phasmata that rose from
earth in woods and glens; Empusa is a phantom sent by Hekate; Mormones are
wandering daimones. These phantoms and demons are hardly to be distinguished
from
ül
the Keres or from those avenging spirits of death called Poi-nai."
Cf. M. Gaster, "Two Thousand Years of a Charm Against the Chüd-Stealing
Witch,"
03
Folklore, XI (June, 1900), pp. 136 ff.
Edward Clodd, Tom-Tit-Tot (London, 1898), pp. 53-^54. For the reluctance
of Welsh peasants to reveal their own names, see D. Parys-Jones, Welsh Legends
and Fainj Lore (London, 1953), p. 71. A funny story about a devil who refuses to
leave his victim until the priest has addressed him in what he considers correct
Latin grammar can be found in Jon Arnason, Icelandic Legends, tr. George E. J.
Powell
63
and Eirikr Magnusson (London, 1866), pp. 33—34.
Arthur H. Nethercot, in The Road to Tryermaine (Chicago, 1939), pp. 98—99,
argues that this phrase may have been used figuratively. Professor James Hitt has
informed this writer that Philostratus probably meant a real serpent.

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160 Nai-tung Ting

in nomenclature shows not only that, to Philostratus äs well äs to many of

the people of Greece, the lamia was already more fable than reality64—an atti-
tude whidi may account for bis omission to make her appear in ophidian form.
The failure to give her an exact name also appears to bear out a suspicion that
Philostratus's version was a somewhat confused version. Whether the tale was
first told by Apollonius orDamis, Philostratus evidently was not in the audience.
He was thus not very sure that bis report of this "best-known story" was
correct, but had to ask other people for more Information. His contemporaries,
however, "have only heard in a general and vague manner that he [Apollonius]
once caught and overcame a lamia in Corinth, but they have never learned
what she was about nor what he did to save Menippus."65 As a result,
Philostratus's narrative is not clear. His vague description of the appearance
of Menippus after the latter has met the lamia is a case in point.
Although Philostratus's account is the earliest recorded version of our
lamia story, one may assume that the story itself was not indigenous to
Greece, but imported from another country. There is no other version of this
story—or even any tale remotely resembling it—in ancient or modern Greek
literature. From the last passage quoted in the above paragraph, it is also
clear that even in Philostratus's time, this story never caught on, although it
was well known. The first introduction of this tale, probably from somewhere
in Asia,66 thus evidently did not arouse much immediate response. It was
designed to illustrate Neo-Pythagorean doctrines that worldly pleasures are
illusory and harmful and that contemplation and austere living may bring
wisdom and power of mind. Neo-Pythagoreanism, however, never attained
predominance. Apollonius was soon to be criticized and discredited by
Christian theologians because he seemed to pose a challenge. Comments such
äs that of Eusefoius—that "the empusa and the lamia which is said to have
played off its mad pranks on Menippus" was "probably driven out by him
[Apollonius] with the help of a more important demon"67—certainly affected
the opinions of generations of Christian readers. It was not unti! the lamia
story came back to Western Europe for the second time (perhaps brought
by the Crusadcrs whom somc of the authors recording the story described
most graphically) and was used to inculcate the authority of the Catholic
Church that it emerged again in writing. While the present writer has not
yet had access to a few very obscure veorsdons, he trusts that the followimg ana-

04
According to Philostratus (I, 125), Apollonius sent another "empusa" scampering
just by "rebuking" her.
65
Philostratus, I, 409. The people of Greece, it seems, have never taken the
lamia stories very seriously (John C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient
Greek Religion, Cambridge, England, 1910, p. 176).
66
Among the many cßscussions of Asian influences on Apollonius, see G. R. S.
Mead, Apollonius of Tyana (London, 1901), passim. For the association between
Apollonius and Asian and Egyptian magicians, see Ferdinand Bauer, Drei Abhand-
lungen
e
zur Geschichte der alten Philosophie (Leipzig, 1876), p. 41.
* Philostratus, II, 567. In Buddhism, since the Buddha was believed to be able
to overpower demons and demand their Services, the use of a bigger demon in
exorcism was sometimes acknowledged. (Tripitaka, VIII, 651).

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 The Holy Man and the Snake-Woman 161

lysis, based principally on the narration in Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium™

(probably the earliest version of the tale in Western Europe) and including
the important modifications in the other versions, will exhibit the essential
characteristics of this cycle. In tlie following analysis, l Stands for the account
in Chronique rimee de Philippe Mouskes,™ and 2 for the one in Le livre de
Baudoyn.10 Variante 3 (representing the accounts in the Gesta Romanorum11
and the works by Giraldus Cambrensis72 and Gervasius of Tilbury73) and 4
(representing the tale in Speculum Naturale)14 are both abridged versions; a
brief description shovving their principal story elements will be given, however,
after the analysis:
I. (a) A nobleman walks alone by the shore. (In l and 2, he follows a game
alone). (b) In the woods, he meets a beautiful girl accompanied by a maid (no
maid in l and 2). (c) She claims to be a lady. (In 2, she just behaves like a lady.)
(d) His head turned by her beauty, he takes her to his castle, marries her, and has
several children by her. (e) She is, however, a snake-woman, and so is her maid.
(In l, she is a devil. In 2, she is a fallen angel.)
II. (a) She is evidently a good wife and a good mother, but she always leaves
ihe church before the sprinkling of holy water and the consummation of the mass.
(b) His mother becomes suspicious, bores a hole on her bedroom door, and sees both
his wife and her maid turn into serpents in the bath and then return to human
shape. (Not in l or 2. In 2, a holy man comes to the court, but she asks her husband
not to give the mendicant food or drink.) (c) His mother teils him what she has
seen. (In l, his suspicious subjects are the informers. In 2, the holy man challenges
her to reveal her own identity.)
III. (a) He calls a priest. (In l, he Orders his followers to prevent her from leaving
the diurch too early. Omitted in 2.) (b) The priest seizes both his wife and her maid
without warning and sprinkles them with holy water. (In l, the lady alone is sprink-
led. In 2, she is compelled by the holy visitor to reveal her plot.) (c) They both fly
through the roof in serpent form and never come back again. (In l and 2, the lady
flies away in unspecified form.)
(3 agrees largely with l in II a, III a, b and c, but does not have other elements.
4 has Ib, d and e [though without maid or children], IIb [surprised by her husband
and servants] and III c [like l and 2]).
This group of tales clearly rcsembles A and B more than it does the King
und the Lamia. It also has for its coro the discovery of an irreligious—though
08
Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, tr. Frederick Tupper and M. B. Ogle (London,
1924), pp. 218—220. Summaries in Laistner, p. 193; Felix Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde
(Heilbronn, 1879), pp. 46—47; Maria Nowack, Die Melusinen-Sage, ihr mythischer
Hintergrund, ihre Verwandtschaft mit anderen Sagenkreisen, und ihre Stellung in
der69 deutsdien Litteratur (Freiburg, 1886), pp. 40—41.
Chronique rimee de Philippe Mouskes, ed. Le Baron de Reiffenberg, II (Brüssels,
1836),
70
lines 18720—18809.
Le livre de Baudoyn, ed. C. P. Serrure and A. Voisin (Brüssels, 1839), p. 15 ff.,
also in the second edition (Brüssels, 1485), bü(b)-bvi(a)—Said to have been written
by71Gilet, c. 1474.
72
Gesta Romanorum, tr. Thomas Wright, II (London, 1811), 316—317.
73
Giraldus Cambrensis, Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer, VIII (London, 1861), 301.
Gervasius of Tilbury, Otia Imperialui, ed. Felix Liebrecht (Hannover, 1856),
p. 26.
74
Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum Naturale. The present writer has not been
able to consult this book, but a summary of the tale is given in Nowack, p. 41, and
a brief reference to it in Map, p. 339 n.

11 FabulaS

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162 Nai-tung Ting

not necessarily lustful—woman äs a snake-woman (äs in the version of Walter

Map and in 4) and her elimination, and must thus be regarded äs another cycle
of our lamia story. Map's account resembles B quite closely in that it has
several important details peculiar to the latter: a maid who is also a snake-
woman, the appearance of the lady äs a snake to her husband's relative, and
the lady's defeat by a holy man through the application of a thing vested
with religious significance. Variant 2, on the other hand, closely resembles A
in that a holy man, also an unwelcome guest, quells the demoness by dint
of words and makes her confess her plot and then vanish. Of course, none of the
versions has element 6, but, instead of physical injury, her husband is sup-
posed to have suffered serious losses in spirit and reputation—a point empha-
sized in l (lines 18758—63). Story element 10 is not stated, but it may be
safely assumed that her husband will turn henceforth into a better Christian.
The demoness, it must be added, is also completely free from non-human
features except when in her Sunday bath, äs in Map's tale.
Some of the significant details in Map's version, such äs the officious
relative, her discovery of the lamia's secret by p>eeping through a hole, and
the final flight of the lamia with a loud scream—point unmistakably to the
influence of a much more populär lamia story in Medieval Europe, the story of
Melusine.75 It appears that, just äs in the case of Philostratus, the raconteurs
feit free to fill with familiär motifs from local folklore the parts which may
not have been very clear in the prototype, namely the exposure and elimination
of the lamia. Thus all the versions borrowed more or less from Melusine. The
identification of the demone&s with other denizens of the nether world than
the snake in l, 2 and 3 also show the influence of local folklore. The fallen
angel in 2, for instance, was a favorite villain in Medieval European imagina-
tion.™ The same reason may apply to the use of the "devil" in l and 3, where
the supposed gentlewoman's neglect of her religious duties was condemned in
strong language.
After the sixteenth Century, our lamia story has obviously made no more
incursion into Europe. The various motifs or components of the story, Pro-
fessor Linda Degh has kindly informed the present writcr, arc still well known
in East Europe, but the story itself does not appear to have circulated among the
people. All later versions of this story, therefore, are literary in origin, or based
on recorded versions. Robert Burton's account in the seventeenth Century, for
instance, was admittedly derived from that of Philostratus. Burton's treatment
of the story,77 though, was very different from that of Philostratus. First,
Burton was not a Neo-Pythagorean. He admired all beautiful things, advocated

75
The affinity between Map's tale and the Melusine legend has been observed
in Nowack, pp. 40—41. Felix Liebrecht ("Zu den Nugae Curialium des Gualterus
Mapes," Germania, V [Wien, 1860], 60-—61) regards Map's tale äs just another
Melusine story.
76
See Alfred Nutt, "The Celtic Voyage of Re-birth," in The Voyage of Bran, II
(London, 1897), 211.
77
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melandwly (New York, 1927), p. 648. Other
quotations from Burton, unless otherwise indicated, are all from the same page.

