Architectural Fragment: Dragon

In museum work, the legacies of colonialism can permanently scar artifacts with missing or altered information. This dragon carving–measuring 27.5 cm in height, 26.5 cm in width, and weighing approximately 2.8 kg–is one such piece. As the provenance of this architectural fragment is completely unknown, it was broadly catalogued as “dragon,” due to lack of information. To explore the history behind this piece, we look to the dragons of Hindu and Buddhist mythology.

Judging from this figure’s fluid body and arms, we may be looking at an aquatic dragon. In Indian Hinduism, nagas are sea serpents who act as “benevolent beings supporting humanity”9. Existing research on this artifact concluded that this piece does indeed represent a naga. However, in Indian and Southeast Asian Hinduism, nagas can take the form of half-human, half-serpent beings or cobras with several heads. None of these naga descriptions fit our dragon. There is also a Javanese iteration of the naga, called antaboga. This dragon is a protective serpent god known to wear a gold necklace. Looking closely at this piece, it looks like the dragon is wearing a piece of jewelry around its neck, perhaps a gold necklace. However, the antaboga is said to live “on the seventh layer of the earth’s bottom”, not the sea.

Without knowing the origins of this dragon carving, we cannot know its true identity and symbolism. This dragon could originate from a temple or temple cart anywhere in India or Indonesia. This dragon has been permanently marked by the forces of colonialism, which slowly chips away at the rich narratives and stories that define it.

1Gheran, Niculae Liviu. “A Brief Overview of Imaginary and Mythical Creatures of Southeast Asia and Their Symbolic Significance.” Incursions into the Imaginary, no. 13 (2022): 63–96. https://doi.org/https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1118369.

2Sengupta, Jayita. “Sea: Mythological/ Mythical Dimensions in Indian Imagination.” In Proceedings of the SARI 2017 Conference on Reinventing the Sea, 15–32. Paris: HAL, 2017.

3Shukla, Anamika. "Navigating the Divine: Sea Creatures in Greek and Indian Mythology." Creative Saplings 2, no. 06 (2023): 69-79.

4Tu, Phan Anh. "The signification of Naga in Thai architectural and sculptural ornaments." The Asian Scholar 4 (2007): 1-15.

5Widayat, Rahmanu. “Dragon Ornaments in the Contexts of Batik Cloth, and the Cultures of Javanese and Tionghoa in Indonesia.” Mudra Jurnal Seni Budaya 37, no. 3 (July 8, 2022): 319–38. https://doi.org/10.31091/mudra.v37i3.2017.