Talk:Bahamut

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Disambig[edit]

Shouldn't this be remade as a proper disambig page? - Stoph 18:38, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

 Done. Bahamut (disambiguation) has been created. Steel1943 (talk) 02:57, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Source?[edit]

Why doesn't anybody cite their damn work? Where in Islamic/Arabian/whatever literature is there mention of bahamut, or any aquatic version of behemoth for that matter? Give your damn sources! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.164.65.13 (talk • contribs) 20:45, 1 November 2006

Sources[edit]

I made a few sources hope it helps — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kara Umi (talk • contribs) 19:37, 19 November 2006

Article is know sourced Kara Umi 19:36, 19 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Never heard[edit]

well for me ...im muslim and i never heard anything named bahamut or so ever so i guess we need sorces thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.87.255.131 (talk • contribs) 17:42, 1 December 2006

What does Islam have to do with Arabian mythology? Arabian Mythology means Preislamic pagan mythologies that existed in ancient Arabian peninsula, saying it doesn't exist in Arabian mythology just because it doesn't exist in islam is like saying that Zues doesn't exist in Greek mythology because he isn't found in Eastern Orthodox church scripture. or that mars doesn't exist in ROman mythology because it isn't part of Roman catholicism. get real or get bent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.161.66.248 (talk • contribs) 20:48, 25 April 2007

I believe this article is hardly notable to be mentioned. There's hardly any source and the previous references were made to some websites that are hardly verifiable. It's hard to say, but the article may have to be deleted, or at the least, a redirect. — Blue。 21:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The subject does exist, and it did influence popular culture. I think it should be merged, not redirected. Kariteh 21:57, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, probably I was too hasty in doing the redirect/silent deletion. Should have open a discussion and all that processes. Did a few minor tweaks, but that's all I could give. — Blue。 22:01, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jinshin-uwo[edit]