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 The Holy Man and the Snake-Woman 163

an aotive life, and opposed celibacy. Both in temperament and in principle,

he was almost the reverse of Apollonius. Second, Burton did not hold Apollo-
nius in such high e&teem äs Philostratus had done. Though occasionally
paying some tributes to the Greek sage, he had on the whole acoepted the
orthodox, Christian criticism of the latter. In the Anatomy of Melancholy,
he referred time and again to Apollonius äs a heathen philosopher,78 a wonder
worker through his control of the devils,79 a "magician,"80 an "impostor," and
a "false prophet."81 Third, \vith his interest in the occult, he probably knew
some Medieval European tales of the lamia (such äs that of Melusine) in
which the laniiahas no nefarious intentions, but is truly in love with her man. He
certainly used Map's book and probably knew Map's account of our lamia
story. Since he did not respect the Catholic church, Map's account may have
created in him mixed feelings for the snake-woman. His account of this lamia
story in the Anatomy of Melancholy, one may notice, is flanked by anecdotes
of the innocent affections for men by both animals and supernatural spouses.
Because of die above reasons, Burton introduced a few vital modifica-
tions which completely changed the characters of both Apollonius and the
lamia. The former is no longer faultless and sacred. He discovers the source
of Menippus's trouble only "by some probable conjectures," and when the
lamia weeps and aslcs him to say no more, he will "not be moved." On the
other hand, the lamia appears no longer äs a cannibalistic monster plotting to
devour Menippus —-a plot described by Philostratus undoubtedly to inspire
fear. She becomes instead a victim of love, one of the multitudes "who are äs
much enamoured and dote (if I may use that word) äs any other creatures
whatsoever." She is head over heels in love: "She being fair and lovely would
live and die tvith him." When cornered, she does not "pretend" to weep, but
tmJy "wept and desired Apollonius to be silent." Certainly, she still resorts
to enchantment to keep her man. But why is she particuiarly to blame? Burton
was discussing not just love, but "love melancholy," which oan make humans
act like animals.82 \Vhy should a reptile, carried away by the same overwhel-
ming force, be singled out for criticism?
In the early nineteenth Century, our lamia story received its most beautiful
expression from the English poet, John Keats. Keats's reading of the legend
is, on the whole, based on Burton's. His Lamia, however, is not just a free
adaptation. Keats seerns to have known much more about folklore than critics
generally realize. The very beginn.ing of the poem, which cannot be found in
Burton, is highly significant:
Upon a time, before the faery broods
Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,
Before King Oberon's bright diadem,
78
79
Ibid., pp. 34—36.
80
Ibid., pp. 159—160, 166—167.
81
Ibid., p. 178.
82
Ibid., pp. 387—888.
Ibid., pp. 651 ff. See also Evans, The Psychiatry of Robert Burton (New York,
1944), pp. 33—34, 72.

11°

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164 Nai-tung Ting

Sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gern,

Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns
From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip'd lawns . ..
(Lamia, I, lines l—6)

Because of the progressive degradation of mythical figures, folklorists have

pointed out, ancient gods and goddesses who would receive only heroes have
gradually degenerated into fairies and demons to consort with peasants and
then become puny elves.83 In shifting his scene back to remote antiquity,
Keats appears to be aware of such degradation, and may be trying to restore
the dignity and purity of ancient myths. The world of Mercury and the nymph
is undoubtedly the Infant or Thoughtlesis Chamber, and the garden in The
Fall of Hyperion. In this seemingly topsy-turvy world of mythology and
folktales, Adam's dream can be truth, and the romance of gods is no dream:
It was no dream; or say a dream it was,
Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass
Their pleasures in a long immortal dream.
(Lamia, I, lines 126—128)

In a world not yet corrupted by modern institutions, the serpent is no

symbol of evil. Though half-woman and half-serpent, she is certainly not
of the brood of Gorgons or Ediidnas, for she is not only benevolent but also
"highly inspired." In fact, Keats appears to have learned that the sexpent was
worshipped äs a symbol of divine wisdom and a protector of men in remote
antiquity,84 for he makes her shield the nymph from "uinlovely eyes" by
rendering the latter invisible, just äs Diana has shielded Arethusa from Alpheus
in the Metamorphoses.85 He seems also to be acquainted with certain medieval
legends, for he compares the iamia to "some penanced lady elf, / Some demon's
mistress, or the demon's seif." (I, lines 55—56). In certain medieval folktales,
we know, female fairies often appear äs serpents to expdate their sins,86 and
all fairies may sometimes take on reptilian forms.87 When the Church showed
83
See, for instance, Lewis Spence, The Fairy Traditions in Britain (London, 1948),
p. 205.
84
J. A. MacCulloch and others, "Serpent Worship," Encyclopaedia of Religion
and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, XI (New York, 1921), 399 ff.; Rudwin, p. 311 n;
Angelo de Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology (London, 1872), II, 396—397, 407—408;
William Hayes Ward, "The Serpent Tempter in Oriental Mythology," in Bibliotheca
Sacra, n. s., XXXVIII (April 1881), 210; C. F. Oldham states in p. 196 of his The Sun
and the Serpent (London, 1905) that "Even in Greece, the serpent was considered
äs a protector."
85
Ovid, Metamorphoses, V, 577 ff.
86
William H. Schofield, Studies on the Libeaus Desconus (Harvard Studies and
Notes in Philology and Literature, IV; Boston, 1895), 202; Ulrich von Zatzikhaven,
Lanzelet, tr. Kenneth G. T. Webster, ed. Roger Sherman Loomis (New York, 1951),
pp.87 131—134; Fettet, p. 230.
Lowry C. Wimberly, Folklore in the English and Scottish Baüads (New York,
1959), p. 61; Paul Sebillot, Le Folklore de France, III (Paris, 1906), 289 ff.; Paul
Sebillot, Traditions et superstitions de la Haute Bretagne, I (Paris, 1882), 109; Ulrich,
p. 224; Quotation from Gervasius von Tilbury by Werner Richter in "Der Lanzelet
des Ulrich von Zazikhoven," Deutsche Forschungen, XXVII (1934), 73.

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 The Holy Man and the Snake-Wonwn 165

disapproval of such stories, the pcople simply turned the fairies into enchanted
princesses,88 and made the heroes disenchant them with one kiss or three
(Motif D711). Episodes of this type, which play essential roles in some medieval
romances, must be lurking in Keats's mind, for Lamia teils Mercury that she
was once a woman and wants to be restored äs such (I, lines 117—118). Lake
almost all other serpent-maidens, she also knows human Speech.89 It is hard
to locate the exact source of Keats's knowledge, however, for most of the
English lamia tales präsent her äs a "laidley worin."90 In Libaeus Desconus,
she has a human face "y°nS and nothing eld,"—but nothing more.91 In Le
Be! Inconnu, a Frencli version, she is also given such -a pretty mouth92 that
the hero becomes "fier" for a different reason. Only Keats had no way of
reading that manuscript.
Keats's portrait of her serpent form, too gorgeous for <any living specimen,
has appeared to many critics äs an exaggeration. Still, although he may have
invented many details,93 he could quote from one of his favorite readings,
Buffon's Natural History, to justify his over-elaboration: "The colours of this
serpent," Buffon vvrites of the Surinam serpent, "are so many and beautiful,
that they surpass all description . . . A still greater favorite is the Prince of
serpents, a native of Japan, that has not its equal for beauty."94 From Buffon's
description of the latter species, Keats may have borrowed a few particulars:
"The scales which cover the back are reddish, finely shaded ("vermilion-
spotted," "crimson barr'd," Lamia, I, lines 48, 50) . .. the eyes handsome and
lively"*5 ("eyes" that are "born so fair/' Lamia, I, lines 61—62). Buffon's
delineation of other species may have suggested other characteristics: "The
scales on the sides are of a bluish white" (Buffon, V, 109)—"Füll of silver
moons" (Lamia, I, line 51); "teeth . . . shining like mother-of-pear/" (Buffon, V,
115),—"with all its pearls" (Lamia, I, line 60); "vivid hue" (Buffon, V, 113)—
"dazzling hue' (Lamia, I, line 47).
However sumptuo-us Lamia may be in snake form, to her the reptilian
shape is a "prison." Her misery is shown in her eyes. "What could such eyes
88
George Lyman KitLredge, Study of Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge,
Mass., 1916), p. 268.
89
Schofield, p. 203.
90
Francis A. Child, English and Scottish Bailad? (Boston, 1884), II, 306—316;
The Marvellous Adcentures of Sir Jolm Maundevile Kt., ed. Arthur Layard (West-
mirLster, 1895), pp. 32—36. Sir Walter Scott, Minstreky of i\\e Scottish Border, ed.
T. F. Henderson (London, 1902), III, 290, 292—293.
91
Ancient English Metrical Romances, ed. Joseph Ritson (London, 1802), II, 84.
In another edition, Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript, II (London, 1868), 493, she
was "y°unSe and nothing old."
92
Renauld de Beaujeu, Le Bei Inconnu, ed. C. Hippeau (Pari5, 1860), lines 3155—
3156. Abo, Hans Siuts, Jenseitsmotiv im deutschen Volksmärchen (Teutonia, XIX,
Leipzig, 1911), p. 139.
95
Sources of Keats's portrait of the serpent are given in John Keats, Selected
Poems and Leiters, ed. Douglas Bush (Boston, 1959), p. 353; Katharina Garvin,
"Snakes in the Grass," Review of English Literature, vol. II, no. 2 (April 1961), 11—27.
94
George C. Buffon, Natural History of Birds, Fish, Insects and Repiiles, V
(London, 1798), 112.
95
Ibid., V, 112—113.

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166 Nai-tung Ting

do there/But weep, and weep, that they wäre born so fair?" (I, lines 61—62).
She wishes, and is soon, to become human. The dclineation of her transforma-
tion recalls a famous passage in an earlier poem of Keats's. The lines
Her eyes in torture fix'd and anguish drear,
Hof, ...
She writh'd about, convuls'd with scarlet pain.
(Lamia, I, lines 150—154)

remind a reader of the pioture of Apollo's deification:

And with a pang

As hot äs death's is chill, with fierce convulse
Die into life: so young Apollo anguish'd:

During the pain . . .

(Hyperion, III, lines 128—133)

It may not be unreasonable to ossume, therefore, that, in Keats's mind,

Lamia's metamorphosis is like that of Apollo, a necessary step to a different,
though not happier, level of being. She has speiwed out poison and is to become,
at least physically, a woman, "a full-born beauty new and exquisite** (I, line
172). It is thus a human being whom Lycius marries, though a human bedng
with a mysterious, shameful past. When Apollonius pronounces her a lamia,
he apparently detects her reptilian origin somewhere deep beneath her flesh
and bones; for he "gaz'd into her eyes" (II, line 256).
Whether Lamia symbolizes lasciviooisness, äs she does in the work of
Philostratus, is not very clear from the context. Her love is certainly not
Platonic, for she longs for "the ruddy strife/Of hearts and lips" (I, lines
40—41). Neither is she an innocent novice: she is "in the lore/Of love deep
learned to the red heart's core" (I, lines 189—190) "äs though in Cupid's
College she had spent/Sweet days a lovely graduate" (I, lines 197—198).
Yet, in II, lines 80—81, Keats emphatically indicates: "Ha, the serpent! certes,
she/Was none," and in the lines preoeding and following the above remark,
she appears passive and weak while Lycius is active and sadistic.
Although Keats does not represent the lamia äs deiighting in the rites of
Aphrodite any more than in human flesh, he clearly does not approve of her
or the type of love she brings. It is certainly not the conventional identif ication
of the snake with evil which affects Keats's attitude. He realizes that his
Interpretation departs from the "commonplace," äs Hunt is later to phrase it.06
In fact, he is glad that his poem will "take hold of people in some way—give
them either pleasarut or unpleasant Sensation." Only Keats knows too well
that the lovely supernaturaJ mistress is just a myth and therefore cannot
face reality. He reminds readers time and again that she can "unperplex"
pleasures from sorrow (I, lines 192—93, 327); yet his own experience has told
him only of pleasure "turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips." Conse-
06
Leigh Hunt's review of Keats's Lamia volume (The Indicator, August 2, 1820).

