The Han dynasty scholar Wang Chong says, "The people paint the dragon's shape with a horse's head and a snake's tail (世俗畫龍之象，馬頭蛇尾。).

"[1] Edward H. Schafer describes the horse's "tremendous importance" to Tang dynasty rulers for military tactics, diplomatic policy, and aristocratic privilege.

He was invested with sanctity by ancient tradition, endowed with prodigious qualities, and visibly stamped with the marks of his divine origin.

[2]This "steed" refers to Tang Sanzang's famous bailongma 白龍馬 "white dragon horse".

Ryūma refers to the legendary Chinese "dragon horse" and the name of a chess piece in shogi (translated "promoted bishop", also pronounced ryūme).

The most famous longma occurrences are connected with the mythical Hetu 河圖 "Yellow River chart", which along with the Luoshu 洛書 "Luo River writing; Lo Shu Square" are ancient magic square arrangements of the Bagua "8 Trigrams" and Wuxing "5 Phases".

Hetu 河圖 is alternately named longtu 龍圖 and matu 馬圖, with "dragon" and "horse".

The Shujing (顧命)[7] records the original Hetu "river plan" among the royal treasures of King Cheng of Zhou (r.  c. 1042–1021 BCE).

[8] The Bamboo Annals which record ancient Chinese mythology and history describe the longma in a context of Yao conveying the throne to Shun.

Then a dragon-horse appeared, bearing in his mouth a scaly cuirass, with red lines on a green ground, ascended the altar, laid down the scheme, and went away.

[9] A subsequent Bamboo Annals context describes the spirit of the Yellow River as a person rather than a dragon-horse, and says Yao rather than Yu received the Hetu in order to control the Great Flood.

[10]The 4th-century Shiyiji (拾遺記)[11] records that Emperor Mu of Jin, "drove around the world in a carriage, drawn by eight winged dragon horses."

The 10th-century Taiping Imperial Reader says a longma that appeared in 741 was considered as a good omen for Emperor Xuanzong of Tang.

A Zhuangzi (列禦寇) story mentions finding a "pearl worth a thousand pieces of gold" under the chin of a lilong 驪龍 "black-horse dragon".

In Kucha, for instance, when that city was visited by Hsüan-tsang in the seventh century, there was a lake of dragons in front of one of its temples.

This story must have had its origin farther west in Iranian lands, where winged horses were familiar in art and myth.

Even the long-legged small-bellied horses of the "Tajik," that is, of the Arabs, were said to have been born of the conjunction of dragons with mares on the shores of the "Western Sea.".