In this thread I will post some mythcal creatures commonly found in folklores in the indian subcontinent and beyond.
You are welcome to post yours.
I will start:
Yaksha are a broad class of nature-spirits, usually benevolent, but sometimes mischievous and sexually aggressive or capricious caretakers of the natural treasures hidden in the earth and tree roots. They appear in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist texts, as well as ancient and medieval era temples of South Asia and Southeast Asia as guardian deities. The feminine form of the word is yakṣī or Yakshini (yakṣiṇī).
In Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist texts, the yakṣa has a dual personality. On the one hand, a yakṣa may be an inoffensive nature-fairy, associated with woods and mountains; but there is also a darker version of the yakṣa, which is a kind of ghost (bhuta) that haunts the wilderness and waylays and devours travelers, similar to the rakṣasas.
The japanese version would be Yasha which seems to be derived from Yaksha, and European equivalent would be fairies.
Mythical Creatures
Kinnaras:
Kinnaras is a heavenly creature, half-bird, half-human. They are good at playing musical instruments, like the veena or the lute. Kinnara woman are called Kinnaris. Kinnaris are intangible and beautiful women from head to waist, but the body shape down is of a goose. They are good at poetry, playing musical instruments, and dancing.
Ahi/Vrita:
Ahi is a vast dragon-serpent that is large enough to drink all the waters of the earth, lives in the mountain range that surrounds the world according to Indian myth. At one time when it drank all the waters of the world, the god Indra found Ahi in the mountains and slew it, releasing all the waters again. This story may be symbolic of how water is frozen in winter and melts back to water during Spring. The Ahi is known for stealing women and cows and endangering fertility.
Very cool thread for once on this board. Of course it appears at the exact moment that I have to go to sleep.
Makara:
A makara is considered to be an aquatic mythical creature. It is generally depicted as an animal with the body of a fish, the trunk of an elephant, the feet of a lion, the eyes of a monkey, the ears of a pig, and the tail of a peacock. Makara is the vahana of goddess Ganga and sea-god Varuna. It is also the insignia of the love god Kamadeva. Kamadeva is also known as Makaradhvaja (one on whose flag a makara is depicted). Makara is also the astrological sign of Capricorn, one of the 12 symbols of the zodiac. It is often portrayed protecting the entrances of Hindu and Buddhist temples.
What the fuck are you doing Pajeet?
Chakora:
Chakora, a kind of partridge, is a legendary bird described in Hindu mythology. It is believed to reside upon the beams of the moon, that is, Chandra. The association of Chakora and Chandra has given rise to a number of folk love stories in north India.
As I just found out, that indeed is the aztec double headed snake, the place I took it from just had listed it as Vrita for some reason.
I saw an apparition of a fair maiden once.
Bolla is a big snake that stays in the woods and wats people passing by. After eating a certain nr of people it evolves into a Kulshedra
Apsaras:
Apsaras are beautiful, supernatural female beings. They are youthful and elegant, and superb in the art of dancing. They are often wives of the Gandharvas, the court musicians of Indra. They dance to the music made by the Gandharvas, usually in the palaces of the gods, entertain and sometimes seduce gods and men. As ethereal beings who inhabit the skies, and are often depicted taking flight, or at service of a god, they may be compared to angels.
Apsaras are said to be able to change their shape at will, and rule over the fortunes of gaming and gambling. Urvasi, Menaka, Rambha, Tilottama and Ghritachi are the most famous among them. Apsaras are sometimes compared to the muses of ancient Greece, with each of the 26 Apsaras at Indra's court representing a distinct aspect of the performing arts. They are associated with fertility rites.
Fair enough, I'd be double checking any images you download from that site, they don't exactly seem rigorous in their selection and coloring it orange does look like a deliberate dick move.
