Jiaolong
A number of scholars point to non-Sinitic southern origins for the legendary creature and ancient texts chronicle that the Yue people once tattooed their bodies to ward against these monsters.
[1][2] The jiao is also claimed to be equivalent to Sanskrit 宮毗羅 (modern Chinese pronunciation gongpiluo) in the 7th-century Buddhist dictionary Yiqiejing yinyi.
(1990:126-7)The word has "mermaid" as one possible gloss,[13] and Schuessler suggests possible etymological connections with Burmese khruB or khyuB "scaly, furry beast" and Tibetan klu "nāga; water spirits", albeit the Tibeto-Burman are phonologically distant from OC.
[9] The explanation that its name comes from eyebrows that "cross over" (交 jiao) is given in the ancient text Shuyi ji [zh] "Records of Strange Things" (6th century).
[14][f][g] It has been suggested that jiaolong might have referred to a pair of dragons mating, with their long bodies coiled around each other (Wen Yiduo 2001a:95–96[17]) Thus in the legend around the jiaolong 蛟龍 hovering above the mother giving birth to a future emperor i.e., Liu Bang, the founding emperor of Han, r. 202-195 BCE [h] (Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian),[18] the alternative conjectural interpretation is that it was a pair of mating dragons.
[20] Zhang cites as one example of jiaolong used in the poem Li Sao (in Chu Ci), in which the poet is instructed by supernatural beings to beckon the jialong and bid them build a bridge.
But on this matter, Schafer has suggested using a name for various dragon-like beings such as "kraken" to stand for jiao: The word "dragon" has already been appropriated to render the broader term lung.
Or perhaps we should call it by the name of its close kin, the double-headed crocodile-jawed Indian makara, which, in ninth-century Java at least, took on some of the attributes of the rain-bringing lung of China.
[38][39] It was considered that while the adult jiao lies in pools of water, their eggs hatched on dry land, more specifically on mounds of earth (Huainanzi).
[32][42][j] The hujiao 虎蛟 or "tiger jiao"[k] are described as creatures with a body like a fish and a tail like a snake, which made noise like mandarin ducks.
Although this might be considered a subtype of the jiao dragon, a later commentator thought this referred to a type of fish (see #Sharks and rays section).
[46][o] Guo Pu (d. 324)'s commentary to Part XI glosses jiao as "a type of [long 龍] dragon that resembles a four-legged snake".
[48] Guo adds that the jiao possesses a "small head and a narrow neck with a white goiter" and that it is oviparous, and "large ones were more than ten arm spans in width[p] and could swallow a person whole".
A later text described jiao "looks like a snake with a tiger head, is several fathoms long, lives in brooks and rivers, and bellows like a bull; when it sees a human being it traps him with its stinking saliva, then pulls him into the water and sucks his blood from his armpits".
[51] A similar paragraph occurs in the Shuyi ji [zh] (6th century) and quoted in the Bencao Gangmu aka Compendium of Materia Medica:[34]
蛟龍.. 【釋名】時珍曰︰按任昉《述異記》云, 蛟乃龍屬, 其眉交生, 故謂之蛟, 有鱗曰蛟龍, 有翼曰應龍, 有角曰虯龍, 無角曰螭龍也。 Jiaolong.. [Explanation of Names] [Li] Shizhen says: The book Shuyi Ji by Ren Fang:: The jiao is a kind of dragon.
[54][s] The Shuowen jieji dictionary (beginning of 2nd c.) states that if the number of fish in a pond reaches 3600, a jiao will come as their leader, and enable them to follow him and fly away".
[33] A similar statement occurs in the farming almanac Qimin Yaoshu (6th c.) that quotes the Yangyu-jing "Classic on Raising Fish", a manual on pisciculture ascribed to Lord Tao Zhu (Fan Li).
[56] According to this Yangyu-jing version, when the fish count reaches 360, the jiao will lead them away, but this could be prevented by keeping bie 鱉 (variant character 鼈, "soft-shelled turtle").
While fishing in the Wei River, he ...caught a white kiao, three chang [ten meters] long, which resembled a big snake, but had no scaly armour The Emperor said: 'This is not a lucky omen', and ordered the Ta kwan[z] to make a condiment of it.
There is a legend surrounding the Dragon Boat Festival which purports to be the origin behind the offering of zongzi (leaf-wrapped rice cakes) to the drowned nobleman Qu Yuan during its observation.
[71] The onomastics surrounding the Long Biên District (now in Hanoi, Vietnam) is that it was so-named from a jialong "flood dragon" seen coiled in the river (Shui jing zhu or the Commentary on the Water Classic 37).
The people in Kuaiji (old capital of Yue; present-day Shaoxing City) adopted such a custom during the Xia dynasty according to the Book of Wei (3rd c.).
[83][84][ae] As noted the Compendium of Materia Medica identifies jiao with Sanskrit 宮毗羅,[4][85] i.e., kumbhīra[7] which denotes a long-snouted crocodylid.
[86][88] Fauvel noted that the jiao resembled the dinosaur genus Iguanodon,[af] adding that fossil teeth were being peddled by Chinese medicine shops at the time(1879:8).
[89] In the foregoing example of the huijiao in the "Classic of the Southern Mountains" III,[44] the 19th-century sinologist treated this a type of dragon, the "tiger kiao",[43] while a modern translator as "tiger-crocodile".
[92] The jiao 鮫 denotes larger sharks and rays,[94] the character for sharks (and rays) in general being sha 鯊, so-named ostensibly due to their skin being gritty and sand-like[ah][ai] Compare the supposed quote from the Baopuzi, where it is stated that the jialong is said to have "pearls in the skin" 皮有珠.