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 The Holy Mim und the Snake-Woman 167

quently she can only mean to him, to quote J. M. Murry, "in the deepest
sense of the word, an iilusion and the cause of Illusion."97 Her desire to keep
Lycius in ignorance, generally condemned by modern critics, may be motivated
by her fear that he may discover her origin in one way or another and be
lost to her forever. She can only bring him happiness through the creation
of illusions, \vhich Keats the poet mu&t destroy. To Keats, love melancholy
is not just ridiculous; it is also the source of grief and tragedy.
Although a destroyer of illusions and dreams, Apollonius is not entirely
acceptable either. As William Bäte has pointed out, the character of the
philosopher also has its limitations.98 Since Lamia means no härm and her
love for Lycius is undoubtedly true, her Opponent shooild be different from
the stern and ruthless saint in Philostratus. With his "bald head," "sharp
eyes"99 and "spieen," he either does not want, or is unable, to understand
love. He regards his disciple's problem not äs a human, but äs a mathematical,
problem. Consequently, he destroys the life which he wishes to preserve,
and which may have lasted longer without his interference. In other words,
he cannot stand for the type of philosophical wisdom mellowed by profound
knowledge of other's sorrow, such äs Keats always admires. He is not what
Keats would call the "human friend philosopher."100 Instead, our poet speci-
fically equates him with "cold philosophy," which blights all beauty and
joy with its rigid logic and analysis. Keats's other allusdons to Apollonius's
character reflect the influences of Burton. Many of the charges which Lycius
levels at Apollonius—hypocrisy, profanation, black magic, etc.—are hardly
justifiable by the context and come very likely from Burton. Lycius calls
Apollonius "a gray-beard wretch" (II, line 287), his eyes "/uggJmg eyes"
(II, line 277) and "demon eyes" (II, line 289), and his words "impious proud-
heart sophistries, / Unlawful magic, and enticing lies." (II, lines 285—86).
Burton also refers to him äs a "magician' with "detestable and horrid
mysteries." "The demons appear. . . that they might keep the wretched race
of magi in their impiety",101 Then he mentions his "/tigg/ing tricks," and accuses
such "infernal Ministers" of the Dovil äs "impostors" and "insolent spirits,"
\vho "out of pride" and "vain-glory" try to create "impiety" with "paradoxes,
figments, crodiets" "false doctrines," and "lies and fictions."102 While
narrating the plot of the poem in one of his letters, it may be added, Wood-

!7
' John Middleton Murry, Keats (London, 1955), p. 248.
93
Walter Jackson Bäte, John Keats (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 559.
!9
' The powerful, unrelenting gaze of Apollonius's reminds one of the Evil Eye
(Motif D 2071) in folklore, for although it disenchants, not enchants, it still produces
magical effect. See Lane Cooper, "The Power of the Eye in Coleridge," in Studies
in Language and Literature in Celebration of the Seventieth ßirthday of James
Morgan Hart, November 2, 1909 (New York, 1910), pp. 78—121; Nethercot, pp.
116—118; G. Elliot Smith, The Evolution of the Dragon (Manchester, England,
1919), p. 55; A. H. Krappe, Bahr with the Evil Eye (New York, 1927), pp. 1—43.
100
Hyder E. Rollins (ed.), The Leiters of John Keats (Cambridge, Mass., 1958),
11,139.
101
Burton, p. 176.
102
Ibid., pp. 887—889.

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168 Nai-tung Ting

house also calls Apollonius "a magician."103 Although he may have learned
the epithet from Burton, there is no reason why Woodhouse could not have
heard Keats use it eight days before, when the poet recited Lamia in his
presence.
While Lamia and Appollonius, though both regarded äs imperfect, are
undoubtedly vivioUy conceived, the same cannot be said of Lycius. Critics
who ciaim that Keats identified himself with Lycius seem to have overlooked
the obvious inconsistencies and peculiarities in the latter character. In Book I,
while walking alone "shut up in mysteries, / His mind wrapp'd like his
mantle," he falls in love with Lamia äs soon äs he hears her voice, and looks
"not with cold wonder fearingly, / But O heus-like at an Eurydice" (I,
lines 247—48). For a Student of philosophy, he certainly becomes hooked
at an astounding speed, for not even the much less sophistioated kings in the
Indic tales are caught so fast. Lamia, to be sure, knows magic; but she
works only one wile on him—threatening to vanish—and he "swoon'd, mur-
muring of love, and pale with pain" (I, line 289). When they set off for
Coiinth, he does not even notice that she has shortened the distance—"so
in her coinprized." During all the time that he is with her, he evidently feels
that she cannot be human and that there may be something wrong with
their love. When Appollonius first sees him together with Lamia, he "blinds"
himself from his teacher's "quick eyes." Later on, it takes the "thrill of
trumpets" to remind him that the world still exists. Yet, even then, he wishes
only to display his conquest—really his conqueror—to his friends in Order
to satisfy his pride. A character of this type cannot be Keats. With his
impetuosity and nai'vete, he reminds one rather of a knight in a medieval
romance. In his insistence on making his "prize" "pace abroad majestical, /
And triumph" (II, lines 59—60) in spite of Lamia's strong objections, he is
certainly reminiscent of Sir Launf al who disobeys the order of his fairy mistress
by divulging that he has a lady fairer than the queen, and loses his belle
dame in consequence (Motifs F 302.67 ,and C 932).104 When Keats calls him
"senseless Lycius," "madman," our poet may indeed have such an impulsive
hero in mind. Undoubtedly, äs the poem proceeds, Keats gradually shares
Lycius's feelings. When he proposes a wreath of thyrsus for Lycius, he
apparently really feels sorry for the perplexed youth. In Lycius's cries of
agony while Lamia droops and dies, one may even hear Keats's own voice.
Yet Lycius is certainly not Keats, for Lycius dies while Keats lives on and
remains in our memory beoause he is among those "Who feel the giant agony
of the world / And more like slaves to poor humanity / Labour for mortal
good." He will soon forget the "sophist's eye / Like a sharp spear.. . Keen,
cruel, perceant" and find courage and solace in eyes that

103
Richard Woodhouse's letter to John Taylor on September 19—20, 1819, in
Hyder E. Rollins (ed.), The Keats Circle (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), I, 94.
104
This motif is an essential feature of the lays of Desire, Graelent, and Sir Launfal
by Marie de France. Two versions of the last were available in Keats's days. See
Thomas Chester, Sir Launfal, ed. A. J. Bliss (London, 1960), p. 47.

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 T/IC Holy Man and thc Snake-Wonwn 169

held me back with a benignant light,

Soft mitigated by divinest lids
Half closed, and visionless entire they seem'd
Of all external things—they saw me not,
But, in blank splendour, beam'd like the mild moon,
Who comforts those she sees not, who knows not
What eyes are upward cast.
(Fall of Hyperion, I, lines 265—71)

Such a vision never inspires o r sustains Lyciiis, who cannot live with either
of the evils and has thus no recourse but death.

In short, our lamia story seems to have made two migrations to Europe,
both times to serve a didactic purpose. In the hands of Philostratus by the
end of the second Century, it taught the evil of desire and the unreality of
earthly joys. Then, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth Century, it was used
to inculcate also the heinousness of neglecting religious duties. Not until
modern writers defiant or indifferent to asceticism reinterpreted Philostratus's
version, did the didactic note disappear. Burton used the tale to illustrate the
overwhelming power of love, tipping the scale in favor of the lamia. In
Keats's poem, the story became a well developed allegory of the perpetual
conflict between dream and reality, reason and Imagination, science and
poetry, and love and its attendant frustrations. The snoke-woman is loveable
and pitiable, buit cannot be relied on because she is illusory. The sage is harsh
and relentless, but cannot be ignored because he represents reality. A crude
folktale became thus a means for the expression of the soul of a great poet
at the crossroads.
Keats's extremely fascinating, if not his greatest, poem was certainly the
best treatment of the legend in the West. Sinoe his time, Philostratus's tale
has not inspired another imitation. A number of Western critics and scholars,
on the other hand, have obviously become fascinated with a siinilar tale from
the East. Of the many versions of the Chinese Legend of the White
Serpent, there have been at least one French translation,105 four English
translations,106 and one English adaptation,107 not to mention synopses, allu-
sions, etc. The only late nineteenth Century attempt at original poetic com-

105
Stanislas Julien (tr.), Blandie et bleue; ou, Les deux couleuvres fees (Paris,
1834). See infra., p. 49.
106
The four translations are: (1) H. C. (tr.), "Lüi-fung Ta, Thunder-Peak Pagoda';
or, The Story of Han-wan and the White Serpent," The Chinese and Japanese
Repository, I (London, 1863—64), 357—365, 401—410, 429-^35, 461--168, 503-^513;
II (London, 1864—65), 11—19, 89—97; (2) S. I. Woodbridge (tr.), Tlie Mystery
of the White Snake: A Lebend of Thunder Peak Tower (Shanghai, 1896)— una-
vailable. See Sun Kai-ti: Chung-kuo t'ung su hsiao shuo shu mu (A Checklist of
Chinese Populär Fiction; Peking, 1933), pp. 361—362; (3) Arthur Waley (tr.), "Mrs.
White," Horizon (London), XIV (August 1946), 86—112; later included in his The
Real Tripitaka and Other Picces (New York, 1952), pp. 183—213; (4) Tien Han,
The White Snake, tr. Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yarig (Peking, 1957).
107
Fullarton Prior, The Legend of the White Serpent (Rutland, Vermont, 1960).
Based on "the full-lenght color cartoon produced in Japan."

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170 \ai-tung Ting

Position that this writer knows of. Herman Grimm's "Die Schlange,"108 is,
however, not based on a Chinese version äs Grube belioves.109 It is oertainly a
free adaptation of variant 4 of the King and the Lamia, which Grimm most
probably found in the Transcaucasia, for he borrowed another Armenian
folktale from the same vvork.110 Grimm's treatment of the tale is highly
sentimental. His sympathy is entirely with the lamia, who at first ignores
the youth and then teils him that she is a snake when he carries her away
almost by force. She is described äs a loving and dutiful wife, although the
scene of her retransformation may arouse a feeling of horror. Her moving
plea from the oven includes the reminder that he has had no reason to betray
her, and a curse that he will die because her image will never leave him
alone. When her voice is still and he staggers back, readers may feel that
his days are perhaps numbered too.
Grimm's poem does not seem to show any influence of Keats's. One passage
in which the youth, when kissing the lamia, remembers the serpent eyes and
tongue he saw on the preceding night may recall Coleridge's Christabel. But
Grimm, the last romantic in Germany,111 was evidently unable to breathe life
into his poem. The lamia story has long become just a curious subject to
scholars in the West; in East Asia, it is still alive.

III. Proliferation in Chinese Literature

In China, our lamia story perhaps first appeared in the city of Hangchow
äs one of the many tales connected \vith the various scenic spots around the
West Lake. It became a part of Professional story-tellers' repertoire in that
city perhaps äs early äs the Southern Sung Dynasty (1127—1279).112 Before
it found its way into writing, it evidently circulated orally among the people
of Hangchow. A local history of Chien Tang County (Hangchow), published
in 1609, states that "according to a tradition, [Lei Feng Pagoda was built to]
control the demoniac spirits of a white serpent and a green fish. The story
has been passed [on by word of mouth] from generation to generation."138

108
109
Herman F. Grimm, Novellen (Berlin, 1856), pp. 264—272.
110
Wilhelm Grube, Gesdiidite der chinesischen Litteratur (Leipzig, 1902), p. 446.
111
Grimm, pp. 187—196.
112
Biographisches Jahrbuch und deutscher Nekrolog, VI (1901), 104.
Chao Ching-shen, p. 7. In regard to this part of the paper, the present writer
is grateful to Professor Wolfram Eberhard and Professor Yang Lien-sen for their
encouragement and suggestions. Of the almost innumerable Chinese versions, this
paper will be able to cover only the most important ones, because its principal aim
is a comparative study of the European and the Chinese cycles and going too far
into
113
details peculiar to the Chinese variants may just confuse readers.
Wan U chien fang hsien chi (Hangchow, 1609; reprint, 1893), VI, 33 b; Tan
Cheng-pi, Hua pen yü ku chü (Basic Texts and Ancient Drama; Shanghai, 1956),
p. 87. Eberhard mentions several Chinese folktales in recent Chinese publications
äs belonging to the cycle of the Legend of the White Serpent (Typen diinesisdier
Volksmärchen, Helsinki, 1937, p. 171 n). Of these publications, the present writer
has managed to read all but one (that in Kuang i min chien ku shih). The tale in
Hsiang szu shuf pp. 30—32 is a brief, partial account of the legend. That in Tu chüeh
hai tzu, pp. 7—10 contains an intcresting parallel to the Melusine story but has

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 The Holt/ M an and t he Snake~Wonian 171

