Taoism?
According to a friend of mine, fossils found in China are still called “dragon bones” today, and are valued in traditional medicines. I tried to argue that that means “dragon” is essentially a mis-translation of the Chinese word, which should have been translated “dinosaur”. The traditional Chinese dragon is then a sort of amateur reconstruction of a dinosaur. My friend (who is Chinese, BTW) didn’t buy it, tho.
If you’re speaking Japanese, dragons definitely do exist, and you can see them in any number of zoos around the world.
The Japanese use the same word for “dragon” and “giraffe”–“kirin”. It’s also, of course, a popular brand of Japanese beer.
I can see some possible confusion, though. How would you interpret it is someone said “I had a few too many kirins last night”?
I withdraw my ‘troll’ comment. I should have considered the possibility that the belief in dragons was cultural in nature. Still, I’m going to have to stick with ‘silly’; though if the OP had come back in a reasonable amount of time to clarify, I would have happily withdrawn that comment as well.
For those still on the Dracula tangent, I would suggest: In Search of Dracula by Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu. The best written account I’m aware of documenting the origin of the Dracula mythos. Sadly there seems to be limited evidence, so they round the book out with much less engrossing material such as movie references.
Bosda:
Errr . . . any details? There are spirits everywhere, but dragons aren’t a part of belief in tao, AFAIK.
Andros: I understand Taoism as cultural artifact, not doctrinal Taoism, accepts dragons. (For a comparison, think about Christian angels – other than the generic “heavenly messenger” concept, angelology is an accrual, and no strict definition of Christianity requires belief in them – except that Bibliocentric versions would expect that what little the Bible says about them be accepted.) In the same way, the worldview of individual Taoists is likely to include dragons as supernatural manifestations, though AFAIK Lao-Tse made only one passing and metaphorical reference to them.
My guess on linnorm’s translation would be “lake serpent” – I’ve never seen linn as meaning or connoting “death.” Compare the Nessie and related legends; in view of the Norse connection with Scotland, there may be some connection (cultural myth transferred, that is).
Coincidentally, the AP put out a rather extensive report two days ago on efforts by Vlad’s former capital to attract tourism and cinema production to Transylvania – I gather it’s been the least prosperous part of Romania for most of the 20th century.
Final comment would be that while T. Rex has been extinct since 1973 (as a band) and was exclusively North American (as a dinosaur), carnosaurs in the strict sense were common throughout Europe, and both carnosaurs and tyrannosaurids were common in Northern China and Mongolia.
Gotcha. Thanks, Poly.
Bosda, I do think that it’s inaccurate to say that because someone is Chinese, dragons therefore play a major part in his or her religion.
PolyCarp-I said Heath-y’know a meadow kinda place.
andros, sorry 'bout not replying sooner- my computer was down for its semi-annual Windows Crash-A-Thon[sup]TM[/sup].
Anyhow, I had always understood the Dragon/Devil idiom to be fairly longstanding, but a more-than-cursory (though less-than-obsessive) web search failed to turn up any sort of cite that wasn’t specifically talking about Mr. Stoker’s novel. In other words, inconclusive, at best.
Carry on.
I’ve read that, I thought it was pretty ridiculous. Never could tell if the author was trying to be serious or funny, though I’m leaning towards the latter. The old-style illustrations were interesting, but the kind of creature he describes is ludicrous.
Giant, living blimps. Yeeeah.
that’s the problem of trying to rationalize the dragons some people carry in spirit; you cannot have something that flies and is that incredibly huge. the best balance would be somewhere around the size of an adult human male, with an obscene wingspan, and a diet of two cows a day. somewhat less impressive and efficient than the 30-100 foot behemoths with more lizardly diets that most prefer, admittably.
saepiroth, I think prehistoric pterasaurs were considerably larger than human, even when not taking into account wingspan. For example:
http://www.nps.gov/bibe/pterosr.htm
This one was 18 feet long.
Correction/clarification/nitpick: Some pterosaurs were considerably larger than a human, but only in terms of wingspan. Even the largest pterosaur (the linked-to Quetzalcoatlus - by the way, an 18’ wingspan for a Quetzalcoatlus is on the low end; some have estimated wingspans of up to 50’ or more!) probably weighed no more than about 140 lbs and had comparatively small bodies. Pteranodon, another large pterosaur, had about a 20-25’ wingspan, but probably weighed no more than about 25 lbs.
The majority of pterosaurs were raven- or chicken-sized.
and that’s my point. you just can’t have something too much larger than human without giving it an obscene wingspan. even then, when you get too much larger the wing bones start to fail under the sheer stress.
if you allow traditional dragons to have some exotic bone composition, say some form of carbon chain or crystal, you’d still have something with a wingspread measuring in acres. there’s a balance there; whatever is flying must either have a huge relative wingspan or it must flap it’s wings very fast. neither seems particularly viable for traditional dragons, so i like to think of dragons as things not much larger than a person, like my previous description.
The pterasaur in my link doesn’t has a wingspan of 18 feet; it is 18 feet long. The wingspan was 36-39 feet.
Considerably larger than a human, even without wings.
longer than a human, yes, but they were very slender. their bodies probably didn’t weigh much more than the aformentioned 140 pounds.
Do you have a source for that? I couldn’t find any references stating their slenderness or weight.
I will dig one up for you.