L’odontotiranno, “drago” dell’India: un’ipotesi interpretativa

The Odontotyrannos (Gk. ὀδοντοτύραννος, Skt. dvijarāja: “the king of the serpents”) appears for the first time in Book 3 of the Alexander Romance, within the letter of Alexander to Aristotle on the wonders of India, near the description of Mount Aorno (Skt. āvaraṇa: “fortified place”) and a “sea monster-island” (κῆτος). The Odontotyrannos is presented also in the De gentibus Indiae et bragmanibus, attributed to Ps.-Palladius, which has been interpolated in the Alexander Romance, near the “letter of Alexander to Aristotle”. The first part of the De gentibus tells of the journey of a “cultured man” (σχολαστικός) toward India, who describes the island of Taprobane as a heavenly place inhabited by long-living people (Μακρόβιοι) and surrounded by “magnetic islands”. He also describes the ascetic way of living of the Gymnosophists (γυμνοσοφισταί: “naked wise men”): what they eat, how they spend their time and how they reproduce. In the wake of Goossens 1927 the data will be collected and analyzed in order to highlight the iconography and the textual evidence of the Odontotyrannos. The guiding idea of this article is to explore the context in which the creature appears and show its metamorphosis up to the specific image of a “dragon”.