But the story was not recorded until Feng Meng-lung (1574—1646), a devotee
of folktales, included it in one of his collections of novelle. Feng's attitude
towards the marvellous was not very different from that of his contemporary
Burton. He argued for the inclusion of such improbable tales in the following
words:
Within the nine continents and the four seas, you do not know how many stränge
and weird happenings have never heen entered in the records or included in the
classics . . .1U
This type of argument, of course, was not uncommon in Western literature
before scientists discredited psydiic phenomena and explorers discovered
every corner of the globe, the most famoiLs example being probably Horatio's
plea. When viewed against Chinese thought, however, it is especially pertinent
beoause, on account of their emphasis on observation and empiricism and
their doubt of a consistently rational creator or scheine, Chinese philo-
sophers usually tended to be less incredulous of chance or extraordinary
happenings. Dyed-in-the-wool Confucianists certainly followed the example
of their great master in refusing to talk about weird events or Spiritual beings,
but the use of the terms of populär religion in a purely naturalistic irrterpreta-
tion of the universe by the Neo-Confucians of the Sung Dynasty probably
led the masses to feel that there might be some kind of justification for their
superstitious beliefs.115 Consequently, much of Chinese literature built on
tales of wonder may remind readers better acquainted vvith English literature
of such works äs Gulliver's Travels, or even modern science fiction, in which
realistic details are used to create a life-like badcgrooind for seemingly im-
probable, if not definitely impossible, yarns. Both because of the use of realistic
details and the praetical need for expanding their narratives, Chinese pro-
fessional story-tellers, whose "basic t ext" (hua pen)116 Feng allegedly depended
on, had dragged in many episodes—some of them impertinent.117 In order to
little to do with this particular lamia story. That in ditto, pp. 36—38 also bears very
little resemblance to our story. The tale in Ku chin yao kuai ta kuan, pp. 71—72
is the same äs that in Feng Meng-lung's Ching shih, eh. XXI, pp. 29 b—30 b, and
will be discussed on infra, p. 173. In view of the extreme popularity of the Legend
in China since the third quarter of the eighteenth Century, one wonders whether
any modern Chinese version can have escaped the influence of the later versions
and preserved pre-Feng Meng-lung features. At any rate, the tale recorded in
Lü yuan ts'ung hua (with an introduction dated 1825), XIX, 9 a—9 b, is clearly an
Imitation of Pai shä cJiuan. The two folktales recorded in Min diien wen hsüeh
(February 1963, pp. 58—60 and January 1964, pp. 103—107) are both obviously
derivations.
114
Feng Meng-lung, "Kuan yiian sou wan feng hsien nü," in his Hsing shih heng
yen,
115
chüan 4.
Joseph Needham, Science and CiOilisation in China, II (Cambridge, England,
1956), 491.
116
Hua pen, used to refresh the story-tellers' memory and to prevent them from
digressing too far in their impromptus, has also been translated äs "prompt copy."
It is translated differently here because "prompt copy" may suggest the existence
of 117
a prompter, of which there is no evidence in Chinese records.
Foi a typical example of the ways in which professional Chinese story-tellers
stringed tales together and thereby extended their yarns, compare Ytm diung lo hsiu
hsieh (Eberhard, p. 179) with any ordinary version of AT Type 301.

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172 Nai-tung Ting

exhibit the connection betvveen Feng's version and the other versions, therefore,
some irrelevant episodes have been omitted from the following synopsis:

I. (a) Hsü Hsüan, an impecunious young employe of a herb medicine störe in

Hangdiow, visits the West Lake, (b) He meets a beautiful lady with a maid servant
and helps them during a storm, thus becoming acquainted with them. (c) She claims
to be the widow of a government official and proposes marriage. (d) She conjures
up luxuries and steals money, without his knowledge, for him, thus causing him
to be exiled to the city of Soochow, where he finds her again and marries her.
(e) She, now called Mistress White, is in fact a white snake in love with him and
her maid servant, Little Green,118 is a green fish. (f) He is now rieh and happy,
but he presumably develops a stränge look.
II. (a) A Taoist monk in Soochow notices the stränge look on his face and offers
to expose his "demon wife," but is humiliated by her instead. (b) Because of another
escapade, they moved to Ching Chiang where she scares a would-be seducer (Hsü's
boss) by temporarily resuming her serpent form, (c) Later on, Hsü meets Fa Hai,
a holy Buddhist monk, in spite of the strong objections of his wife. Fa Hai teils
him that his wife is a demoness. (d) Back in Hangchow, a relative of Hsü Hsüan's
sees her in her snake form. But another Taoist monk attempting to catch her is also
defeated.
III. (a) Frightened, Hsü Hsüan again meets Fa Hai, and receives from him a
magic alms-bowl. With it, Hsü Hsüan covers his wife's head while she is off her guard.
(b) She struggles, and begs for mercy. But Fa Hai comes in the nick of time, compels
both the lamia and her maid to admit what they are, turns them into their original
forms, and puts them into the bowl. (c) The bowl is buried beneath Lei Feng
Pagoda by Fa Hai. (d) Hsü Hsüan renounces the world and becomes a Buddhist monk.

Even shorn of some irrelevant episodes, one may observe, Feng's version
is mudi more complex than the European versions. Some of the redactions
were obviously necessary to make the tale acceptable to Chinese listeners.
For instance, the youth visits ancestral graves instead of hunting in the coun-
tryside, because a seventeenth Century Chinese gentleman rarely ran after game
but had to display his filial devotion at least once a year. The serpent's color is
white, not only because a white serpent was regarded äs most potent in
folklore,119 but also because, according to a populär Chinese belief, freaks of
nature could have preternatural powers. The maid accompanying the lamia
may or may not have been in the prototype, but she was also almost in-
dispensable to a Chinese lady during those days.
The two details mentioned above, however, can also be found in another
lamia tale recorded in a different work by the same author, in which tale the

118
In Chinese, she is referred to äs a diing (green, or dark blue bordering on
black) fish. Arthur Waley in his translation "Mrs. White" gives her color äs green.
This writer is doing the same because, although some Chinese versions specify her
color äs ou (black), she is oftener dressed in green on the stage.
119
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, XI, 404; von Haxthausen, pp. 318—319 n;
Howey, p. 202; Persian Tales, tr. D. L. R. Lorimer and E. O. Lorimer (London, 1919),
pp. 225—231; Topsell, pp. 302—303; H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology
(London, 1928), p. 296; "The Three White Snakes," in Grimms' Fairy Tales,* tr. Mrs.
H. B. Paull, pp. 79—83; Angelo de Gubernatis, II, 407; Reidar Thomas Christiansen,
Migratory Legende (Helsinki, 1958), p. 39—4L See also Busk, pp. 217—220; Margery
Kent, Fairy Tales from Turkey (London, 1946), pp. 102—109; Hamel, pp. 184—185;

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 The Holy Man and the Snake-Woman 173

snake-woman also lives in splendor.1"0 The principal method usad by the

story-tellers in expanding this story seems to have been the adoption of
striking features from other Chinese tales of supernatural wives. Thus, to still
another lamia tale in an older collection,121 Tai p'mg kuang chi,—a tale wliich
perhaps originated in a poison damsel (Motif F582) story—Feng's version
may be indebted for another detail: a man going to the lamia's house to
reclaim a loan and consequently becoming intimate vvith her. However, it is
obviously The Story of the Three [Miniature] Pagodas in the West Lake,122
a lamia story which had at first most probably been concerned with a striga or
striges (Motifs G 262.2, G 262.5), that lent Feng's account sorne of its important
features: the youth's repeated emancipations from the lamia and bis subse-
quent submissions to her charms (Id, IIb and d), the lamia's irascibility123
(II d), and the imprisonment of the demons in a Container whidi was to be
buried underneath a structure sacred to Buddhism. The success vvith which
the Professional story-tellers welded together several different tales of the
snake-woman12* certainly made tliis lamia story more interesting, but it speit
woe for the other three lamia tales, which gradually sank into oblivion whereas
this story—known later äs the Legend of the White Serpent—became the rage
among the common people in China.
Trimmed of the digressions which had been introduced with a view to
delaying the conclusion, Feng's version reveals all the characteristic features
of our story. The lamia allegedly loves both lust and human flesh, and her
magic often gets her man into difficulties; but she also loves him dearly and
lias not harmed any person. However, she forbids him from assocdating with,
or giving alms to, monks and, forgetting her humble position äs a demon,
"presumes to mix with man/' The holy man must therefore subdue her, first

De Visser, p. 129; T'ai p '/ig kuang dii, chüan 456. p. 5 a, and chüan 458, p. 5 a;
Tripitaka, L, 355, 400, 767; LI, 44.
120
Feng Meng-lung, "Mang ching," in his Ching shih, or, in a modern reprint
entitled Ku diin ch'ing shih lui tsuan (Shanghai, 1926), diüan 24, p. 21.
121
Tai ping kuang dii, "Li Huang," diüan 458; also "Pai she dii," in Yen i pien,
chüan 34, no. 2 (Shanghai, 1936), II, 160—162. Cf. N. M. Penzer, Poison Oamsels
and Other Essays in Folklore and Anthropology (London, 1952), p. 3 ff. Another
Nagi story in the same collection (chüan 298) may or may not have influenced
Feng's account. However, the fox woman dressed in white in chüan 452 may have
suggested the lamia's repulsion of her would-be seducer.
122
Ch'ing ping shan t'ang hua pen (Shanghai, 1957), pp. 22—32 (by Hung Keng;
ed. T'an Cheng-pi); "Hsi hu san t'a dii." This tale has been regarded by some
Chinese scholars äs containing the "embryo" of Feng's narrative, but seems to have
more to do with the type of witch who has formed the h'ne taste for human hearts
and livers without hankering particularly for other parts of the body. See Lawson,
pp. 179, 182—183; Friedrich S. Krauss, Slavisdie Volksforsdiungen (Leipzig, 1908),
pp. 61—62; Halliday, p. 55; Bompas, pp. 432—434. Serpents cannot be so finicky.
123
The Nagas are believed to be quick-tempered. See De Visser, p. 9; Tripitaka,
IV, 369, 463; XXV, 51, 156—157; XXXVI, 403-^04; L, 304; LIII, 87, 255, 318,
954, 972; LIV, 91; LXXIV 748; LXXXIX, 902; LXXXX, 96. Jataka, VI, 82.
1<J4
A minor detail—a fan with a pendant in the form of two fish—was borrowed
from a taie in which the female spirit is a ghost (in Wan U diien t'ang hsien dii,
VI, 32 a, or Hsiung Lung-feng, "Shuang yü chui chi," in Szu diung hsiao shuo), äs
Chinese scholars have pointed out (Chao, p. 14).

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174 Nai-tung Ting

through her husband and then directly by himself. His poem toward the end
of the tale evidently contains the moral:
Let me advise you not to love beauty [i. e., beautif ul women]
Or beauty will certainly turn your head

If I, the old monk, had not interferred,

The snake would have eaten him up, flesh and bones.
Fa Hai's poem is followed by Hsü Hsüan's verses, which harp on the
illusoriness of earthly love. The last four verses read äs follows:
Just äs beauty reverts to the beauty-less,
So can the formless assume forms.
Beauty is vanity and vanity beauty—
The vainness of beauty must needs be told.
The lamia, one may add, is also never seen äs a snake by her husband.120
While reminisccnt of Philostratus's tale in its moral and outline, Feng's
tale, äs has been pointed out on page 172, also resembles Map's tale in
its introduction of a demon maid, the discovery of the lamia's secret by a
hostile relative, and the conquest of the lamia with an objectsacredtoareligion.
The weapon used in Feng's version, the alms-bowl, may remind readers of
the oven in the King and the Lamia. With the Kashmiri folktale, indeed,
Feng's version has a few interesting details in common: the constant references
to a lake, the age of the lamia, and the appearance of a weak, bungling monk
besides the great master. None of these similarities, thooigh, needs be of much
importance. The association of the lamia with water may be found in the
folklore of many a country.126 All demons in Chinese superstition have to con-
template for hundreds or thousands of years before achieving magic power.127
The use of two bungling Taoist monks äs a foil to the almighty Buddhist
monk, according to a Chinese theory,128 shows that one of the original purposes
of the Chinese tale was the glorification of Buddhism at the expense of its
rival—religious Taoism. It may thus have been added in China for that
purpose.
Whether or not the earliest carriers of the story into China haxi been
Buddhists, äs some Chinese scholars have ciaimed, it is clear that in Feng's
account, didactioism took a back seat to sheer zest in narration. The primary
concern of Chinese story-tellers was, of course, the entertainment of Chinese

125
In some later Chinese chap-books, Mistress White is said to have foul breath
even when seemingly human. In one Indian folktale, the same is said of a Naga
king. See M. Paul Dare, Indian Underworld (London, 1958), pp. 163—165.
1-6
Mistress White may have originated from the legendary "Lady of the West
Lake" (Li Yüeh-nan, "Lun pai she diuan shen hua chi ch'i fan k'ang hsing," Hsin
hua Monthly, IV, no. l [May, 1951], p. 223). For Celtic superstition that supernatural
wives are mostly connected with lakes, see D. Parry-Jones, p. 68. Nowack regards
Melusine
127
äs a water or cloud spirit. (op. ctf., p. 25 ff.).
Eberhard, Type 120.
128 cf Yang Kang, "Ping yü chü pai she chuan" (A Critique of the Shaoshing
Opera Version of the Legend of the White Serpent), Wen i pao, XXIII (1952), 8.

