The Makara is a composite monster something like a crocodile, taking many forms, but unreal and elusive in all of them. It is hard to imagine that it was ever believed to exist, yet its figure is common in the architecture of India and the Far East and in the Mayan and Aztec civilizations of the New World. Its appearance is so varied, its features so different, that almost any weird beast can be called a makara; there are elephant-makaras, fish-makaras, dragon-makaras, goat-makaras, and so on, which may possibly account for its lack of a concrete, substantial character.
     Two points, however, seem to persist in all the metamorphoses of the makara. Although essentially a sea-beast, it always seems to have characteristics of both fish and mammal and it may be that, even as the Persian bird senmurv was an attempt to combine the features of mammal and bird in a single creature, the makara was intended to combine the features of sea and land animals in one. Secondly, the makara always has at least a suggestion of a snout. This snout, whether it originated in that of the crocodile, or as the horn of the horned shark, the horn of the antelope, or the trunk of an elephant, certainly resembles the latter most closely. The creatures modeled at either end of the ridge pole of Chinese roofs, with the pole itself coming forth from their mouths in a most successful architectural design, are presumably makaras. Their head, and the barely suggested front claws are those of the dragon; the snout that curls back over the wide-open mouth can only be described as that of an elephant.
     The makara is essentially Indian, although its prototype may well be found in the goat-fish Capricorn, a creature of the Babylonian water-god Ea. Its most common form is that of an antelope-fish, and as such it is the tenth sign of the Indian Zodiac, being thus identical with the goat-fish Capricorn which is the tenth sign of our Zodiac.
     But the strangest thing about the makara is that, although definitely an aquatic animal, it combines features of the elephant and the dragon. And it is in the relationship of the elephant to the dragon, or serpent, that we may find a clue to the mystery of why the dragons of East and West have so different a character. The great reptilian figure, the primeval force that under the guise of the dragon haunted the minds of both Orient and Occident, seems to have been originally one and the same creature; only, as we have seen, in Western mythology it epitomized all that was most diabolical, destructive and terrifying in nature, and in the Far East it was the king and best of all beasts, capricious perhaps, but a true benefactor of man.
     In Indian mythology, however, not only do good and evil dragons exist together but they carry on constant warfare against each other. The trouble is that, to add to the confusion, it is doubtful whether either of these two opposing dragon forms are truly dragons. Both are nagas, which is usually translated either as "dragon" or "snake," but the word "naga" is applied not only to the mythological serpent breed but also to the wild elephant. And the elephant is definitely a symbol of good. (This is reflected by early Christian writers, who used the elephant as a symbol of Christ.) Thus, whether from a misunderstanding of words, or from an inarticulate attempt to express the duality of good and bad in nature, the elephant seems to have taken over the good characteristics of the dragon form, while the serpent-dragon-naga absorbed what was evil in it. The first concept, traveling east, may have been associated with an already existing spirit of the waters and thus given the Orient its kindly, bewhiskered dragon (though in this case it could only have been the concept or idea that traveled; it would be hard to imagine anything physically less like an elephant than the Chinese dragon). In the same way the second, traveling west, either created or reinforced belief in a monster of evil, an elemental force incarnate in serpent form. (In this connection it is interesting to find a seventeenth-century English naturalist saying that "There be also serpents called Elephants," whose bite inflicts a kind of leprosy, but that fortunately these are "strangers to our country.")
     Whatever its origin, the traditional enmity of elephant and snake is widely accepted both East and West. The Pa snake in Western China is reputed to attack and swallow elephants, as are certain serpents in Borneo. In Libya, near the Nile river, enormous snakes are said to prey on the elephants as they come down to drink, and the same story is told of the dragon in India. There as elsewhere, it is the reptile who attacks the elephant, entangling him in vicious coils until the poor ponderous beast has no hope of escape, but it is said that the wounded elephant makes sure he falls in such a way as to crush his enemy. Thus the monsters die together. No man has ever seen one of these titanic battles, but proof of them is to be found in the existence in the earth of veins of cinnabar, for it is the dragon's blood soaking into the earth that causes this reddish ore. (At least one Japanese emperor tried to make himself immortal by drinking melted cinnabar in the belief that it was truly dragon's blood.)
     All this takes us far from the makara. There may indeed be no connection between that vague and unrealistic monster and the question of whether the dragons of East and West have a common ancestor in the "naga," and whether the naga in turn is both elephant and snake. But it is curious that a single combining elephant and dragon does exist.
     The makara is a frequent decorative motive, either the whole figure or the head alone, and it is probably due to its popular use in art rather than to any symbolism that it has become so widespread in the Far East. As a design rather than a living beast, it also appears in combination with another strange creature found in Indian and other Asian architecture. This is the Kirtimukha, the "Glory Face" or "Face of Fame," and it is the face of a lion, without body, without limbs, without even a chin below its wide open mouth. The eyes are protruding, the thick line of the eye-brows is extended to form a suggestion of horns, and the bushy hair springs upward as though it were meant to represent flames. The mouth is an enormous grinning cavern reminding one irresistibly of the Cheshire Cat. ("A grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!") Sometimes, especially when used as the lintel of doorways in Javanese temples, there is no lower lip at all and the "Glory Face" is scarcely even a face. From the open mouth spring festoons of pearls or of flowers, and these in turn end on either side in the head of a makara, fish face, elephant snout and all.
     This Kirtimukha is probably related to the "T'ao-t'ieh," or monster face, of China, which was supposed to drive away evil spirits and which was much used on early sacrificial bronzes. It is likely that both are derived from some ancient Asiatic symbol, the meaning of which is lost to us. The origin of the T'ao-t'ieh (also Tao-tieh) is certainly obscure, the only hint being contained in a single reference in the early classical books to the T'ao-t'ieh as one of four monsters exiled into outer darkness by the emperor Shun about 2,000 B.C., but it is interesting to find that the characters for the name of this bodiless monster face mean "voracious glutton." The story as told in India by the worshippers of Siva to account for the origin of the Glory Face fits in well with the idea of gluttony.
     Siva, it seems, was just about to marry the beautiful Parvati, when a messenger came to him from the land of the demons. This messenger was Rahu, the demon who every now and then swallows the sun and so causes eclipses, and the message he brought was that the king of the demons considered Siva unworthy to wed Parvati of the mountains, and that he himself would take her instead. On hearing this Siva became so angry that, before he could even speak, a monster in the shape of a man-lion, which was indeed nothing else than his own concentrated fury made visible, sprang out from between his eyes and fell upon the unfortunate Rahu. Rahu, however, threw himself at Siva's feet and begged for mercy, arguing, as the ambassadors of kings have always done, that he could not reasonably be held responsible for the message of which he was only the bearer. Siva, mollified, agreed to let him go. But the lion creature who was born of his wrath now turned upon Siva, and complained of hunger.
     "You created me to devour the demon," he protested. "And now you have forgiven him and sent him away. What am I to do?"
     "Well," Siva agreed, "that is true enough. But if you have been cheated of one demon, there is still another. You will just have to eat yourself."
     And this the monster did. He began with his legs and then his arms, gradually eating himself up until nothing remained of him but the face. (The strings of pearls so gracefully formed into garlands by the artists were his entrails.) The sight of this so amused Siva that he appointed the lion spirit -- or what remained of it -- as guardian of his door, to be worshiped and fed with sacrificial meats by all who entered there.
     

Text excerpted from Peter Lum's Fabulous Beasts, copyright 1951.