Beneath the seas live the
serpent peoples. There the dragon King, Ryu-wo,
reigns in a wonderful palace built of coral and
crystal. He has a human body, but a serpent
adorns his crown, and his followers are serpents.
fishes, and monsters of the deep. He is wise and
noble, a guardian of the Shinto faith. Many of
those who have fallen by chance into the sea have
lived on, transformed, in the court of the dragon
King.
At Kamakura, on the Pacific
coast of Japan, there is a great temple, something
like the dragon king's palace, built to commemorate
the marriage of the goddess of love, Benten, and a
serpent king, who lived in a pond
This serpent terrorized the
villages and devoured the children for miles
around. Benten could not bear to witness such
destruction. Therefore she stirred up an earthquake
and hovered above the serpent's lair in the dust
clouds. Descending, she called it forth.
Unlike Ryu-wo, this king was
ugly and repulsive, with a serpent's scales and a
serpent's flicking tongue. At first Benten was
filled with loathing. But the serpent king wooed her
with soft and tender words until her heart was
melted, and making him promise to mend his
savage ways -- she married him.
Words alone won Benten, for she
is the goddess of eloquent speech and also of
music. She always carries with her a little
stringed instrument called a biwa, and sometimes she
will appear in person to great musicians when they
play with all their soul.
Benten wears long, many-coloured
robes and a jewel in her crown, and she is worshiped
at beautiful spots all along the sea coast. It
is to her that people pray when they are in need of
money, for she will give wealth to those who win her
favor with well-argued
pleas.