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populace, who never really accepted Buddhist doctrines.129 To please such an

audience, marvellous details had to be preserved, of course, and perhaps even
expanded. But the most important device would be the use of episodes
repräsentative of actual life in China. Since Hsü Hsüan is a poor man, an
account of his life provides an excellent opportunity to depict ancient China
through the eyes of the lowly. The government of the prefecture, for instance,
is presented äs harsh and unreasonable; the constables corrupt and far from
being heroic. None of the constables, in fact, dares to approach a supposedly
demoniac woman except for an addict to alcohol, who drinks up a whole jar
of liquor first and then throws the empty vessel at his female suspect. The
rieh are not always kind to the poor. Esquire Li, Hsü Hsüan's boss for some-
time, has no scruples about tempting the latter's wife. Hsü Hsüan is at first
too poor even to get married, and then driven from pillar to post for crimes
that are not his own. These and many more vivid anecdotes would remain
to be the principal attraction of almost all subsequent prose versions in China.
Just äs Feng relied on a prior, extinct version, so did Huang Tu-pi, the first
Chinese wniter to treat the legend in dramatic poetry with some success. An
earlier attempt, probably contemporaneous with—or even prior to—Feng's
narration, had been made; but it had proved to be a failure because, according
to a critic, it had failed to achieve unity and its language was too coarse.180
Since the earlier play no longer survives, it is impossible to assess the extent
to which Huang's Play of Lei Feng Pagoda (1738)131 borrowed from its pre-
clecessor. In default of evidences to the contrary, one may assoime that it was
Huang who started the sentimental trend by introducing the idea of yüan
(predestined relations, especially romantic and conjugal relations between
men and women).132 This idea, based on the Buddhist idea of karma, which
asserts that all tlie happenings in a person's life are determined or at least
conditioned by the person's actions in his previous reincarnations, roughly
equals the Western notion that marriage is made in Heaven. However, just
äs Cupid is said to be blind, so the Chinese god of marriage, the Old Man
ander the Moon, sometimes knots a tie that proves disastrous (nieh yüan)
because of the sinful desire or misplaced affection of the two parties for each
other in a previous life. The union of Hsü Hsüan and the lamia, Huang told
us, is nieh yüan. Hsü Hsüan was once an attendant upon the Buddha; the
lamia, though a demon, had studied Buddhism for many years and was on
the way to sainthood. Nieh yüan arase between the two, presumably because
of a chance admiration for each other, and the Buddha doomed both tempo-
rarily to the trials and tribulations of earthly existence.133

lM
' Cf. Chinese Mythology (Mythohgy of All Races, vol. VIII), p. 198: The
Chinese people "share very little in the genuine ideas of Buddhism."
i3ü pu Hsi-hua, Ming tai ch'uan dii di'üun mu (Peking, 1956), pp. 281—282.
131
Ch'uan ch'i, literally "a stränge story," meant simply "play" or "drama"
du ring Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties.
132
Cf. Huang Shang, Hsi hsiang du yü pa she diuan (Shanghai, 1953), pp. 40—41.
133
In Fu Hsi-hua (ed.), Pai ishc diuan du (The Legend of the White Serpent: An

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The idea of immortals retunüng to the "red dust" (the world) was a frequent
theme in Chinese Buddhist literature. The gods return edther to repay a debt
of gratitude, to play a part in a pre-ordained event, or to experience once more
the tragic nature of human life and become more confirmed in their religious
faith.The last was evidently meant to be the moral of the play: After HsüHsüan
has been united with Mistress White and the nieh yüan between them is
fulfilled, Fa Hai the holy man is to sever the improper relation and recall
Hsü Hsüan to heaven. The lamia, still a demon, will allegedly remain so
hopelessly sunk in the sea of passions that she will refuse to give up her man
and must thus be disciplined. Such an Interpretation, one may readily see,
displays an ambivalent attitude towards romantic love, or even life itself. Love
is an illusion. It is but vanity. Yet how beautiful it can be! Ho\v much joy and
grief it alvvays brings in its wake! Dante's profound sympathy for Paola and
Francesca ("ehe di pietade / io venni men cosi com'io morisse; / e caddi, come
corpo morto cade." Inferno, V, lines 140—142), Chaucer's compassion for
Troilus and Criseyde ("Thesiphone, thow help me for Rendite / Thise woful
vers, that wepen äs I write." I, lines 6—7), and Hardy's strong protest to fate
in Tess of the D'Urbervilles ("If all were only vanity, who would mind it?
All was, alas, worse than vanity. . . ." Chapter 41), may all be found in Chinese
literature affected by Buddhist sentiments.134 Huang, hke some other Chinese
writers, could not dismiss the bitter-sweet of love with total indifference. His
play Starts with the following verses:135
While birds are diattering and flowers smile,
I pick up a flute to play a new tune.
Do not take [the legend] too seriously.
Ye fishermen, ask not where lies the way.130

Sometimes I love to hear a ghost story,

Similar in hobby to heavenly Pu.137
Do not call my tale inane or silly;
'Tis told because I'm too profoundly moved.

At the end of the play, hc apologizod again for his sentimental attitude. Hc
was treating a fantastic story; other literati had done so too with an amused and

Anthology; Shanghai, 1955), pp. 282—284. All subsequent quotations are from
ihis edition.
134
For a description of similar amhivalence in the Oream of the Red Chamber,
see C. T. Hsia, "Love and Compassion in the 'Dream of the Red Chamber/"
Criticism, vol. V, no. 3 (summer 1963), p. 261—271.
135
Pai she chuan chi, p. 282. In translating these and other verses quoted from
the plays of Huang Tu-pi and Fang Ch'eng-p'ei, this writer has tried only to be
faithful in meaning, not to reproduce the mellifluousness of the lines.
136
An allusion to T'ao Yuan-ming's "T'ao hua yüan chi," in which one fisherman
accidentally discovered a Utopian Community never spoiled by civilization. Then
he returned to the world, and could never locate it again. Similar attempts by others
also failed.
137
The poet Su Tung-po of the Sung Dynasty.

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tolerant smile,138 much äs Anatole France probably did when creating the little
fairy to divert studious, old Sylvestre Bormard.139 Huang, however, was dealing
now with passion and sufferings, and he could not restrain his sympathy.
In dranging Mistress White froni a plotting, lustful creature to a plaything
of fate and a victim of love, Huang effected the same change in her character
äs Burton had done. Of the tender passion, she experiences the sorrows äs
well äs the joys.140 In the first part of the play, where the fore-doomed lovers
have not yet exhausted their share of happiness and still enjoy the approval
of the Buddha, the dramatist describes thedr feeHngs in melodious lines. When
Hsü Hsüan first meets Mistress White in her residenoe, for instance, he is
swept off his feet by her beauty:
Her breath like that of orchids—
Ah, the girl of my dreams!
Her complexion like that of jade—
I'm adrift and inebriated with love.
(Pai she diuan dii, p. 290)
When Mistress White becomes separated from her h iisband, she dreams of
him at night and is haunted by fear:
I kept on dreaming of losing my way,
Until the moon sank below yonder beam.
I have ne'er feit so lonely äs of now!
[Our love] almost came true, now turned awry ...
How can I forget my sorrow and fear?
(Pai she diuan dii, p. 297)
In the second part of his play, Huang's sympathy peters out and his style
becomes much more pedestrian, perhaps because the plot deanands that
Mistress White, failing to learn her lesson, be caught and penalized. Hsü
Hsüan has to be delivered from "the sea of sorrow*' and to learn to "laugh
at the world where mortals reel like drunks/Look back at life with infinite
regret." (Pai she diuan dii, p. 336). Fa Hai, therefore, remains still a savior,
a true emissary of the Buddha. The sympathy which the author showed toward
the lamia in the first part, however, evidently appealed far more to his
audience and readers than his loyalty to Buddhist doctrines. Unable to accept

138
Educated people in China, just äs educated people in other countries, found
folktales interesting because they could help to relieve the monotony of everyday
life. Thus wrote Pu Sung-ling: "Yet it is not at the sprouting and failing of foliage,
nor at the metamorphosis of insects that they (i. e., readers) marvel, but only at
the manifestations of the supernatural world. ... We marvel at devils and foxes;
we do not marvel at man." ("T'ang Meng-lai's Preface," quoted in the "Introduc-
tion" of Herbert A. Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, Shanghai, 1916,
p. 139
xviii.)
Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (New York, 1918), pp. 107 ff.
The female spirit in France's "La Fille de Lilith," with her desire to experience
both the bitter and the sweet of life, seems to come closer in spirit to many super-
natural spouses in Chinese fiction than roost of her sisters in Western folklore. Cf.
Killen,
140
p. 340.
Pai she diuan dii, pp. 287, 297, 316, 321, 322, 330.

12 Fabula 8

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the pessimistic views of Buddhisin, some of his Imitators feit that Huang had
been unfair to the lamia. Since Mistress White is also a prey to nieh yüan
and truly devoted to Hsü Hsüan, why does she alone have to suffer without
a hope for redemption? Consequently they added a sequal: She is to give
birth to a son who will grow up to win the highes t scholastic distinction in an
Imperial Examination, become honored by the emperor, and then deliver his
mother with the permission of the Buddha.141 Such a happy ending appeared
to Huang Tu-pi äs extremely "vulgär," and he denounced it without reseirve:
Mistress White is but a demon, a serpent. If she were made respectable, where
would we be?142
This accusation, incidentally, ciearly shows that, in spite of some vestiges
of snake-worship, the Chinese also regarded the snake äs base and disgusting,
though not usually evil äs people in the West, affected by the Biblical tradition,
usually took the snake to be. Many of the common people in China, of
course, worshipped the dragon. But the latter was a mythical creature, into
which a serpent might or might not change itself. Before it did, it had to
crawl on lowly ground, humble, despised, and sometimes frightening.143 In
the Chinese mind, the lamia could thus represent a base, disreputable, though
capable woman. In a conservative society, because of her origin, she was not
permitted to become the consort of any respectable man. In giving her a
scholarly, successful son, Huang's Imitators adopted the one sure device which
could lift a woman with a past out of the mire. Instead of adumbrating
ethical or metaphysical doctrines, therefore, the legend gradually became a
social allegory in China.
In spite of Huang's strong objections, the tragi-comic versions which he had
denounced äs "vulgär" gradually became populär in other parts of Eastern
China.144 Their appeal to the masses increased tremendously, when in 1771
Emperor Chien Lung attended a performance of one of diese plays, Sponsored
by rieh merchants of Northern Kiangsu to celebrate his birthday.145 We do not
know now what this play was like. It may have been the so-called Old
Manuscript Copy, a synopsis of and some excerpts from which have recently
been pu'blishod.146 At any rate, this play feil into tho hands of Fang Ch'eiig-p'ei,
an accomplished lyricist, who found the language too coarse and undertook
to revise it. Fang's version, though based largely on earh'er works, was to
serve, in plot, a source and a model to all subsequent attempts.147 A synopsis
of his main plot is thus given äs follows:
141
Chao Ching-shen, p. 21, attributes the sequal to an actor Chen Chia-yen and
his daughter.
142
In Chien Hsing-ts'un, Lei feng t'a diuan dii hsü lu (Shanghai, 1953), p. 7.
143
Cf. Howey, p. 258. For an alleged eye-witness account of the transmogrification
of a serpent into a dragon, see Yü Yüeh, Ch'un tsai fang ts'ung shu, chüan 109,
pp. 29—30.
144
Chien Hsing-ts'un, p. 8.
145
Ibid., p. 53.
146
Ibid., p. 27—51.
147
Huang Shang, p. 55. Tai Pu-fan, "Shih lun pai she chuan ku shih," in Chang
Hen-shui, Pai she chuan (Peking, 1955), p. 2.

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I. Almost the same äs Feng's, except that the love between Hsü Hsüan and
Mistress White is also based on yüan, äs in Huang.
II. (a) Same äs in Feng. (b) At noon on the fifth day of the fifth moon (the Dragon
Boat Festival), following a local custom, Hsü urges Mistress White to drink a wine
mixed with realgar, which causes her to appear temporarily äs a serpent and him to
die of fear. To revive him, she has to go to the mountains to fetdi a life-giving herb,
and is almost killed there by the Spirit of the White Stork. She is, however, finally
granted one stalk, and restores her husband to Life. She does not hesitate, though, to
assume the form of a different kind of demon to scare her would-be seducer. (c) Same
äs in Feng, except that Mistress White literally raises a storm and a flood in an attempt
to drown Fa Hai and get her man back, and Hsü is released later because his wife
is going to have a baby. (d) Hsü mns into his wife again on a bridge near Hangchow.
She accuses him at first of ingratitude, but relents and takes him bade.
III. (a) Mistress White gives birth to a son. More than half a month later, Hsü
suddenly becomes afraid and again meets Fa Hai. He will not use the alms-bowl himself,
but lets Fa Hai use it the next day. (b) Mistress White is combing her hair when
Fa Hai arrives and puts the alms-bowl on her head. She implores in vain and becomes
a little snake in the bowl. Her maid is carried off in chains. (c) Same äs III c in Feng.
(d) Same äs III d in Feng. (e) Hsu's son grows up, wins distinction, and then comes
back to offer sacrifice to his mother at the pagoda. Moved by his devotion and
Mistress White's good behavior while doing penance, the Buddha releases the latter
and recalls her to heaven.
One can readily see that the already much-expanded plot in Feng Meng-lung
has become even longer. One reason for the new additions is of course again
practical: episodes such äs Mistress White fighting other spirits in Order to
steal an herb, raising a flood to drown Fa Hai and his followers, etc., provide
much action and call for elaborate scenery, lighting, etc., on the stage. The
other, and perhaps more important, reason is to improve dramatic effect.
Making Mistress White appear only once äs a serpent before her husband's
eyes—not saveral times and each time ineffectively äs in Huang's play—after
many tender love soenes and in the midst of festive atmosphere intensified the
contrast between beauty and horror, joy and fear. (Incidentally, this change
also draws Fang's play closer to the King and the Lamia). The meeting of the
lovers on a bridge (II f) re-introduces sentimental lyricism after all the din
and fury. For these new additions, the playwright undoubtedly drew also from
folklore. The belief that realgar or cinnebar can help to exorcise or overcome
evil spirits may seern peculiar to Chinese folklore.148 Mistress White's quest
for a life-restoring herb, however, reminds one not only of the folktale known
in the West äs the Three Snake-Leaves (Motif B 512, Type 612), but even
more specifioally of Hanuman's trip to the summit of Mount Kailaca of the
Himalayas for a similar purpose.149 Her defoat by the Spirit of the White Stork,
which almost costs her her life, may be traced to the perpetual fear of the
Nagas for the Garudas.150 Her ability to create storms and floods comes

148
149
Dennys, p. 70.
Ramayana, tr. Manmatha Nath Dutt (Calcutta, 1891), section LXXIV, "Yuddha-
kandam."
150 £)e Visser, p. 7; "Pai i mei fu," in Ku (hin shen kuai ta kuan (Shanghai, 1922),
chüan 6, p. 4; many references in Tripitaka.

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undoabtedly from the folk belief in the rain-making faculty of the dragon.1''
Yet these additional features do not make Mistress White more terrible; they
endear her more to the audience. She drinks the realgar wine with füll realiza-
tion of its potency,because she will not displease her huslband. She braves death
and hardship to save him. After her husband has left without an explanation
and once again causes grave danger to her person, she takes him back in spite
of the advice of her maid. An even stronger appeal to the audience lies in her
motherhood: She has given birth to a boy who will become a great scholar,
and is nursing him with tenderness when she becomes wrested from the
world. In other words, except in one terrifying scene, the audience sees no
evidence of her reptilian origin but witnesses her only äs a loving, self-sacri-
ficing woman. In the last act, when she is finally released, even the Buddha
praises her for her loyalty, humility and motherly love.
One scene which Fang wrote entirely by himself and was very proud of,
the most exquisite scene in all the Chinese treatments of the tale, "Small
Talk by Night," portrays her äs being reminded by moon-lit landscape of
her earlier religious existence on snow-clad peaks. She teils Little Green,
sighing:
Talk not now of this o'erwhelming passion,
For suddenly I recall my life of old,
Saunt'ring like a lone cloud o'er the brooks.
Ever since destiny unites me with him,
I've been like a leaf fallen from its twig,
Not knowing what the future holds in störe.

When the cute Little Green teases her, she admits that, once in the "red
dust," she is no longer mistress of herseif. However, she does not regret her
fondness, but mentions several Chinese goddesses smitten with love for mortals.
Hsü Hsüan appears and they walk hand-in-hand in the moonlight. Hsü sings:
The closed vermilion doors—how quiet they seem,
And this courtyard, so radiant and bright,
Every step of yours delicate and light ...
Steeped in chilly air, how my beauteous wife,
Simple and unadorned, looks ravishing.

Without actually altering the main outline of the plot, Fang, a highly
unconventional man,152 had evidently less scruples about adopting folk themes
and ideas, and his sympathy for the lamia seemingly did not lapse throughout
the play.
Mistress White's gain is Hsü Hsüan's loss. Despite his infatuation, Hsü
Hsüan never completely trusts her since the escapade in Hangchow (Id). The
author never explains how Fa Hai convinces him of the wickedness of his
wife. At any rate, soon after the birth of his child, he hurries to Fa Hai to ask

151
152
De Visser, pp. 10 ff; Oldham, p. 50; many references in Tripitaka.
For biographical Information on Fang Cheng-pei, see Hui chou fu chih,
XVI, 58 b.

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for deliverance, alleging that while raising a flood to get him back, bis wife
has destroyed many human lives and tbus cannot go unpunished—an argument
fitter for a dispenser of justice such äs the Buddha or Fa Hai than for him.
He does not have the heart to in jure her, but allows Fa Hai to do so without
interference. He is not only weak, but also, äs a verse following the prelude
calls him, "heartless"—an epithet which would become associated with bis
name for years.
As in the versions of Feng and Huang, Fa Hai remains lofty, correct, and
uncompromising. He at first refuses to release Hsü Hsüan from bis tem/ple
because the latter wants to stay with him. Then he sends Hsü back to Hang-
chow because the yüan has not yet been completely fulfilled and Mistress
\Vhite is going to have a baby. He finally punishes the lamia because she has
destroyed many lives. When Hsü Hsüan's son grows up and denounces
him—äs Lycius does in Lamia—äs a sophist, a home-wrecker and an impostor,
Fa Hai does not retaliate, for he is but a tool of destiny. When Mistress
White's penance is done and the sorrow of her son moves heaven, it is he who
comes to release Mistress Wbite and read her eulogy. "The man who unties
the bell must needs be the same that fastened it," he declares, and winds up
the play with a Buddhist admonition:
Alas, all men tormented by passion,
Bustling and hurrying with love or regret.
Don't you notice yonder in the West Lake
The towering pagoda against the setting sun?
(Pai sh$ diuan dii, p. 419)
The poetic plays of Huang Tu-pi and Fang Ch'eng-p'ei, with their literary
diction and ocoasional purple patches, did not represent the average Chinese
versions. The Professional story-tellejrs who catered to the masses relied chiefly
on prose and tan tzu (a mixture of deolamation and chant to the accompani-
ment of a stringed Instrument). During the eighteenth Century, when
interesting developments vvere taking place on the stage, no notable prose
version was produced in China. Only two of these versions are still mentioned
by modern critics: One in Ihi hu chia hua (Pleasant Discourses about the
West Lake),153 »and the other in Hsi hu shih i (Miscellaneous Information
about the West Lake).i:A Both of them are simplified accounts of Feng Meng-
lung's tale and are of little historical or literary importanoe. A remarkable
variant, an Imitation of Feng Meng-lung's account, appeared though in
Japan.155 With its original redactions and its gripping power, it is clearly
superior to most of the Chinese prose versions. However, its emphasis on the
wantonness and the weirdness of the lamia made it out of step with the main
l ine of development in China, where Mistress White was increasing in
humanity and agreeableness. This tendency was carried on chiefly by the
153
Hsi hu chia hua, ed. Mu Lang tzu, diuan XV (1751); "Mrs. White," tr. Arthur
Waley.
™_
155
Hsi hu shi i, ed. Chen Shu-dii (1791), chüan 21.
Ueda Akinari, "Jasei no in," in Ugetsu monogatari.

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tan tzu versions, which were designed principally to entertain fe>male readers.
One such Version, The Strange History of Lei Feng Pagoda, written allegedly
by the "Master of [the Hall of] Jade Mountain" in 1807 and based probably
on an earlier tan tzu tale,150 hos been available to the present writer only
in a French translation.157 It introduces a new note by explaining the yüan
betvveen Hsü Hsüan and the lamia: thousands of years back, when the lamia
was yet a little white snake, she was caught by a begigar and might have lost
her life, if a man had not bought her and set her free. This man, after
many reincarnations, has become Hsü Hsüan. In order to repay the debt of
gratitude, she assumes human shapc to become his wife (p. 266 ff). The lamia
has thus become a grateful serpent (Motif B 375.9), analogous to another
white serpent (actually a Naga princess) in a Ming Dynasty play.158 There
is nothing wrong now in her yüan with Hsü Hsüan. The punishment she
receives from Fa Hai is due partly to her unwitting destruction of life, and
partly to her violation of a sacred oath (p. 15). Little Green becomes now
also a snake (pp. 16—17). Hsü Hsüan is depicted äs a true lover. When Fa
Hai comes uninvited and traps his wife, he does all he can to save her.
Finally he becomes a monk not because he is converted by his wife's destroyer,
but because he is overwhelmed by grief (p. 279).
Another version, couched in a colloquial style that is by tums humorous,
grave and sentimental, is the Biography of the Grateful Demon (1810).159 The
lamia is now definitely descended from a dragon. Before leaving heaven,
she has drunk some nectar granted her by a goddess and, like Keats's Lamia,
vomitted all her poison (1,3 a). After marriage, she is also the less lusty
partner (1,10 a). Her success in helping her husband and her final wishes
that her husband might remarry and that her baby might be taken good
care of after her disappearance, etc., may remind readers of Melusine. "If
you wish," she blubbers when she is caught, "take a last look at your poor wife.
In an instant, she will be lost forever." (VI, 6 a). Hsü Hsüan also reads more
like Keats's Lycius, or Raymond in Melusine. He cannot live without Mistress
White and, after her imprisonment, develops intense hate for his offieious

156
157
Chao, p. 36.
Stainslas Julien, op. cit. Julien does not give the title of the Chinese original.
From the Chinese charaeters on the title page, it may appear that the name of the
fiction is Pai she ching chi (Story of the Spirit of the White Serpent), not Lei feng
t'a di i chuan. Nevertheless, the translation also points out that the author is called
Ju Shan Chu Jen, and that the legend is supposed to have come from Ching Chiang.
The date of the original is given äs 1807, and the contents of the volume correspond
with Chao Ching-shen's description (p. 34). There is no doubt, therefore, that this is
a translation
158
of one of the editions of the Strange History.
See the summary of Pai she dii (White Serpent Story) in Chü hai tsung mu t'i
yao,
159
V, 7 a—b. This play is obviously based on a folktale (Eberhard, p. 64 ff).
The edition which this writer has used is Hsui hsiang i yao di'üan diuan
(no date, no place). The contents of this edition match very closely the description
of Chen yü-chien's / yao diuan in Chao, pp. 37—41. It is, though, evidently a
corrupted edition of I yao dnian. Compare the Quotation in Chao, p. 38, with the
corresponding passage in III, 12 b, and see the discrepancy in the heading of eh.
28. On II, 23b, the author of this edition admits using Chen Yü-chien's version.

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deliverer. "The more I think [abaut the tragedy]," he bewails, "the bitterer
appears my lot. What do I care about becoming a saint or a Buddha? It
would be much better to seek the Styx." (VI, 7 a). Little Green also becomes
a more complex character, a combination of the traditionally impish Soubrette
and a plucky, loyal girl devoted to her mistress. Fa Hai, on the other hand,
is represented äs arrogant, cold and inflexible, ahnost like Apollonius in Keats's
poem. He is still doing what must be done: executing divine will. But he
insists on persecuting Mistress White in spite of Hsü Hsüan's strong objections,
refuses to relent in spite of her abject pleas and the curses of Hsü's relatives,
and thus appears completely inhuman.
As many Chinese critics have pointed out, the Biography of the Grateful
Demon played a vital role in making our lamia story known in almost every
village in China. With its racy style and its wealth of realistic details, it
turned a tale of marvels into a novel of manners. It also represented the
completion of the sinicization of an alien tale based on an alien philosophy.
The asceticism and other-worldliness of Buddhism becarne now completely
swept away by the stress on family life and the interest in this world, which
had long been characteristic of Chinese civilization. Because of the implied
hos tu i ty to Buddhist philosophy in the Biography and its innumerable imita-
tions, in spite of the superficial deference whidi most of these versions still
paid to Fa Hai, the common people of China obviously came to hate the
Buddhist monk. According to Lu Hsün, they even invented an ignominious
end for the monk: The Jade Emperor (a king of gods invented purely by
Chinese sources) Orders Fa Hai arrested and punished for his ill deeds, and
the latter has to seek refuge in a crab shell.ieo The response of Chinese
Buddhists to such populär resentment may be seen in two Precious Scrolls
(Buddhist booklets often containing exampla), which this writer has come
across. Both of them161 follow in the footsteps of the Biography of the Grateful
Demon, exalt Mistress White, and bear down on their own saint—Fa Hai.
"Do not regard Mistress White äs a demon," one of them even remonstrates.
"She does not act like one. Should she not put to shame human beings
\vho do not act like human beings but follow the ways of demons?"162
Whether such partiality for Mistress White came from the anxiety of the
monks to please their patronesses, this present writer is not competent to
judge. Both Precious Scrolls accessible to him appear to be fairly recent publi-
cations which may or may not have reflected the views of earlier Buddhist
versions.163 With all their condemnation of sex in Order to enforce celibacy
160
Lu Hsün, Lu Hsün di'üan dii (Complete Works of Lu Hsün; Shanghai, 1938),
I, 158—159. According to a folktale in Min chien wen hsüeh (January 1964, pp.
106—107), it is Little Green who drives him into the crab shell.
161
Chekiang Hangchow fu chientang hsien lei feng pao chuan (no date, reprint
in Fu Shih-hua datecl 1887); Lei feng ku chi pai sho pao chuan (pref. 1908).
162
Lei feng ku chi pai she pao chuan, p. 1.
163
The above-mentioned preface (loc. cit.), however, also pleaded for fraternity
witli the religious Taoists, thus reversing the hostile attitude towards the latter in
Feng Meng-lung's tale.

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and all the ddsrespect for women inherited from Ancient India, it must be
pointed out, the Buddhists also admitted women to their order and even
to Arhatship.164 The story of Ananda and the Matangi on page 157 of this
paper, for instance, has been regarded äs "bearing some resemblance to
that of the Samaritan woman in the Gospel of St. John."165 The Zen Buddhists
in China, besides, were not harsh disciplinarians.
Whatever may have been the reasons for the favorable view of the lamia
in the above Precious Scrolls, Mistress White undoubtedly emerged in the
vast majority of Chinese versions by the beginning of this Century äs a
paragon of virtue, sharing all the frustrations and sorrows of Chinese woman-
hood. Radical Chinese writers thus started to read in her story the injustices
and cruelties which a feudal society had inflicted on women. When the
beautiful Lei Feng Pagoda, moss-clad and dilapidated, collapsed in 1932, Lu
Hsün rejoiced:
The White Serpent of its own accord doted on Hsü Hsüan. Hsü Hsüan voluntarily
married a demoness. What did it have to do with other people? Yet he [Fa Hai]
would put aside his sutras, interfere for no reason at all, and make trouble. Probably
he was jealous—this is almost certain.166
Lu Hsün's comment, one may notice, coincides curiously with Leigh Hunt's
observations on Keats's alleged intentions. "He [Keats] would see fair play
to the serpent..." Hunt wrote, "Lamia, though h'able to be turned into
painful shapes, had the soul of humanity; and the poet does not see why she
should not have her pleasures accordingly."167
Populär äs it was, the Legend of the White Serpent would have remained
äs one of such tales—familiär to every peasant woman and ocoasionally
toudied up and tumed into serious literature by a few unconventional
writers, if there had not been the Communist revohition. Realizing that fairy
tales "often show how the people would not yield to their fate, but overcome it
in their imagination,"168 the government of Red China has encouraged the
re-evaluation of well-known tales, includinig the Legend of the White Serpent.
To most of the critics in Maiinland China, the Legend of the White Serpent
shows "the resistance [of the common people] to landlords, monks, and the
feudal ethical System."169 Mistress White is a heroine because, though similar
to many a peasant woman in Ancient China in her loyalty, honesty and tragic
fate, she is not meek or bashful but will defy any authority to protect herseif
and her beloved. "In most works of classical Chinese literature," one critic in
Shanghai has pointed out, "the quest for freedom in love ended in elopement,
suicide, fantasy or dream." In the Legend of the White Serpent alone did
such a quest "take the form of positive, unflindiing resistance, even matching
164
The Questions of King Milinda, tr. T. W. Rhys Davis, in Sacred Books of the
the165East, XXXV (London, 1890), 297, nl.
166
Beal, A Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, p. 206.
167
Lu Hsün, loc. cit.
18
Hunt, Loc. cit.
1
Tai Pu-fan, p. 11.
Li Yüeh-nan, p. 223.

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force with force."170 The fact that she is also supposed to be a serpent does
not deter her admirers. The ruling class, one critic maintains, used to
represent themselves äs gods. In retaliation, rebellious masses invented giants
and monsters to challenge such gods. The White Serpent was but one of
these inventions. Buddhist interpretations were added later by authors soib-
servient to the ruling class.171
Such an Interpretation of the legend of course contravenes the Buddhist
reading. The idea of yüan must be ruled out,172 or Mistress White would
appear perverse in refusing to accept the inevitable. She must not marry Hsü
Hsüan only beoause she ovves hirn a debt of gratitude, since she is free to
choose whomever she pleases.173 To\vards Buddhist monks in old China, most
of the modern Chinese critics are inimical. Buddhist monks, they assert, were
often lackeys of landlords or landlords themselves. Fa Hai cannot be just a
self-righteous busy^body.174 He wrecks a happy home because he regards
Mistress White äs disreputable and will not tolerate freedom af love among
the yooing.175 Since he is evil incarnate, the forces resisting him must be all
good and noble. Little Green, who has been described in most of the Chinese
versions since the Biography of the Grateful Demon äs extremely defiant to
the "bald ass," must be particulary pure and heroic. Her affairs and im-
pishness must be forgotten. She has to emerge äs a young Amazon and a
symbol of the revolutionary forces, which alone will deliver Mistress White
from her long imprisonment—not the nurnber one sdiolar in an Imperial
Examination (a lackey of feudalism) or Fa Hai (feudalism itself).176
To these critics, the most difficult diaracter is Hsü Hsüan. Making him either
extremely weak and egotistical or too gullible and naive would make Mistress
White either too simple-minded or too sentimental. Making him firm and
always appreciative of his wife's qualities would militate against the main
plot and reduce the tragic atmosphere of the story.177 He must thus be
described äs irresolute, wavering between "reactionary" and "progressive
elements." Just like tlie petty bourgeois in the modern world, he is a diaracter
that botli sides have to win over. In his weaknesses and vaoillations lies
drama.178 Yet where in the plot should he be represented äs remaining loyal

170
Shen Jen-chieh, "Pai she chuan shih hin," Shanghai Chieh fang jih pao (May
31, 1952).
171
Ibid.; Li Yüeh-nan, pp. 222—223.
172
Huang Shang, p. 41.
173
Chang Keng, "Tui yü pai she chuan ku shih ti kai pien," Wen i pao, no. 23
(1952), pp. 11—13; Yü Yü, "Tan chin po chi," Hsi diü pao, V, no. 6 (Nov., 1951);
Liu Meng-te, "Pai sh£ diuan shih lun," Shanghai Chieh fang jih pao (May 31, 1952).
174 ^ YÜ? loc cit . f/ai p u -f an) "P'ing chin po chi," Jen min jih pao (Sept. 12,
1952).
175
Chao Chia-hsin, "Tui chi ko ti fang chü t'uan yen ch'u pai she chuan ti i
chien," Peking Kuang ming jih pao (Dec. 7, 1953); Tai Pu-fan, "P'ing chin po dii."
7 Yü Yü> ioc cit . shen jen.chjeh, loc. dt.
177
Chao Chia-hsin, loc. cit.
178
Chien Hsing-ts'un, "Lun Hsü Hsüan ti kai pien," Wen i pao, no. 23 (1952);
Huang Shang, p. 89.

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186 Nai-tung Ting

to bis wife? Where may he distrust her? What are to be the motives for his
dianges of heart? On these problems, there does not appear to have been a
general agreement.
These critical opinions, published mostly between 1950 and 1953, were
provoked by the appearance of many new stage versions. None of these
bold innovations has been accessible to the present writer. According to the
descriptions of their critics, they certainly tried to introduce radical and ex-
tensive changes in plot. In one of these versions, for instance, Mistress White
is not a lamia, but entirely human. When on the Dragon Boat Festival, her
husband thinks that he sees her äs a serpent, he is actually drunk and his
vision is blurred. In another version, she is a girl compelled by her step-
mother to live with a detested fiance, a little boy much younger than she is. Her
alleged crime lies in her elopement with Hsü Hsüan, vvhom she really loves.
Still other dramatists made her into a reformed prostitute or a revolutionär}':
Fa Hai hates her because she has rejected his advances179 or stolen one of
his magic puls, which act sets him back in his search for more magical power.180
The better versions produoed in Red China, however, mostly reflect the
critical views presented in the preceding paragraphs. Of such versions, that
by Tien Han is easily the most outstanding.
Long before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, Tien Han had been
aware of the dramatic character of otir lamia story, "a tragic struggle between
heterodoxy and orthodoxy, emotion and reason."181 His first attempt, The
Stonj of the Golden Bowl (composed ca. 1945), however, was not a success.
It was first banned by the Nationalist government because of its allusions
to contemporary events.182 Then, under a ne\v regime, it became criticized
for being too traditional in its Interpretation and failin-g to emphasize the
theme of anti-feudalism.183 His second effort, The Legend of the White
Serpent (1953) for Peking opera,184 won him more praises than strictures.185
It follows, on the whole, the suggestions of contemporary critics, but it also
has indisputable merits of its own. First, it improves the unity of the play by
omitting most of the minor episodes that have cluttered up the other Chinese
versions. With the deletion of the lamia's larcenies, the antics of her fellow
demons, Hsü Hsüan's trials and travels, etc., the main theme—the conflict
between the lamia and the holy man—becomes much more conspicuous. Fa
Hai is made to appear very early in the play without any of his bungling rivals
in order to increase the contrast. Second, the characters are provided with
more reasonable motives than in most of other Chinese versions, and made

179
180
Tai Pu-fan, "Shih lun pai she chuan ku shih," pp. 6, 11—13.
Shen Jen-chieh, loc. cit.
181
Tien Han, op. cit., p. 92.
182
183
Chen Shou-chu, Lun Tien Han ti hsi diü diuang tso (Shanghai, 1961), p. 94.
184
Yü Yü, loc. cit.; Tai Pu-fan, "P'ing diin po dii."
Tien Han, Pai she diuan (Peking, 1955), tr. into English by Yang Hsien-yi
and185Gladys Yang (Peking, 1957).
For a dissenting critique, see Chen T'ing-sha, "Tui hsiu kai yen di'u pai she
chuan ti i diien," Peking Kuang ming jih pao (May 23, 1953).

