9 replies to this topic

[ghostexorcist]

I am currently reading a translation of an Arabic book published in 953 called The Book of the Wonders of India ('Aja'ib al-Hind). The book is primarily a collection of sailor and merchant tales ranging in date from 900-953. One tale involved a Muslim merchant befriending a king in the Gulfs of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). At dinner, the King brought out "a dish of various pieces of cooked meat, with heads, hands and feet just like the heads, hands and feet of small boys." The merchant was disgusted at first, but later learned it was a delicious type of fish.

This tale greatly reminded me of Journey to the West when the immortal offered Xuanzang the life-prolonging fruit that resembled babies. Does anyone know of human-shaped food mentioned in other works of Chinese literature?

What about the literature of other cultures?

Edited by ghostexorcist, 10 September 2008 - 02:59 AM.

[kaiselin]

The first obvious one that comes to mind is Mandrake. It's root was said to look like a human. Legend has it that when pulled from the ground it screamed.

There is the slender and delicate cookie called Lady Fingers.

and you can not forget the cookie Gingerbread Men.

[kaiselin]

There is the fruit Citron which is also know as Buddhas hand.

[Pattie]

Medieval Europe was fond of solteties, (the most famous being a cockatrice) but fantastic beasts were the norm there...nothing resembling a human was made to my knowledge.

[ghostexorcist]

The first obvious one that comes to mind is Mandrake. It's root was said to look like a human. Legend has it that when pulled from the ground it screamed.

I totally forgot about the Mandrake root. Boy, does it have some weird stories surrounding it! One tale says the root sprouts from the semen of a man who has just been hung. A witch supposedly collects the root and, using it as a...cough cough...phallus, later gives birth to an evil child with no soul. They are also connected to rituals that supposedly create Homunculi.

Anytime I think of Gingerbread men, I think of the one from Shrek. "Not my gumdrop buttons!" "You're a MONSTER!"

Medieval Europe was fond of solteties, (the most famous being a cockatrice) but fantastic beasts were the norm there...nothing resembling a human was made to my knowledge.

WOW! The pics of those things are so weird looking. It's kind of like how they sewed a monkey and a fish together to make the Fiji Mermaid.

There seems to be a common motif among the the sailor and merchant tales I'm reading. 10th century Arab seafarers seemed to honestly believe various animals were created from the union of two completely unrelated species. The story about the boy-like fish is only one of many mentions of human-shaped fish. These beasts are said to arise from the union between man and fish (eeeeewwwwww!). At the end of one particular story, the author claims ...

It is in the same way that men, by coupling with panthers, hyenas and other land animals, have given birth to monkeys, nasnas and other animals that look like man. It is in the same way that the union of pigs and buffalo have produced the elephant, dogs and goats the wild boar, and the a** and the mare the mule.

I have always found the baby fruit episode from Journey to the West interesting. Not only because the fruit wiggled around and screamed like a real baby, but because of the highly ritualized way the fruit had to be picked. If I remember correctly, they had to belt the fruit with a rod made out of gold and catch it on a certain type of pillow. Otherwise, the fruit would sink into the ground and make it as hard as steel. This was because it bestowed 10,000 years of immortality onto whatever it graced.

Now that I think about it, there is a Chinese movie named Dumplings about an aging woman that discovers eating a certain type of dumpling turns back the clock. However, she eventually learns the dumplings are made from baby fetuses.

[ghostexorcist]

I just read a story in the Arabic book that mentions a human-shaped fruit. It is hollow on the inside, so when wind blows, it sounds like the fruit is moaning.

[kaiselin]

I just read a story in the Arabic book that mentions a human-shaped fruit. It is hollow on the inside, so when wind blows, it sounds like the fruit is moaning.

Did you find the name of that interesting fruit or was it just a myth?

[ghostexorcist]

Did you find the name of that interesting fruit or was it just a myth?

The book is a collection of stories as told by merchants and sailors. Some mention historical people and places and, therefore, are historically reliable. But some read like greek myths of sea monsters and magical islands. These are no doubt stories that might have been real, but where enhanced to entertain or to strike fear.

Unfortunately, the fruit is never given a name. The story just says the Fruit was from the "Waqwaq country" and it grew on a large tree with round (and sometimes oblong) leaves. It goes on to say it's "full of air, like the fruit of the ushar. if one picks it, the air escapes at once, and it is nothing but skin."

I imagine that one might be able to find a real fruit fitting the description by utilizing that described above. This book says Waqwaq "was a geographical term covering part of Malayo-Indonesia (usually Sumatra, sometimes perhaps also Kalimantan) in the east and Madagascar in the west". There is also a "Waqwaq tree" mentioned in Chinese records. One webpage states:

The earliest reference to it (though without the name) occurs in a Chinese source, the T’ung-tien of Ta Huan, written before 801. Ta Huan was told the story by his father, who had lived in Baghdad for 11 years as a prisoner of war after the Battle of Talas. He claimed to have heard the following story from Arab sailors:

The king of the Arabs had dispatched men who boarded a ship, taking with them their clothes and food, and went to sea. They sailed for eight years without coming to the far shore of the ocean. In the middle of the sea, they saw a square rock; on this rock was a tree with red branches and green leaves. On the tree had grown a number of little children; they were six or seven thumbs in length. When they saw the men, they did not speak, but they could all laugh and move. Their hands, feet and heads were fixed to the branches of the trees.

The same story occurs repeatedly in Arabic sources, where the tree is identified as “the waqwaq tree,” and is later embellished by turning the little children into beautiful young women, suspended from the branches by their hair. The classic account, written in 12th- century al-Andalus, says the women “are more beautiful than words can describe, but are without life or soul…. This is a wonder of the land of China. The island is at the end of the inhabited world….” (source)

The webpage's section on Waqwaq is pretty big. You might want to read it all. It would appear that the Waqwaq tree is just a popular tale told amongst Arab and Chinese merchants. Keeping in mind that the oldest mention is in Chinese records, the Waqwaq tree might have been the inspiration for the magic tree mentioned in Journey to the West.

Edited by ghostexorcist, 11 September 2008 - 12:02 PM.

[DaMo]

I think he intends a distinction between food that is simply named after human or human parts, and food that is actually intended to resemble or represent human or human parts. Like youtiao (fried dough sticks).

[Moon]

And Ginseng? Ren-Shen in Chinese translation.
The root of a plant of China, Korea and N America, believed to have tonic and energy-giving properties