What is a dragon?

According to the analysis of dragon's morphological characteristics, biologists believe that it belongs to vertebrate phylum, reptile phylum, squamata (lizard) and Iguanidae in the animal kingdom (some people think that it is an unknown and unique lizard and should be a special family, which can be called "Dravidae"). Some experts believe that the dragon evolved from a reptile to a mammal, because it has both crawling and crawling.

2. Cultural statement:

Some people say that dragons are totems; Some people think that dragons are not totems, but water gods; Some people say that dragons are animal gods or heavenly beasts. What exactly is a dragon? This is the first problem to be clarified.

What do people think of dragons? It is directly related to people's attitude and worship of the dragon and plays a decisive role in the worship of the dragon. Its development and change determines the development and change of the whole dragon culture. Any cultural phenomenon and cultural elements are constantly changing with the development of society, and the concept of dragon is no exception. Only by analyzing the dragon from a dynamic perspective and putting it in the long river of history can we get the correct answer.

Judging from the current data, since the emergence of dragon culture, people's concept of dragon has mainly gone through two stages: one is totem stage, and the other is god stage. In the hunting and gathering stage, some tribes regard dragons as totems, as their relatives and ancestors. After the formation of agriculture and animal husbandry, the concept of god began to appear, and people regarded dragons as gods. The concept of god includes three forms: the concept of natural god, the concept of protecting god and the concept of god beast. These three concepts are both related and different. Totem concept and deity concept related to dragons have emerged successively, but they are not simply replaced, but integrated with each other. After the concept of God came into being, although some cultural elements as totems gradually disappeared because of their ineffectiveness in society, functional cultural elements (such as totem names, signs and symbols, etc.) were preserved and coexisted with various cultural elements produced later, thus forming the duality of dragon culture, that is, dragons have both the basic characteristics of totems and the general characteristics of gods.

So, what is a dragon? In this regard, ancient and modern scholars have different opinions, mainly as follows:

First of all, the dragon is a magical animal and one of the four spirits. "Book of Rites." : "Lin, phoenix, turtle and dragon are collectively called the four spirits."

Second, the dragon is a changeable animal, and it is the length of the scale worm. Shuo Wen (Volume 11): "The dragon is the length of the scale worm. It can be quiet and clear, detailed and huge, short and long. " The vernal equinox reaches the sky and the autumnal equinox dives deeply. "

Third, the dragon is one of the five emperors.