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 The Holy Man and the Snake-Woman 187

to illustrate the qualities they are designed to symbolize. Mistress White, a

se €nt-t ned-fai y, represents love and heterodoxy. She falls in love with
Hsü Hsüan not only because of his good looks, but also because of his gentle-
ness, good manners, love of his parents, and his effort to make an honest
living, much äs many a Chinese lady might do in those days. Her fear of
losing Hsü Hsüan, though, causes her to make one big mistake: She does not
confess her ignoble origin until her arch-enemy has already learned of her
and laid schemes for her destruction (p. 69). Fa Hai Stands for reason and
orthodoxy. He must annihilate Mistress White because she is not of the
proper kind and yet dares to act independently in defiance of his authority
(p. 16). He makes no pretense to convert Hsü Hsüan because he is so sure of
his infallibility (pp. 81—82). Hsü Hsüan has, at first, no suspicion of his wife.
Then Fa Hai plunges him into doubt and he gets into a painful dilemma:
Loving his wife yet hoping for salvation,
Hsü Hsüan straddles boats going divers ways. (p. 47)
This tug-of-war between "self-denying love and the desire for self-preser-
vation," äs Tien Han puts it, ends decidedly in favor of the former. All his
vacillations end when he learns about the sacrifices his wife has made and the
dangers she has braved for his sake.
The significance of Tien Han's play h'es not only in its simplification of plot
and improvement of characterization. It also furthers the trend that has
transformed the legend in both the West and the East by stressing the redee-
ming quality of love. Whatever may be her origin and imperfections, Mistress
White compels the sympathy, or even the admiration, of most of the other
characters with her unqualified, unquestioning devotion to her husband. She
is granted a blade of magic herb to revive her husband, for instance, because
of her "touching, profound love" (p. 36). When a Buddhist novice reminds
Hsü Hsüan: "Your wife is a demon. She is a fake." Hsü Hsüan retorts: "But
her love is true." (p. 56). Then, after he has learned about his wife's sufferings
for him äs well äs her shameful past, he swears that he will never change his
mind because of her "true and deep love/' "Having been smelt a thousand
times true gold shines," he apostrophizes. "Your profound love will move
heaven and earth." (p. 71). The play is thus by and large a paean of love.
The last scene which depicts Little Green setting fire to the pagoda and
releasing her mistress is extremely brief. The same scene in another modern
operatic version, however, ends with good wishes to all lovers:
Let all men live happily together,
All lovers be united forever186 . . .
Irrespective of ideology or race, it is love that moves the stars.
In short, our lamia story perhaps first entered China in the twelfth Century.
When it became recorded in a collection of novelle by Feng Meng-lung early

186
Tsai Yeh and Wang Ling, Pai she chuan diao chou ko tsey p. 44.

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188 Nai-tung T in g

in the seventeenth Century, it appeared äs a didactic tale inculcating the same

moral lesson äs the tale told by Philostratus, but already encrusted with
other episodes dragged in by generations of Professional story-tellers. This
tradition, in which the lamia was depicted äs a demon of lust and delusion,
was continued in two prose adaptations in Chinese (in Hsi hu chia hua and
Hsi hu shih i) and a remarkable Imitation in Japanese (Jasei no in). But, in
China, it was soon swept away by a sentimental tradition in which the lamia
was represented äs bein-g truly in love and thus worthy of sympathy. The
sentimental tradition was perhaps first started by a play penned by Huang
Tti-pi in 1738. Then one of the imitations of Huang's play enjoyed royal
patronage and another author, Fang Ch'eng-p'ei, produced in 1771 a note-
worthy stage version which established the sentimental tradition for all sub-
sequent attempts. In the nineteenth Century, efforts were consistently made
to exonerate and even ennoble the lamia, thus directly or indirectly belittling
the holy man. The tendency carried on by the Strange History of Lei Feng
Pagoda (1807) and the Biography of the Grateful Demon (1810) reached its
climax by the end of the nineteenth Century, when even Buddhist tracts came
to praise Mistress White for her virtuous conduct.
The metamorphosis and popularity of our lamia story in China were due
to the following reasons: (1) the deep-rooted distrust of Buddhist asceticism
and other-worldliness among the common people of China, who could not
accept or even understand the moral; (2) the infusion of realistic details which
made many prose and tan tzu versions read like novels of manners; (3) the
peculiar attitude towards the snake in folk Imagination, according to which
the snake was base and despioable, but not positively evil; (4) the conservative
nature of ancient Chinese society in which most women, unlike the lamia of
our story, had to be meek and obedient and were not allowed to choose their
own mates. Where Western readers saw metaphysioal allegory, therefore,
Chinese readers found social allegory. When the Communist government came
into power, it discovered implied or explicit criticism of old Chinese customs
and institutions in many Chinese versions and sooißht to turn the story into a
means for encouraging female independence and freedom in love. Many
revisions have thus been published in China, including Tien Han's The Legend
of the White Serpent. Peking opera troupes from Red China have performed
the play, or parts of the play, in Europe and Japan. Therefore the East is
now <again bringing this lamia story to the West, not äs an obscure, fantastic
tale for the few lovers of the occult, but with all the pomp and glitter of
Chinese operatic shows and the respectability of official recognition.

IV. Conclusion
The origins of our lamia story lay apparently in ancient beliefs and
myths. From the goddess both adored and feared by men came demonesses,
and concomitantly holy men to exorcise the latter. One such legend, in which

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 Ttie Holy Man and the Snake-Woman 189

the demoness is a snake-woman and her plot is nipped in the bud, is

still circulating in Central, West and South Asia äs the King and the Lamia.
From an ancient version of this folktale perhaps arose a didactic tale whidi
preached abstinence and religious devotion. This didactic tale presumably
found its way, early in our era, into the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, through
wlüch it passed on to Burton and Keats. It probably entered Western Europe
during the twelfth Century, inspiring a number of tales in the subsequent
centuries. It did not really branch out and bloesom, however, until five or six
hundred years after its first incursion into China. There, early in the eigh-
teenth Century, it grew from a local tale into a national legend. Under the
Communist regime, it has become one of the most highly acclaimed and
thoroughly studied tales.
Wliile much of the early history of our story is shrouded in the mist of time
and remains still conjectural, a study of the vviays in which it has been used and
developed in Europe and in China reveals interesting parallels. As has been
repeatedly pointed out, this story became almost completely changed in
nature when the lamia began to be regarded äs a symbol not of lust, but oi
love. The occurrence of such a diange in England and in China, though
obviously for different reasons, may in the final analysis be traced back to
the double nature of many earth-goddesses, and the constant confusion of
gods and demons in ancient mythology.
As parallel development naturally entailed similar emphases and characte-
rization, most of the resemblances between the cycles in Europe and in Asia,
äs already demonstrated in this paper, need not be recapitulated here. It
remains only to be pointed out tliat, even in turning thds story into an allegory
of social injustice and rebellion (an Interpretation which was evidently never
adopted in the Western versions), the contemporary Chinese writers still have
not departed far from the meaning of the myth. Lüith, an ancestress and
sometimes a double of Lamia's, was banished and degnaded because of her
disobedience. The use of the snake to symbolize a revolutionary, it may
he added, was not an irifrequent practice among Keats's contemporaries. Had
Shelley, who employed the serpent äs a symbol of good ignored and despised
by man in the Revolt of Islam, treated this story instead of Keats, his reading
inight not have been very different from that which is pnevalent in Red China.
Finally, the present writer sincerely hopes that this humble study will not
only demonstrate the lasting significance and influence of an ancient legend,
but also help to vindicate the companative study of literary productions by
peoples of disparate cultural traditions. More than one hundred years ago,
Matthew Arnold urged critics "to try and possess one great h'terature, at least,
besides his own; and the more unlike his own, the better." May the efforts
at ciosing the gaps bet\veen the literatures of the East -and the West, which
seem recently to be making headway, increase apace and open up more new
avenues for literary research.

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 RELATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF ALL THE EXTINCT
AND HYPOTHETICAL AND MOST OF THE RECORDED VERSIONS
DISCUSSED IN THIS PAPER
Primitive ogress tale°
l
l

É é
!
Prototype of
él
this lamia story0 |

/ 'º\
\ v 1
x' é N\ l
1 VI
/ l '
2nd Century
Philostratus ' 'X
| N
N
l 1
.1 ' S
1 V
l é v
v
' 1 \
12th Century ! ' Early Chinese story-tellers* versions0
Walter Map and ! Ëxí
other Mecfieval |
European versions j // v
\
/ \
| / \
| / \
Ming play° ^
17th Century
Burton J é Feng Meng-lung
1 1 /Vv
1 1 / ^^y^^
18th Century 1 Huang Tu-pi Hsi hu \ ^s.
1 | chia hua Hsi ht*\^
1 Fang Ch'eng-p'ei shih i Aki
1
19th Century 1 /\
Lei f eng \
1 chi chuan \
1 / yaa chuan

l\\
1 l\
Keats Modern versions
of the King and \\
\ \
the Lamia (incl.
Variant4)

Grimm

20th Century Two precious

Scrolls

Contemporary Chin
versions (incl. Ti«
Han)

WEST EAST

0
Lost or hypothetical Version

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 The Holy Man and the Snake-Woman 191

POSTSCRIPT. Since I wrote this article, I have come across a Spanish

legend that may throw light on the life history of the King and the Lamia.
The following is a summary of the legend recorded in Mrs. S. G. C. Middleton's
Spanish Legendary Tales (London, 1885), pp. 131—143:
A man lives with a woman of unknown background, without realizing that she is
a lamia. Then his nephew comes and notices that his aunt has snake features when
angry. He also sees a snake once in the house but cannot convince his uncle.
Following the advice of a hermit, he manages to see the snake again twice and
each time he cuts off a part of her body. Then an old servant teils him to burn a
snake skin hidden in a ehest He finally gets his uncle's permission to do so. She
dies and the old man feels relieved.
This tale may be regarded äs a truncated version of Type 411. It supplies
one feature which is found in the accounts of Walter Map and the Chinese
authors, but not in the modern oral versions: the discovery of the woman
äs a snake by the man's relative, but not the man himself. As there is no
other version of Type 411 known in Western Europe, it may have been a tale
carried to Spain by the Moors. If this conjecture can be proved, it may show
what one version of the King and the Lamia was like some centuries ago and
thus help me to modify my hypothesis in the first part of this paper. The
author indicated in the preface that it had been circulating orally in Spain.
However, I have not been able either to verify her Statement or to trace the
origin of the legend. Any Information on this legend from colleagues will be
very much appreciated.

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