Anyway here's an Ahuizotl for your thread, man eating monster that inhabits pools of water
La llorona, a more modern version of the Aztec Cihuateteo, basically a form of Banshee
And a story:
In Hindu mythology, Ahalya, also known as Ahilya, is the wife of the sage Gautama Maharishi. Many Hindu scriptures say that she was seduced by Indra (the Vajra wielding king of gods, who often disguised himself as women's husbands so that he could have sex with them on the sly), cursed by her husband for infidelity, and liberated from the curse by Rama (an avatar of the god Vishnu).
Created by the god Brahma as the most beautiful woman, Ahalya was married to the much older Gautama. In the earliest full narrative, when Indra comes disguised as her husband, Ahalya sees through his disguise but nevertheless accepts his advances. Later sources often absolve her of all guilt, describing how she falls prey to Indra's trickery. In all narratives, Ahalya and Indra are cursed by Gautama. The curse varies from text to text, but almost all versions describe Rama as the eventual agent of her liberation and redemption.
When Gautama found out, decided to inflict an ironic punishment on Indra he cursed the god to sprout a thousand vaginas all over his body.
Indra was mortified and went into hiding, and the other gods went looking for him. When they finally found him, he was covered in blood. The gods, repulsed by Indra's full-body menstruation, undid the curse by turning all of the vaginas into eyes, which gave Indra his official title as the Thousand-Eyed God.
Suvannamaccha:
Suvannamaccha is a daughter of Tosakanth appearing in the Thai and other Southeast Asian versions of Ramayana. She is a mermaid princess who tries to spoil Hanuman's plans to build a bridge to Lanka but falls in love with him instead.
The figure of Suvannamaccha is popular in Thai folklore and is represented on small cloth streamers or framed pictures that are hung as luck-bringing charms in shops and houses throughout Thailand.
An Aztec goddess, the glass butterfly, she was deadly in battle and killed many warriors but was ultimately defeated by their ghosts, she became a star.
Indian ghost elephant
I genuinely do not give a shit about anything other than Indian food
An American not caring about other cultures except for their food, now there's a surprise
Great thread lads
>indian mythical creatures
>doesn't post the toilet witch
shoo shoo
bump great thread Pajeet
Hindu mythology is amazing. Any other country's cultural heritage does not even come close to that of India.
On another note, would someone kindly bost characters from slav mythology, like Baba Yaga etc. in this thread?
>>GIMME THE CAN O CORNN
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>Any other country's cultural heritage does not even come close to that of India.
China beats it by a long shot.
...
nope
actually, a lot of countries get close to India and beat it
you don't have to go far even, Italy's cultural heritage beats India's too.
>Italy
Literally no. Even we have more regarding mythology than Italy
What standard are you using for this? There's literal hundreds of mythological figures in both Aztec and Roman mythos. If you're just going on sheer extension of the Vedas that's more literature than myth.
actually made me laugh
but I'm talking in regards to cultural heritage, not just mythology
are there any ebin, recommendable movies around the Mahabharata?
for me the second most fascinating mythology after Nordic-Germanic desu
China doesn't 'beat' India in that way, especially given the historical reverence that the Chinese had for Indian medicine, philosophy, etc. Not to mention all the trade for pepper and steel historically. Read accounts of any Chinese in antiquity about India - from Journey to the West to Zheng He (who died off the coast of India probably). Italy isn't 'not going far' - Italy is basically the basis of all European culture in antiquity.
India is basically on-par with China, Greece and Persia; Rome arguably equals them depending on how you consider things. There are so many metrics that this sort of 'ranking' is pointless though, but its not debatable that India, at least historically, was a cultural powerhouse. They just didn't really care about stuff outside of India, and there's many cultural and economic reasons for this.
I'll post a couple of Russian mythological creatures.
This is Leshiy.
The master of the forest and wild animals. Sometimes featured wearing an animal pelt and having some physical attribute of an animal such as horns and/or hooves. According to most tales he has the ability to shapeshift, changing his size and even assuming the form of a human without a belt and can become invisible. He also has enormous strength. A whole range of forest sounds are attributed to the Leshiy but it is said he is also capable of human speech. Leshiy are seen in both a negative but also a postive light. Sometimes the leshiy was seen as a cruel prankster spirit but also a just overseer of the forest that wouldnt hurt people without a reason (such as disturbing the peace and quiet) and could even come to the aid of a human.
