The Giant Crab, Slayer of the Flood Serpent

The giant crab is the monster-slaying hero of the Bunun flood myth. While the ancestors were stranded on the mountain summits above the risen waters, the crab descended to battle the giant serpent whose body blocked the river. Gripping the serpent with its pincers, it cut open the monster's belly; the serpent died, the dam broke, and the waters drained away so that people could return to the land. Comparative mythologists class the tale among the distinctive Formosan flood myths in which the deluge is ended by an animal combat rather than by divine decree, and the episode was recorded from Bunun narrators by Ogawa and Asai (1935) and analysed by Ho Ting-jui (1971) and Lu Yi-lu (2002).

Domains

• receding waters

Powers

• to cut open the flood serpent's belly with its pincers and release the pent-up waters

Relations

• slayer of: The Giant Serpent of the DelugeWith its great pincers the crab sliced open the belly of the serpent that dammed the river, killing it and ending the flood.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)
• enemy: The Giant Serpent of the DelugeThe single combat between crab and serpent is the pivot of the Bunun deluge narrative.Gauss, Aaron Valdis. 'Villains of Formosan Aboriginal Mythology.' Intergrams 20.1 (2020). (secondary)

Sources

• The heroic giant crab of the Bunun deluge myth, which fought the river-damming serpent, cut open its belly with its pincers, and so released the floodwaters and saved the ancestors.: Ho, Ting-jui. A Comparative Study of Myths and Legends of Formosan Aborigines. Taipei: Orient Cultural Service, 1971. (secondary); Lu, Yi-lu (鹿憶鹿). 洪水神話：以中國南方民族與台灣原住民神話為中心 [Flood Myths: Centering on the Ethnic Peoples of Southern China and the Taiwan Indigenes]. Taipei: Liren Shuju, 2002. (secondary)