Myths of the Dog-Man (The University of Chicago Press)

An impressive and important cross-cultural study that has vast implications for history, religion, anthropology, folklore, and other fields.... Remarkably wide-ranging and extremely well-documented, it covers (among much else) the following: medieval Christian legends such as the 14th-century Ethiopian Gadla Hawaryat (Contendings of the Apostles) that had their roots in Parthian Gnosticism and Manichaeism; dog-stars (especially Sirius), dog-days, and canine psychopomps in the ancient and Hellenistic world; the cynocephalic hordes of the ancient geographers; the legend of Prester John; Visvamitra and the Svapacas (Dog-Cookers); the Dog Rong (warlike barbarians) during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou periods; the nochoy ghajar (Mongolian for Dog Country) of the Khitans; the Panju myth of the Southern Man and Yao barbarians from chapter 116 of the History of the Latter Han and variants in a series of later texts; and the importance of dogs in ancient Chinese burial rites.... Extremely well-researched and highly significant.--Victor H. Mair, Asian Folklore Studies