According to folk tales hunters would bring an offering to the leshii and make a contract with him to ensure a successful hunt.
When pranking people he is said to assume the form of a close relative and taunt a person making him chase the leshii and get lost in the forest. He could be gotten rid of through prayer or alternatively, through heavy swearing.
A person found wandering the forest alone would be thought of as having been bewitched by the leshii. In order to lift his spell one would need to put on their clothes inside out or switch the soles in their shoes.
There's also a bunch of stuff about using the leshii to curse someone and him kidnapping young women which he could take as wives and the ways to get those young women back using a ritual.
This Vodyanoi.
A negative water spirit. Usually represented in the form of an fat old unkempt man with a fish tail and a beard. Lives in whirlpools, next to abandoned watermills and at the bottom of rivers that havent been blessed. Known for drowning people, especially those not wearing a cross.
Can ruin watermills by cursing them and stopping then from working.
Millers try to appease the spirit by sacrificing animals. During the construction of the mill you're supposed to bury a black rooster or a double headed wheatplant under the front porch of the mill to prevent him from entering.
In Belarus they believed that when a body of water is blessed the vodyanoi will try to escape with his children by asking a man to borrow his sled or carriage. Thats why before a blessing a river for example all the sleds and carriages were tipped over to prevent his escape.
This is interesting. Very familiar to our Datuk Harimau (Sir/grandpa Tiger). A spirit tiger that prowls the forests. People used to offer gifts to appease hin before entering the forest to hunt or forage. He sometimes appears as someone you know or call out your name to lead you astray. That is why it is taboo to call someone loudly with their real names in the forest for fear of the Datuk hearing and mimicing your voice.
The Jaguar god, he was responsible for echo and his roar could be heard in earthquakes which he was the master of and provoked.
Yara-ma-yha-who is the vampire of Aboriginal folklore described as a little frog-like man with red fur, a very big head, a large mouth with no teeth and suckers on the ends of its hands and feet. The Yara-ma-yha-who is said to live in fig trees. Instead of hunting for food, it is described as waiting for an unsuspecting traveller to rest under the tree. The creature then drops down and uses its suckers to drain the victim's blood. After that it swallows the person, drinks some water, and then takes a nap. When the Yara-ma-yha-who awakens, it regurgitates the victim, leaving them shorter than before. The victim's skin also has a reddish tint to it that it didn't have before. It repeats this process several times during which the victim is slowly transformed into a Yara-ma-yha-who themselves.
Kinda reminds me of Jellenheimer
Pictured is Jade-her-skirt she wept at the evil of the previous race of men and destroyed them with the deluge that resulted from her tears. Ours is the fifth race of men to have lived according to Aztec mythology
>deluge
Okay you know what's very weird? Every culture has some sort of a deluge story. The Epic of Gilgamesh for example speaks of a time before the deluge where the gods would actively take part in the affairs of man.
we got Trolls, which we share with the danes and swedes
they're a thing in norse mythology and later made their way into scandinavian folklore. sometimes they're identified as jötuns, giants, who regurarly gets fucked over by thor (which is why they fear lightning). i recall that they can also smell the blood of christians and they turn to stone if the sun shines upon them
Koschei the deathless.
A sort of immortal lych. Depicted as an extremely skinny tall sorcerer king resembling a skeleton. Hard but possible to kill if you find a series of objects and animals hidden within each other.
A character in many different tales the Koschei wields extremely powerful magic, known to have turned an entire kingdom into stone. In many tales he is initially a prisoner chained deep under ground until someone helps set him free. Known for being greedy and possessing many treasures and a proclivity to kidnap qt princesses.
