|
Mandi (legendary Creature)
The Mandi, according to Pliny the Elder, are a short-lived people from India. Pliny equates the Mandi, named by Cleitarchus and Megasthenes, whose women can bear children in their seventh year and who become old at forty, with the Macrobii, whose women only have children once in their lives.Pliny the Elder''The Natural History'' John Bostock, Ed. Chapter 2. 60-66 See also * Calingi * Buddhist eschatology, where a similar short-living race is mentioned. References {{DEFAULTSORT:Mandi (Legendary Creature) Medieval European legendary creatures ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pliny The Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic '' Naturalis Historia'' (''Natural History''), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote of him in a letter to the historian Tacitus: Among Pliny's greatest works was the twenty-volume work ''Bella Germaniae'' ("The History of the German Wars"), which is no longer extant. ''Bella Germaniae'', which began where Aufidius Bassus' ''Libri Belli Germanici'' ("The War with the Germans") left off, was used as a source by other prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus and Suetonius. Tacitus—who many scholars agree had never travelled in Germania—used ''Bella Germa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cleitarchus
Cleitarchus or Clitarchus ( el, Κλείταρχος) was one of the historians of Alexander the Great. Son of the historian Dinon of Colophon, he spent a considerable time at the court of Ptolemy Lagus. He was active in the mid to late 4th century BCE. Quintilian (''Institutio Oratoria''. x. I. 74) credits him with more ability than trustworthiness, and Cicero (''Brutus'', II) accuses him of giving a fictitious account of the death of Themistocles. But there is no doubt that his history was very popular, and much used by Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius, Justin and Plutarch, and the authors of the Alexander romances. His unnatural and exaggerated style became proverbial. His work, the '' History of Alexander'', is almost completely lost and has survived only in some thirty fragments preserved by ancient authors, especially by Aelian and Strabo. A recent papyrological find from Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. LXXI 4808) records that he was a tutor ( el, διδάσκαλος) of Pto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Megasthenes
Megasthenes ( ; grc, Μεγασθένης, c. 350 BCE– c. 290 BCE) was an ancient Greek historian, diplomat and Indian ethnographer and explorer in the Hellenistic period. He described India in his book '' Indica'', which is now lost, but has been partially reconstructed from literary fragments found in later authors that quoted his work. Megasthenes was the first person from the Western world to leave a written description of India. Biography While Megasthenes's account of India has survived in the later works, little is known about him as a person. He spent time at the court of Sibyrtius, who was a satrap of Arachosia under Antigonus I and then Seleucus I. Megasthenes was then an ambassador for Seleucid king Seleucus I Nicator and to the court of the Mauryan Emperor Chandragupta Maurya in Pataliputra (modern Patna). Dating for his journey to the Mauryan court is uncertain; Seleucus I reigned from 305–281 BCE for the loose range of years that Megasthenes' mis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calingi
The Calingae or Calingi, according to ancient accounts, were a race of extremely short-lived people in India. According to Pliny the Elder they had a lifespan of only eight years. This has been viewed as exaggeration, akin to Pliny's report that the Mandi people of India bear children at age seven. The Calingae were widely diffused over a large area according to Pliny, and consisted of the Calingae proper, the Gangarides-Calingae and the Macco-Calingae. This may have been a reference to the Tri-kalinga ("Three Kalingas") that appeared in the ''Puranas''. The area of diffusion is thought to roughly coincide with the Northern Circars (now spanning the states of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha). Their chief cities were Dandagula (Dandaguda) and Parthalis (Protalis). According to political scientist Sudama Misra, the Kalinga janapada originally comprised the area covered by the Puri and Ganjam districts. See also * Buddhist eschatology Buddhist eschatology, like many facets of modern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buddhist Eschatology
Buddhist eschatology, like many facets of modern Buddhist practice and belief, came into existence during its development in China, and, through the blending of Buddhist cosmological understanding and Daoist eschatological views, created a complex canon of apocalyptic beliefs. These beliefs, although not entirely part of Orthodox Buddhism, form an important collection of Chinese Buddhist traditions which bridge the gap between the monastic order and local beliefs of Imperial China. Although the main source of writings describing eschatological beliefs in Chinese Buddhism are so called “apocryphal” texts, these are an invaluable source of information in the study of Buddhism as it was actually practiced, as the available monastic sources depicting Buddhism are merely the tip of an iceberg, of which the body is still mostly submerged and hidden from view (Zürcher (Perspectives) 169). These eschatological Buddhist groups began to appear in China from on (Overmyer 46), and es ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
