The Giant Serpent of the Deluge

The giant serpent is the antagonist of the Bunun deluge myth, one of the most widely recorded narratives of the tradition alongside the sun-shooting story. Its coiled body blocked a great river — in central-Taiwan versions the Zhuoshui River — and the impounded waters rose until only the highest peaks, such as Yushan and Luntou-shan, stood above the flood. The ancestors of the Bunun took refuge on the summits until a giant crab fought the serpent and sliced open its belly, whereupon the dead serpent washed away and the waters drained. Japanese-era linguists Ogawa Naoyoshi and Asai Erin recorded versions of the tale in Bunun in 1935, and Ho Ting-jui's comparative survey of Formosan mythology (1971) analyses it among the island's flood myths caused by a blocking monster rather than by rain.

Domains

• floods

Powers

• to dam a great river with its coiled body and drown the world

Relations

• enemy: The Giant Crab, Slayer of the Flood SerpentThe giant crab challenged and fought the serpent, cutting open its belly with its pincers; the serpent's death released the floodwaters.Gauss, Aaron Valdis. 'Villains of Formosan Aboriginal Mythology.' Intergrams 20.1 (2020). (secondary)

Sources

• A monstrous serpent whose body dammed a great river and caused the primeval flood in Bunun myth, until it was slain by a giant crab and the waters receded.: Ho, Ting-jui. A Comparative Study of Myths and Legends of Formosan Aborigines. Taipei: Orient Cultural Service, 1971. (secondary); Ogawa, Naoyoshi, and Erin Asai. 原語による台湾高砂族伝説集 [The Myths and Traditions of the Formosan Native Tribes]. Tokyo: Tōkō Shoin, 1935. (secondary)