His soul (or death) is hidden separate from his body inside a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in an iron chest (sometimes the chest is crystal and/or gold), which is buried under a green oak tree, which is on the island of Buyan in the ocean. As long as his soul is safe, he cannot die. If the chest is dug up and opened, the hare will bolt away; if it is killed, the duck will emerge and try to fly off. Anyone possessing the egg has Koschei in their power.
Has a lot of interesting tales featuring him as the antagonist.
Humans tend not to be very creative as a species, it's how you end up with dragons in Europe, China and Mexico. I supose given the conditions of early agricultural societies (The Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, the yellow river in China) floods would have been relatively frequent phenomena and they'd be devastating. In Mesoamerica the Aztecs built their main city on a lake and the Anahuac valley was a generally humid environment with many lakes and rivers.
The epic of Gilgamesh is certainly a fascinating work regardless.
The lord of the land of the dead (Mictlán) he is jealous of letting anything that falls in his hands go, in Aztec mythos he tested Quetzalcoatl as he tried to recover the bones of the elder gods in order to create humanity.
Bump
Maybe Burgers can post some mythological beasts of their own
Here's an interesting video about snakes and dragons in mythology
youtube.com
The Roman goddess of love and beauty
Pretty cool video man, thank you very much, I've read Sagan's Dragons of Eden and would certainly recommend that book.
This is the Aztec main god the turquoise hummingbird, who was born in full battle attire to defend his won mother from his sister, which he fights in this illustration.
Isn't a lot of Chinese mythology from India?
How do you even measure cultural heritage? It's all subjective innit.
You're welcome. I'll check the book out
One of my personal favorites the goddess of the agave, a plant whose sap is still used to elaborate pulque, an alcoholic beverage. She sends rabbiits to play with your conciousness and make you silly while pulque, a milky white substance drips from her breasts.
We have a lot of so called corn demons who are said to haunt corn or rye fields. They come in all kinds of shapes, as people ar animals, but mostly as a woman. These women would catch kids who went into the fields and beat them with/force them to suck her gigantic tits (seriously) before killing them. It's way more detailed and there are thousands of variations and henchmen and shit that come with it. Back in the day when harvesting they used to leave a part of the field standing to please the corn demons.
Lewd
The goddess of lust, she was actually thought benevolent and a protector and through her sexual deeds acted as a sin-eater. This is a very rare win-win scenario in mythology.
The goddess of flowers but also of love and beauty, the Aztec equivalent to Venus.
good thread, desu.
Not to sound obnoxious or anything, I''ll just give an account of chinese history from a chinese.
>China's early literature was restricted to realism. It is because of Buddhism that the power of imagination of Chinese literature became invigorated. Since Tang Dynasty, from the 7th century A.D., romanticism became more popular in Chinese literature. Journey to the West, a novel well-known to every household in China, is a good example. It is about the pilgrimage of Xuanzang, a learned monk in Tang Dynasty, who travelled from China to India to study Buddhism. The most popular figure in the novel, Monkey King, is believed to be based on Hanuman, the revered figure of Indian mythology.
>In ancient China, the art of stone-carving was underdeveloped. The spring-up religious caves and stone sculptures in China were a direct result of the spread of Buddhist culture. Additionally, Buddhism has exerted a profound influence on Chinese painting, music and dance.
>Apart from that, the development of ancient printing in China is also closely related to the spread of Buddhism, which was driven by the increasing demand for Buddhist figures and scriptures.
>During the mutual exchanges between the two civilizations in the past, although certain Chinese technologies and inventions contributed to Indian civilization, in general, especially in spiritual terms, it was mainly China that learned from India. In one thousand years or so, India was China's teacher. Chinese people will never forget that.
This is a representation of the Aztec god of storms and rain
are these recent reimagination of old gods or are these old representations themselves.
This one is contemporary, it's non religious tho, the Aztec religion is long gone. Pictured is an Aztec representation of Tlaloc, some others are much more detailed even if less well preserved.
