Anonymous
×
Create a new article
Write your page title here:
We currently have 2,416 articles on Monstropedia. Type your article name above or click on one of the titles below and start writing!



Monstropedia
2,416Articles
Revision as of 14:11, 5 June 2008 by Niko (talk | contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Zhangxian shooting peddle at a tiangou

The tiāngoǔ or tien kou (Wade-Giles:T'ien kou; 天狗; "celestial dog") is a legendary creature from China.

Chinese literature assigns this creature a variety of descriptions, but most often it is a fierce and anthropophageous canine monster that resembles a shooting star or comet.

One plausible theory is that the Chinese derived its name from a destructive meteor that hit China sometime in the 6th century BC.

The tiangou makes a noise like thunder and brings war wherever it falls. One account from the Shù Yì Jì (述異記, "A Collection of Bizarre Stories"), written in 1791, describes a dog-like tiangou with a sharp beak and an upright posture, but usually tiangou bear little resemblance to their Japanese counterparts. However, it is admitted that it gave its name to the tengu of Japan.

Source

de Visser, M. W. (1908). "The Tengu". Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 34 (2): pp. 25-99. Z. P. Maruya & Co..