Creatures ▼

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巴蛇 Bashe: Bashe is a giant snake that can swallow an elephant easily. If it eats an elephant, it will only spit out the bones after three years. If a virtuous person eats its meat, he/she can prevent heart attack and gastrointestinal diseases. On its body, there are four kinds of colors, including green, red, yellow and black.

Bashe not only names this mythical giant reptile but is also a variant Chinese name for the South Asian ran or mang "python" (and South American "boa constrictor" or African "mamba"). "Mythical draconyms often derive from names of larger reptilians", says Carr and "Since pythons usually crush their prey and swallow them whole, one can imagine Chinese tales about southern ran 'pythons' being exaggerated into legendarily-constipated bashe 'giant snakes' that ate an elephant every three years". In literary usage, bashe is found in the four-character idiom bashetunxiang (lit. "ba-snake gulping down an elephant") meaning "inordinately greedy; extremely insatiable".

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Reference

Creatures and Beings of China Folklore and Lower Mythology . . . (n.d.-b). Cryptid Wiki. Retrieved September 14, 2021, from https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Creatures_and_Beings_of_China_Folklore_and_Lower_Mythology

Wikipedia contributors. (2021a, February 18). Bashe. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashe

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