Strange beast in an Asian river

Wednesday, 3/09/2011

Figure 1: SIL28-222-13.jpg

Early explorers and treasure seekers strayed pretty far from reality while portraying the people they were busy exploiting or exterminating in the tales and images they brought back to the inquiring public in Europe.
I ran across an odd early woodcut in the Smithsonian’s Illustrations Collection that really got me guessing. Most early ‘ethnographic’ or natural history illustration is filtered through the early European mind set. The artist need only satisfy church and king to be safely within legitimate reportage practice. This image though of a beast of some sort in a river has some threads of truth. It made me wonder if it weren’t the twisted interpretation of an actual observed scene somewhere. I started out thinking this was a portrayal of the “here there be dragons,” from the tale of places at the edge of the world. What do you think the artist was trying to portray?


Men sit on the back of a 'sea-serpent' in the middle of a river. Two European men and a child dressed in ‘tamoshanter’ bonnets, bloused shorts and hose look on from shore. The creature and her passengers share the river with two other men who have roped a smaller seal-like creature from a half-moon shaped canoe. A water serpent and some badly drawn shells are also in the river. The trees seem mostly palm fronds.
One of the people on the big river creature wears what seems to be the Hindu thread across one shoulder and carries a spear. Are the headdresses of the other three supposed to be turbans or are they some version of the early Hindu dynasty helmets?
    The creature itself is a mixture of fish and mammal. While it sports a definite fishy tail it is a mammal and female. I finally realized those fish fins to either side of the creatures face are probably the ears of an elephant and the whiskers might be the tusks. And I was pretty excited about my discovery of a mythic rendition of a dragonboat here too. It’s hard to let go of still.
    Doesn’t this image look like an early 1700’s Dutch woodblock? I found it on the website: Smithsonian Illustration Library Collection? The woodblock seems to be by an artist "J. J." according to the initials at the bottom left of the image.
    So, are we looking at someone's interpretation of a legend along the lines of 'St Brendan and the whale'? Perhaps this is a romantised view of a dragon-boat in pre-colonial tropical Southeast Asia.
    Another possibility is that this is a first view of an elephant getting washed at the end of the work day? Note the big floppy 'fins' right about where the ears should be. And because I'm reluctant to give up on my flash of brilliant deduction that this was a SE Asian style 'dragonboat' I wonder if the elephant washing scene could have been an early inspiration for the dragon prowed battle canoes?
    Like I said, mostly I'm sad to give up on the leap of brilliance, but, I'm liking the elephant with her 'mahouts' in the wash cycle as an interpretation better and better.
    The diagnostic indicators recorded here are the headgear and dress of the non-European people, the shape of the houses and of the double ended canoe. Another indicator is the variety of shells distributed in obviously 'plain sight all around the picture.
    Who was famous for these kinds of shells during the period indicated by the specific European dress form? How about an Asian source for the Murex conches? Does the abundance of shells tell us where this is supposed to be?

Pacific  Ancient  Voyagers