en the life-giving attributes of water were confused with the same
properties with which shells had independently been credited long
before, the shell's reputation was rationalized as an expression of the
vital powers of the ocean in which the mollusc was born. But the same
explanation was also extended to include fishes, and other denizens of
the water, as manifestations of similar divine powers. In the lecture on
"Dragons and Rain Gods" I referred to the identification of Ea, the
Babylonian Osiris, with a fish (p. 105). When the value of the pearl as
the giver of life impelled men to incur any risks to obtain so precious
an amulet, the chief dangers that threatened pearl-fishers were due to
sharks. These came to be regarded as demons guarding the treasure-houses
at the bottom of the sea. Out of these crude materials the imaginations
of the early pearl-fishers created the picture of wonderful submarine
palaces of Naga kings in which vast wealth, not merely of pearls, but
also of gold, precious stones, and beautiful maidens (all of them
"givers of life," _vide infra_, p. 224), were placed under the
protection of shark-dragons.[273] The conception of the pearl (which is
a surrogate of the life-giving Great Mother) guarded by dragons is
linked by many bonds of affinity with early Erythraean and Mediterranean
beliefs. The more usual form of the story, both in Southern Arabian
legend and in Minoan and Mycenaean art, represents the Mother Goddess
incarnate in a sacred tree or pillar with its protecting dragons in the
form of serpents or lions, or a variety of dragon-surrogates, either
real animals, such as deer or cattle, or composite monsters (Fig.
26).[274]

There are reasons for believing that these stories were first invented
somewhere on the shores of the Erythraean Sea, probably in Southern
Arabia. The animation of the incense-tree by the Great Mother, for the
reasons which I have already expounded,[275] formed the link of her
identification with the pearl, which probably acquired its magical
reputation in the same region.

"In the Persian myth, the white Haoma is a divine tree, growing in the
lake Vourukasha: the fish Khar-mahi circles protectingly around it and
defends it against the toad Ahriman. It gives eternal life, children to
women, husbands to girls, and horses to men. In the Minokhired the tree
is called 'the preparer of the corpse'" (Spiegel, "Eran. Altertumskunde,"
II, 115--quoted by Jung, "Psychology of t