The Western Mermaids

Japan, like China and india, does not have local mermaids legends. rather, they've snake-spirits, who may want to take at the form of snakes, human men or women, or hybrid snake-human forms (with snakes every now and then replaced with dragons). The Indians known as those beings Nagas, with the woman in particular regularly known as a Nagini.

[source]quora.com

They were taken into consideration spirits of the water, but, and fulfilled a number of the same functions as mermaids in more Western cultures. The girls specially were taken into consideration seductive, vengeful, mischevious and yet innocent, and severa artifacts display them in attendance upon Shiva.
In southeast Asia, mermaids have been part of the lifestyle, and have been often referred to as Duyung, from whence the word for Dugung, a manatee, comes from. Philipine lifestyle mainly features mermaids that have turn out to be staples even into the twenty first century, thru the diverse incarnations of the Ravelo comedian primarily based Dyesebel, who was a spinoff of the Darna comics (an analog to marvel lady). significantly, one in all Darna’s most frequent antagonist turned into the snake-haired Valentina, who, while missing the stone-turning competencies of Medusa, however had both toxic locks and the ability to command snakes.

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When Japan was first opened with the aid of the Perry expedition within the 19th century, japanese shopkeepers listened to the stories of the sailors, and, sensing a possibility, killed monkeys then stuffed them and placed on the tail of a fish. The shopkeepers referred to as these constructs “dolls” - Ningyo - however the gullible sailors thought that the word meant “mermaids”.
once the sailors discovered that these mermaids were pretty popular, there has been a run on stuffed mermaids, including one which ended up within the series of P.T. Barnum, the Fejee Mermaid.
Through the years, Ningyo became adopted through the japanese as a term for mermaid as nicely, and the utilization unfold from Japan to China, where Ningyou and the mermaid were added within the Eighteen Eighties (at the side of the japanese transliteration Marimeid).

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Mermaids have seemed periodically in jap lore, at first as awful figures, then later as the more westernized delusion figures (mainly in the previous few a long time). perhaps the maximum recent incarnation of the ningyo in Japan is from the anime Monster Musume, which capabilities a “harem” of various “monster-ladies”, together with the snake-tailed Miia (as a pun on Lamia, the name of a Greek snake woman) and Meri, a romance-obsessed mermaid.
nearly each jap knows approximately a reasonably story of Urashima-Taro.
It’s an easy tale which is goes like this: Taro located some kids who were torturing a turtle. He rescued it. The turtle became a princess of the sea Empire King. Then Taro became invited into the citadel of Dragons 竜宮城. He got there with a memento which he changed into, but was advised he must not open. However, he opened it and found out he spent 300 years inside the castle.

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This tale is just alike with the French ‘Mermaid and Fisherman’ tale. because the Portuguese and Dutch came to Japan in the sixteenth century and this Urashima_Taro tale first seemed in the sixteenth century.

Hence, japanese people were given the idea of the Mermaid from Western sailors.
unluckily, maximum of the facts regarding mermaids that i've seen, books on legends, mythology and such , films and so forth, do no longer point out Ningyo(eastern mermaids) a lot, if in any respect. From what little i've been capable to discover they're essentially the identical of their abilities underwater, are of route , portrayed in art as being physically equivalent to Asian ladies in their top half, that's as an alternative cool, by way of the way. some oriental legends imply that they could furnish wishes to a worth mortal, however, then again, a few western mermaid testimonies say that the identical factor, is in order that’s no longer surely very one of a kind. I think that Ninqyo are flawed for western mermaids due to the fact they're essentially very similar, and contemporary. Media are blurring some thing subtle distinctions they first had.
I’m sorry, i will to provide you with a higher answer than this, but this is the best I could offer.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this post

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I am George Ani
@georgeani

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