Vishap

The vishap is the dragon of Armenian myth and folklore, a water and storm serpent of mountain lakes and springs, fought by the thunder god Vahagn and linked to the ancient carved dragon stones called vishapakar.

What Is a Vishap?

The vishap is the dragon of Armenia. The word was borrowed from Iranian, where Avestan vīšāpa, roughly "whose water is poison," is an epithet of the three-headed dragon Aži Dahāka. In Armenian tradition the vishap is a great serpent-dragon of the mountains, lakes, and clouds, connected with water, storms, and sometimes with eclipses, and it is the enemy of gods and heroes.

Vahagn the Dragon-Reaper

The best-known Armenian dragon-fighter is Vahagn, the pre-Christian god of thunder, fire, and war. The early Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi preserved a fragment of an old song about Vahagn's birth from a burning reed in the sea and said that bards still sang of how Vahagn fought and conquered dragons. He was honored with the title vishapakagh, "dragon-reaper." The pattern of a thunder god against a serpent places Vahagn alongside Indra and Vritra and other Indo-European storm-god myths.

Khorenatsi also tells of Azhdahak, a king of the Medes whose name comes from Aži Dahāka, and calls his descendants, who settled around Mount Ararat, the vishapazunk, "offspring of dragons." Here the dragon has been turned into a legendary human dynasty.

Vishaps in Folklore

In later Armenian folk belief, vishaps live in high mountain lakes or underground, sometimes on the slopes of Mount Ararat. They can rise into the sky, where storms and lightning were explained as the battle between the dragons and heavenly forces that lift them up and strike them down. Some stories have the vishap swallowing the sun or moon. Others make the vishap a guardian of springs and water.

The Vishapakar, or Dragon Stones

Scattered across the highlands of Armenia are tall carved stone stelae called vishapakar, "dragon stones." Many stand high on the slopes of Mount Aragats and in the Geghama Mountains near springs and the sources of streams. Many are shaped like great fish, and others are carved with the stretched hide of a bull. Archaeologists date them to the Bronze Age, at least the 2nd millennium BCE and possibly earlier, long before any written Armenian text. Their link to the vishap comes from later folk naming, and their original meaning is uncertain, although their placement near water suggests a water cult.

Legacy

Stylized dragons fill the so-called dragon carpets of the Caucasus, which many specialists attribute to Armenian weavers, and the vishap remains an important symbol in Armenian culture. Read more in the Vishap section of Dragon Species and in Dragons Across Cultures.

Related

• Aži Dahāka: Aži Dahāka is the three-headed dragon of Zoroastrian myth, created by the evil spirit Angra Mainyu, who becomes the tyrant Zahhāk with serpents growing from his shoulders in Ferdowsi's Persian epic, the Shahnameh.
• Vritra: Vritra is the serpent or dragon of drought in the Rigveda, a footless, handless monster who held back the world's waters until the storm god Indra killed him with the thunderbolt and set the rivers free.
• Kulshedra: The kulshedra is a monstrous, many-headed female dragon of Albanian folklore who spits fire, hoards water to cause drought, and is fought in storms by the winged hero called the drangue.
• Tiamat: Tiamat is the primordial salt-water sea goddess of the Babylonian creation epic Enūma Eliš, who raised an army of monsters against the gods and was split in two by Marduk to make heaven and earth.
• Dragon Species
• Dragons Across Cultures

Sources and Further Reading

• Moses Khorenats'i, History of the Armenians, trans. Robert W. Thomson (Harvard University Press, 1978)
• James R. Russell, Zoroastrianism in Armenia (Harvard University Press, 1987)

Cite this entry: “Vishap,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/vishap.