Drums and gongs are beaten, bells rung, and trumpets blown in many parts of the world to scare away the dire adversary. ![]() In the language of the Turkic-speaking Chuvash and of Estonian folklore, a verbal form translated into English as "eaten" is used to describe an eclipse. The Hindus spoke of a dragon called Svarbhanu analogous figures appear almost universally. According to some scholars, the English word for this phenomenon derives ultimately from Huruc án, the name of a monstrous wind god of the Quich é Indians of Central America.Įqually widespread is the belief that eclipses are caused by a monster's swallowing and then disgorging the sun or moon. The Seneca Indians saw in hurricanes the activity of a monstrous bear named Ya-o-gah. In the Mesopotamian creation epic Enuma elish, the rebellious Tiamat is accompanied into battle by a cohort of gruesome monsters that includes Stormwind, Cyclone, and the like. Hurricanes are often attributed to the rampages of monsters. Analogous figures appear in the folklore of such diverse peoples as the Chinese, the Burmese, and several American Indian tribes. The ancient Sumerians spoke likewise of a gigantic bird named Heavy Wind (Im Dugud) who caused storms the Teutons spoke of Hraesvelgr. ![]() One such monster is the gigantic North American deity called the Thunderbird, the flapping of whose wings is believed to cause storms. In Chinese folklore, the subjugation of raging streams is called "caging the dragon." Conversely, however, the monster sometimes personifies a malevolent power who impounds the subterranean waters that have to be released in order to prevent drought.Īdverse natural phenomena are also personified as monsters, though it is sometimes difficult to determine whether these represent the phenomena themselves or the demonic powers that are believed to cause them. In several myths, the monster personifies the swollen rivers or winter squalls that threaten to inundate the earth unless properly channeled. The defeat of the monster is therefore retrojected into cosmogony and projected into eschatology: Leviathan, V ṛtra, Azhi Dahaka, and Fenris úlfr of Norse mythology, for instance, are said to be imprisoned but not slain and will eventually burst their bonds and have to be subdued again. What thus inaugurates each separate year or season is thought to have inaugurated the entire procession of years and seasons in any given era and to be destined to happen again before a further era can begin. It is a widespread custom to inaugurate a new year or season by staging a mimetic combat between two antagonists who represent respectively the old year and the new, winter and summer, drought and rainfall, and the like -a combat that survives, albeit in distorted form, in the English Mummers' Play and similar seasonal performances elsewhere. The primordial monster appears not only in myth but also in ritual. The Sumerians of Mesopotamia spoke of such a combat between the monster Azag ("demon") and the god Ninurta the Babylonians, of the defeat of the rebellious Tiamat by their supreme god Marduk the Hittites, of the defeat of a sea serpent named Illuyankas by the combined efforts of the goddess Inaras and a mortal hero the Hebrews, of Yahveh's rout of Leviathan the Hindus, of Indra's subjugation of V ṛtra the Iranians, of the dispatch of the serpentine Azhi Dahaka and the Greeks, of the triumph of Zeus over the contumacious Typhon. One kind of mythical monster is the dragon, the embodiment of primordial chaos, who is believed to have been subdued in battle by a leading god before the world order could be established. It is often their obtuseness and greed that prove their undoing. What they have in brawn, they lack in brain, and when they devour their victims, it is not because they are innately hostile to the human race but because they possess insatiable appetites. In popular legend, monsters are commonly portrayed as both stupid and gluttonous. The term is applied also to human "freaks," or "monstrous births," that is, persons with more or less than the normal number of limbs or organs, Siamese twins, hermaphrodites, and even albinos. ![]() Such creatures have been a feature of popular lore and religious cult in all parts of the world from earliest times. Strictly speaking, a monster is a mythical being and may be human or animal or a combination of both it may be huge, misshapen, or grotesque, malevolent, savage, or terrifying.
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