Reading Notes: The Eight-Forked Serpent of Koshi, Part A Reading

·      Susa-no-wo sees a chopstick floating down a river, and he concludes that there must be people living upstream

o   He wonders what kind of people they are

·      He comes across an aged man and woman who are weeping while a beautiful girl sits between them

o   They are crying as if she were dead

·      Apparently an eight-forked serpent of Koshi has been killing and eating their eight daughters year after year

o   The beautiful girl between them is the last daughter remaining

·      They offer a description of the serpent – bright red eyes, a blood colored body, and eight heads and eight forked tails

·      Susa-no-wo offers to slay the serpent. In exchange, he desires their remaining daughter for marriage

·      He then transforms the girl into a many-toothed comb which he then places in his hair

·      He requests the old crone that she brew a lot of sake of eightfold strength

·      He also hangs eight doors on pointed logs and places a vat of sake at each door

·      The serpent comes and sees the sake, which it then promptly drinks and falls into a drunken stupor and then succumbs to sleep

·      Susa-no-wo slays the monster and finds a divine sword, Kushanagi, in the serpent’s tail

·      Finally, he marries the beautiful girl 

Yamata no Orochi. Source: Wikipedia.

Bibliography: This story can be found here. Story source: Romance of Old Japan, Part I: Mythology and Legend by E. W. Champney and F. Champney (1917).