I'm Japanese but never heard of "Jinshin-uwo". I searched but couldn't find what is meant. Perhaps he meant "Jishin-uwo". With just the pronunciation it is hard to determine for sure because several words have same pronunciation. But the closest to what I can deduce as the actual term is "jishin-uwo". Jinshin is human body and jishin is earthquake wihle uwo is fish. But Jishin-uwo is not much used as a term and even then it is just a general name not a particular name of one type of fish, whether it be mythical or not. Borges may have mentioned it, so a precise quote would be nice to clarify that this is just what Borges said, and may not actually exist, just an alleged or alluded entity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.216.120.242 (talk) 01:46, 7 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, the Borges book cites as its source for Jinshin-Iwo a book called The Sacred Scriptures Of The Japanese by Post Wheeler, which does appear to be a reliable source for the purposes of Wikipedia. The Sacred Scriptures Of The Japanese spells the creature's name as Jishin-Iwo, so this appears to be a typo by Borges. --Muchness (talk) 23:21, 7 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly this is "earthquake fish" ("jishin-uwo") and not "human-torso fish"?? ("jinshin-uwo").
Post Wheeler is just a journalist, with no apparent Japanese language background, so he probably screwed up. You're supposed to look for the most reliable sources, i.e., scholars who study the relevant field, examples:
  • "地震魚" - (Professor) Josaburō Ogino, Kodai nihon no asobi no kenkyū, p. 13[1]
  • "jishin (no) uo" - Cornelis Ouwehand (1964), Namazu-e and Their Themes, pp. 4, 262(index)[2])
I don't think this "jishin-uwo" has that wide a currency of use though.
The scholar Ogino above mentions as his source is Ōbayashi Taryō [ja], whose Shinwa no hanashi, pp. 93-102 I have read. Obayashi goes into the topic of "earthquake catfish" (jishin namazu) and the motif of "World-Fish moves and causes earthquake (sekai-gyo ga ugoku to jishin wo okosu)", but I don't see Obayashi using "jishin uwo" here. --Kiyoweap (talk) 15:29, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Merging[edit]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Result is no merging.. Point noted. — Blue。 05:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Minimal sources, content mostly video game trivia. Should be mentioned in some lines over there in Behemoth. — Blue。 22:05, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Against merge: Bahamut is traditionally the "King of Dragons" though this may be contrived by the Squaresoft and TSR corporations as a mythical creature, thereby reducing the amount of credible sources. However, the lack of sources is just that, lack of sources, not an invitation to merge. First of all, by all accounts I have read they are NOT the same thing. Behemoth did come up in Historiography classes, in the same breath as the other mythical creature, the Leviathan. These two were respectively compared to the giant animals of the earth and sea, the elephant and the whale. Effectively, what you are talking about doing is merging a giant dragon with the beast in control of the earth, for no other reason than "they sound the same." This is upsurd. -bulmabriefs144 24:22, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Even in the link itself, they say as to Bahamut that it's a sea creature while Behemoth "eateth grass like an ox." You can revert if you wish, but I see no reason why this is an issue. Different creatures, different concepts, no merge needed. -bulmabriefs144 24:26, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
  • oppose merge unless a source can be provided that says this is somehow connected to a "Behemoth" we should obviously not merge just because they have similar spellings. --JayHenry 05:24, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
  • Actually, I spoke to soon. I see now that the source in this article does say that the Whos-Who of Mythology claims that the words have similar origin. It looks as if Bahamut should be merged with the Dungeons and Dragons monster, and Behemoth should perhaps merely contain a sentence saying "the Arabic Bahamut may be related" or something to that effect. --JayHenry 05:35, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • What you are asking, if I understand this correctly, is to merge two beasts that may or may not have any connection to each other strictly based on pronunciation. Both beasts are historically documented as actual beasts in completely separate religious books. The book of Job states that the Behemoth was a living breathing creature that roamed the earth at that time and could be observed as a reference point for God to note to Job. Merging these two will do nothing except bring confusion to the reader. Did the Behemoth and the Leviathan get together and birth the Bahamut? Unless you have some sort of historical proof of this interaction, these beasts have not business whatsoever being mentioned in the same reference, with exception to that they may have similar origins due to vocabulary. —Preceding Rachel Meglio comment added by 65.25.86.221 (talk) 20:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is no point in merging because those are not the same. BUT there is a huge mistake in saying Bahamut was "altered and magnified" FROM Behemot. It was the opposite: If you look for the etymology of Behemot, you will see that it was made out off Bahamut. We are not talking about arabic religion or the kuran, but a mythologic beast from a paganist culture from the Chalcolitic Age ( Copper Age), the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. It's about 1000/2000 years before the christian Era. The Behomot is only first mentioned in the book of Job, 500y Before Christian Era, a part of the protocanonic books of the Hebrew. Saying Bahamut was made out off Behemot would just be like saying Medusa was made out of Maria and Pegasus out of the Archangels. Out off Bahamut was made Behomot ( massive bull promised to the believers as food after the judgment day ), to "mix" into different culture - Likewise, Jesus was born during summer, while the 24th December is in fact a pagan celebration of the solstice. --Nicolasticot (talk) 09:47, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

De-"Trivia"lized[edit]

I've taken the liberty, (at the mild arm-twisting of SuggestBot,) of restructuring what has become a WP:Trivia section into something resemlbling prose. I deliberately left out most of the marginal mentions, and I would encourage editors not to add them back unless there is more to be written about them than there was. I'd like some feedback if at all possible from those watching. -- RoninBK T C 13:39, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wait a minute. Why is there a mention of Bahamut in D&D, but no mention of Bahamut of Final Fantasy, who has been in 10+ games? While he (it?) was usually just another summon, he's frequently been a character in and of himself, ala FFX. I'm at work right now, so I can't look for sources, but certainly the Bahamut of Final Fantasy deserves at least a mention? Tainted Conformity (talk) 21:58, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Because hat links point to topics that have articles, and there is an article on the D&D version, and not one about the Final Fantasy one. The article as it stands doesn't merit a separate mention for the Final Fantasy appearance, as it does nothing to further understanding of the article's mythological subject. Mintrick (talk) 22:00, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I guess that makes sense. Still, it's annoying that Bahamut (Final Fantasy) redirects here, and there's not even a mention of him. Since the disabiguation exists, I'm guessing that there was an article on him at one point. Have to look into it. By the way, is there any idea how the name Bahamut became synonomous with "King of Dragons"? The vast majority of media has him depicted as a dragon, not as a fish. I'd look it up myself, but I'm at work, so surfing is a no-go. Thanks! --Tainted Conformity (talk) 09:41, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest, I think that Bahamut (Final Fantasy) should either redirect to Bahamut (Dungeons & Dragons), with a statement added to the latter reflecting his influence on the Final Fantasy series, or simply to Gameplay of Final Fantasy#Magic, with no additions being necessary. As it stands, the current Bahamut article makes no mention or reference to the Final Fantasy character, and as such, a redirect to this page is rather nonsensical. I would argue that the D&D character had more influence over the development of the Final Fantasy one than Pre-Islamic Arabian Mythology, as the two are similar in recurring form and function, but I really don't have any readily available sources to back it up, so I'll leave that be for now. However, I'm going to go ahead and change the redirect page for Bahamut (Final Fantasy) to lead to Gameplay of Final Fantasy#Magic. --Demitel (talk) 07:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed most of these concerns by creating Bahamut (disambiguation). Cheers! Steel1943 (talk) 04:32, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In-Universe[edit]

Borges was fond of the idea of writing fiction as if it were fact in order to try and make it come true. In essence, he was a troll. His work cannot be cited as a source of general mythology, since he is very likely to have made it up himself. Therefore this article is basically describing Borges' fictional Arabic mythology from an in-universe perspective (the fictional universe being one where Bahamut is part of Arabic mythology.) Dranorter (talk) 16:56, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The article includes two other reliable sources, and Borges himself cites Edward William Lane's Arabian society in the middle ages as his book's source in the footnotes (Lane spells Bahamut "Bahamoot", but this is only an orthographical issue). Given the three reliable independent sources verifying the existence of Bahamut (Lane, Ward, Sykes), one of which predates Borges' book, I don't see that Bahamut can be described as a fictional invention of Borges without some specific supporting evidence. If the Borges material is considered dubious, it could be deleted from the article or rewritten as explicitly spurious, but I'd like to see some form of reliable source discussing the Borges book's provenance before supporting that step. --Muchness (talk) 23:44, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Dranorter that there is too much in this article that is discussed through the filter of Borges's Imaginary Beings. Borges isn't an authority on Arabic/Islamic cosmology and comparitive mythology, so he might make mistakes.
Borges also does adds his own signature to the material. On a related matter, he listed the cosmic bull kujata as "Quyata". I believe this spelling was invented by him, phoneticizing it into the Spanish spoken in his La Plata region, because "y" isn't pronounced as "j" everywhere. --Kiyoweap (talk) 16:13, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

hippopotamus[edit]

Removed the following claim:

"In some sources, Bahamut is described as having a head resembling a hippopotamus or elephant".[rose 1]

  1. ^ Rose, Carol (2001). Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 37. ISBN 0-393-32211-4.

This looks to plainly to be a misstatement of Borges (which is Rose's source #18). What Borges wrote was "Bahamut .. At first a hippopotamus or an elephant, at last it was transformed into a fish.." Anyways this is not verifiable in any highly reliable sources or primary sources. --Kiyoweap (talk) 04:04, 16 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Al-Rayyan[edit]

Just a working note (to-be-done list). It looks like "Al-Rayyan" is another name. Further research needed.

I also haven't really written up info on "Tafsir" type literature that yields a bunch of other alternative names, because there are so many versions. One is mentioned in the thesis paper I've been using as major source. But I'm finding other versions on the netspace mostly.--Kiyoweap (talk) 06:34, 21 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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