Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 12:48:53 pm
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Ruins of 7,000-year-old city found in Egypt oasis
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080129/wl_mideast_afp/egyptarchaeology
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Mythical Monsters

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 61   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Mythical Monsters  (Read 4331 times)
0 Members and 167 Guests are viewing this topic.
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« on: March 04, 2010, 11:17:08 am »

Mythical Monsters
by Charles Gould
[1886]


« Last Edit: March 04, 2010, 11:18:43 am by Keira Kensington » Report Spam   Logged

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2010, 11:17:39 am »

Charles Gould, the son of the ornithologist John Gould, wrote this book in the 19th century on the subject now called 'cryptozoology,' the study of (possibly imaginary) animals only known through anecdotal or folklore evidence.

The core of the book is about dragons: Western, Chinese, and Japanese, although it also covers the Sea-serpent, the Unicorn, and the Chinese Phoenix. Gould hypothesized that the dragon was based on an unknown, very rare animal, a huge reptile with wings, which became extinct in historical times. He also concluded that persistent sea-serpent sightings were also due to an undiscovered surviving prehistoric marine animal. He drew on the then-emerging body of fossil evidence for prehistoric megafauna, from flying lizards to whale-sized aquatic dinosaurs.

Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #2 on: March 04, 2010, 11:18:07 am »

In context the proposal was not all that outrageous. Darwin had 25 years earlier proposed that humans are part of a huge web of biological relationships over vast realms of time and space. So what other paradigms were about to be shattered?

Gould leads off with a discussion of some other 'earth mysteries:' the world-wide flood myth, cultural diffusion, and Atlantis; readers looking for the cryptozoology will want to skip forward to Chapter VI. Extensive illustrations, translations from rare documents, and historical accounts from newspaper articles, make this a must-have book for anyone interested in this subject.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://sacred-texts.com/earth/mm/index.htm
Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #3 on: March 04, 2010, 01:02:51 pm »

PREFACE.
THE Author has to express his great obligations to many gentlemen who have assisted him in the preparation of this volume, either by affording access to their libraries, or by furnishing or revising translations from the Chinese, &c.; and he must especially tender them to J. Haas, Esq., the Austro-Hungarian Vice-Consul at Shanghai, to Mr. Thomas Kingsmill and the Rev. W. Holt of Shanghai, to Mr. Falconer of Hong-Kong, and to Dr. N. B. Dennys of Singapore.

Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #4 on: March 04, 2010, 01:03:00 pm »

For the sake of uniformity, the author has endeavoured to reduce all the romanised representations of Chinese sounds to the system adopted by S. W. Williams, whose invaluable dictionary is the most available one for students. No alteration, however, has been made when quotations from eminent sinologues like Legge have been inserted.

Should the present volume prove sufficiently interesting to attract readers, a second one will be issued at a future date, in continuation of the subject.

June, 1884.

Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #5 on: March 04, 2010, 01:03:11 pm »

NOTE BY THE PUBLISHERS.

THE Publishers think it right to state that, owing to the Author's absence in China, the work has not had the advantage of his supervision in its passage through the press. It is also proper to mention that the MS. left the Author's hands eighteen months ago.

13, WATERLOO PLACE. S.W.
January, 1886.       



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #6 on: March 04, 2010, 01:03:22 pm »

CONTENTS.
 
 PAGE
 
INTRODUCTION
 1
 
LIST OF AUTHORS CITED
 27
 
CHAPTER I.—ON SOME REMARKABLE ANIMAL FORMS
 31
 
CHAPTER II.—EXTINCTION OF SPECIES
 42
 
CHAPTER III.—ANTIQUITY OF MAN
 78
 
CHAPTER IV.—THE DELUGE NOT A MYTH
 101
 
CHAPTER V.—ON THE TRANSLATION OF MYTHS BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW WORLD
 137
 
CHAPTER VI.—THE DRAGON
 159
 
CHAPTER VII.—THE CHINESE DRAGON
 212
 
CHAPTER VIII.—THE JAPANESE DRAGON
 248
 
CHAPTER IX.—THE SEA-SERPENT
 260
 
CHAPTER X.—THE UNICORN
 338
 
CHAPTER XI.—THE CHINESE PHŒNIX
 366
 
APPENDICES
 375
 



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #7 on: March 04, 2010, 01:03:47 pm »

p. 1

MYTHICAL MONSTERS.
INTRODUCTION.
IT would have been a bold step indeed for anyone, some thirty years ago, to have thought of treating the public to a collection of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming for them the consideration due to genuine realities, or to have advocated tales, time-honoured as fictions, as actual facts; and those of the nursery as being, in many instances, legends, more or less distorted, descriptive of real beings or events.

Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #8 on: March 04, 2010, 01:03:59 pm »

Now-a-days it is a less hazardous proceeding. The great era of advanced opinion, initiated by Darwin, which has seen, in the course of a few years, a larger progress in knowledge in all departments of science than decades of centuries preceding it, has, among other changes, worked a complete revolution in the estimation of the value of folk-lore; and speculations on it, which in the days of our boyhood would have been considered as puerile, are now admitted to be not merely interesting but necessary to those who endeavour to gather up the skeins of unwritten history, and to trace the antecedents and early migrations from parent sources of nations long since alienated from each other by customs, speech, and space.

p. 2

Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #9 on: March 04, 2010, 01:04:13 pm »

I have, therefore, but little hesitation in gravely proposing to submit that many of the so-called mythical animals, which throughout long ages and in all nations have been the fertile subjects of fiction and fable, come legitimately within the scope of plain matter-of-fact Natural History, and that they may be considered, not as the outcome of exuberant fancy, but as creatures which really once existed, and of which, unfortunately, only imperfect and inaccurate descriptions have filtered down to us, probably very much refracted, through the mists of time.

Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #10 on: March 04, 2010, 01:04:22 pm »

I propose to follow, for a certain distance only, the path which has been pursued in the treatment of myths by mythologists, so far only, in fact, as may be necessary to trace out the homes and origin of those stories which in their later dress are incredible; deviating from it to dwell upon the possibility of their having preserved to us, through the medium of unwritten Natural History, traditions of creatures once co-existing with man, some of which are so weird and terrible as to appear at first sight to be impossible. I propose stripping them of those supernatural characters with which a mysteriously implanted love of the wonderful has invested them, and to examine them, as at the present day we are fortunately able to do, by the lights of the modern sciences of Geology, Evolution, and Philology.

Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #11 on: March 04, 2010, 01:04:41 pm »

For me the major part of these creatures are not chimeras but objects of rational study. The dragon, in place of being a creature evolved out of the imagination of Aryan man by the contemplation of lightning flashing through the caverns which he tenanted, as is held by some mythologists, is an animal which once lived and dragged its ponderous coils, and perhaps flew; which devastated herds, and on occasions swallowed their shepherd; which, establishing its lair in some cavern overlooking the fertile plain, spread terror and destruction around, and, protected from assault by dread or superstitious feeling, may even have been subsidised by the

p. 3

Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #12 on: March 04, 2010, 01:07:09 pm »

terror-stricken peasantry, who, failing the power to destroy it, may have preferred tethering offerings of cattle adjacent to its cavern to having it come down to seek supplies from amongst their midst. *

To me the specific existence of the unicorn seems not incredible, and, in fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its origin to a lunar myth. †

Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #13 on: March 04, 2010, 01:07:19 pm »

Again, believing as I do in the existence of some great undescribed inhabitant of the ocean depths, the much-derided sea-serpent, whose home seems especially to be adjacent to Norway, I recognise this monster as originating the myths of the midgard serpent which the Norse Elder Eddas have collected, this being the contrary view to that taken by mythologists, who invert the derivation, and suppose the stories current among the Norwegian fishermen to be modified versions of this important element of Norse mythology. ‡




p. 4

Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #14 on: March 04, 2010, 01:07:29 pm »

I must admit that, for my part, I doubt the general derivation of myths from the contemplation of the visible workings of external nature." * It seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled the utterance of these oft-told tales until their original appearance is almost unrecognisable, than that uncultured savages should possess powers of imagination and poetical invention far beyond those enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present day; less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all descriptions, are transformations than to believe them to be inventions. †

Report Spam   Logged
Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 61   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy