Re: USAGE: Dinos and dragons

On Fri, 13 Oct 2000, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:

> > From:         DOUGLAS KOLLER <LAOKOU@...>
>
> > "The dragon seems to perpetuate the tradition of primæval flying saurians of
> > geologic times, now known only through their fossilized remains. The Lamas
> > and Chinese Buddhists have assimilated them with the mythical serpants
> > (Naga) of Indian myth."
> >
> > (Quoting from the book I just mentioned quoting from 'Waddell, _Lamaism_, p.
> > 395)
>
> When reading statements like this, I always wonder how the author
> imagines such a tradition to have been transmitted.
>
[snip]
> Of course the Chinese might have found dinosaur bones themselves,
> thousands of years ago. But as far as I know there's no record of such
> finds, so that would be quite a leap of faith to make.
Maybe they were being ground up for medicinal purposes and no one thought
that a dinosaur skeleton was worth writing home about?

Complete speculation on my part, though someone in some book did note
that it was interesting that the dragon is the only "mythological" beast
in the Chinese zodiac.  (I'm Year of the Horse for the curious.)

<brightening>  I should come up with some sort of silly astrology
business for my conlang....

YHL