Tengi.....?

[Zaphiel]

Tengi....in japan some sort of angles, spirits....whatever.
But what exactly are these creatures
.....are they good,evi....human-like.....spirits of the nature?
I wanna know everything you know about it......please!
thanks<rei>

[redearthws]

Do you mean 'tengu'?

Do a search for tengu on google. Plenty of info there.

[xifoarhos]

if i remember correctly tengu are demons, not evil though, and they are mast swordsman. thats what they do. perfect and study swordsmanship. there are
some legends of master swordsman having learned form them.

[Zaphiel]

sorry used the plural........tengu...all right tengu.
so they are swortmasters.....so samurai trained with them or what.....?

[xifoarhos]

i think that only certain individuals were taught by the tengu. the tengu did not willingly give out their secrets, and i think that swordsman fought the tengu too. i dotn know much, sry i cant be of much more help

[not-I]

Zaphiel, as you can read in this excellent site: http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/tengu.shtml the tengu mythology probably came from China and like most creatures in Japanese mythology, tengu have both Shinto and Buddhist attributes.

Being master warriors, tengu are credited with passing on secrets to humans who sought them out and were deemed worthy enough. Legend has it that the young Ushikawa (Minamoto no Yoshitsune) learned his combat techniques and strategy from the tengu of Mt. Kurama.

Tengu feature strongly in the Shinkage-ryú Heiho Mokuroku, a swordsmanship manual of the Shinkage school with later explanations which was translated into English by Hiroaki Sato in The Sword & The Mind.

Also, since you read German, you might want to look into Reinhard Kammer - Zen in der Kunst, das Schwert zu führen ("Zen in the Art of Swordsmanship"), which is a translation of Shissai Chozan's Tengu Geijutsu Ron ("Discourse on the Art of Tengu"). There, Shissai describes the "ultimate secret" of swordsmanship that he claims to have learned from tengu. It's an interesting book and is considered to be a classic along with Takuan Soho's Fudóchi Shinmyó-roku, though the German title is silly because Shissai was a neo-Confucian who considered Buddhism to be dangerous.

[Zaphiel]

Zaphiel, as you can read in this excellent site: http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/tengu.shtml

Also, since you read German, you might want to look into Reinhard Kammer - Zen in der Kunst, das Schwert zu führen ("Zen in the Art of Swordsmanship"), which is a translation of Shissai Chozan's Tengu Geijutsu Ron ("Discourse on the Art of Tengu"). There, Shissai describes the "ultimate secret" of swordsmanship that he claims to have learned from tengu. It's an interesting book and is considered to be a classic along with Takuan Soho's Fudóchi Shinmyó-roku, though the German title is silly because Shissai was a neo-Confucian who considered Buddhism to be dangerous.

wow...thanks a lot<rei>
that's what I'm looking for.....and I think I'll buy that book you talked about!!!!
thanks a lot again......