Friendly reminder that the Indian Vedas were writte by Slavs
This is one of the Aztec elder gods, snakes her skirt, you can see it is very well detailed, looks like a figurine but it actually is a 2.7 meters 2 ton statue
Are aztec gods to be feared or are they drawn with gruesome characteristics because they are to be revered?
I think it would've been more as in the Roman Pantheon were Gods were not necessarily good or evil but capable of both. Some were loved, others feared. There was a very strong conception of sacrifice as being necessary for life, the elder Gods had, some willingly, others not, sacrificed themselves so that the world could exist and the Gods the Aztecs worshipped themselves had some died and been reborn, the overarching theme being death is necessary to life.
This is one of the main gods of not just the Aztecs but all Mesoamericans, going back all the way to the Olmecs, the smoking mirror, the god of night and sorcery. What is underneath is an actual human skull
*early iranics who mixed with dravidians and were broadly termed as indians.
This is probably the most dreadful and terrifying of all the Aztec gods, the flayed one, who wore the skins of others and was continually reborn of blood as a dark phoenix. His cult was however similar to that of Demeter in some aspects, he was a god of vegetation and agriculture. His cycle of horror was also the cycle of seasons, and necessary for life.
so they were not transgenders
aztecs were an ancient colony of india
No, they certainly were not
slavs descended from indians
long long ago we had the knowledge of interlayer travel. we could travel through the core to the other side and build pyramids there. we had to give it up when atlantis came back to power
Yeah, our pyramids have different origins
Yakusha and Yakushini from India are worshiped in Japan through filters.
I live in Suwa.
I think that Suwa is the Shiva god in India.
Suwa has a festival called "Onbashira".
I heard that it is similar to Hindu Indra Jatra Festival. Suwa has a god named Moriya.
>so they were not transgenders
that is something libturds wants you to believe.
theres a mythical creature here called the honest politician
Mexican mythology seems based. Would have been interesting to see how their religion developed if they hadn't adopted Christianity.
Wrong. Slavs were the originial northern 'Indians' that gave taught the Vedas to the dravidians. Theres plenty of evidence for it
>to see how their religion developed
Their civilization was already dead for thousands of years
>Theres plenty of evidence for it
>honest politician
What did they practice before Christianity came over?
WE
Smart people is the mythical creature here.
WUZ
PAJEET
Kanako best goddess.
It was at its peak at time of European contact, wtf are you talking about?
I think it's sort of like Buddhism in Asia, it was a necessary change which, while it was largely forced on Mexico, did provide make for a better alternative. There are similarities on which some amount of syncretism was made such as the sacrifice of Jesus, to end all other sacrifices, and the belief in purification through atonement. Some native Americans even today equate Jesus to Quetzalcoatl, it would be too lenghty to go here over the similarities but it was a figure something like the Mesoamerican Prometheus, and some even believe Jesus taught in Teotihuacan during his teenage years. Then there's the saints which to some extent took on the atributes of some Aztec deities, main amongst these the virgin Mary which took on many of the atributes of the goddess Tonantzin, thios being one of the benevolent figures which the Aztecs did love.
Post more titty monster mommies.
Vodník
They are water spirits, residing in ponds and rivers. Their allegiance is not set, some of them are good, some are bad, depending on the tale. They drown people and store their souls in clay pots which they keep underwater. They also like to sit on willows and sow their clothes or boots.
Golem
looks gay
That’s originally rabbinic concept. Kind of similar to budhist tulpa, later degenerating into a story of a man made of clay.
Still undeniably tied to Prague though
youtube.com
Not so gay now
Cool, thx for the Spanish subs
This one is a Mayan, there's some controversy about her actual role and even existence, but legend goes this is a psychopomp, meaning she helps the dead in the afterlife, that specializes in getting suicide victims to heaven.
like mermaids?
No, not really like mermaids. They are usually pretty ugly and they have feet.
Pic related is my cult's goddess. She's called Aqua.
why is she anime?
Singaporeans pray to their waifu
>/shin megami tensei general/ on Sup Forums
well alright