Talk:Á Bao A Qu

Broken Links and Bad Translations
First, whatever cite http://www.xlibris.de/magickriver/abaoaqu.htm was for is now broken. Second, Á Bao A Qu is spelled, in the 2005 Viking edition of this Borges book, A Bao A Qu. There is no mention of it being Malaysian, anywhere. Whoever came up with: "Malay legend Borges claimed that he had found ... in the book On Malay Witchcraft (1937), by C.C. Iturvuru" made that up since Borges cites his source for this as: "Captain Richard Francis Burton records the legend of the A Bao A Qu in one of the notes to his version of The Thousand and One Nights" (Viking Press, page 3) Chalchiuhtlatonal (talk) 22:25, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

The 1969 translation by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author, published by Penguin Books in 1974 attributes the source to C.C. Iturvuru "in an appendix to his now classic treatise On Malay Witchcraft (1937)." Which may have been a change from earlier editions. Á Bao A Qu is a work of fiction and its source is a work of fiction as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.55.177.117 (talk) 05:29, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I left the mention of the photoblog up because it was there in A Bao A Qu (album), from which about half of this article was taken. I have no idea how famous the weblog actually is (my first impression is "not exactly well-known") but I figured that if its mention stuck around this long in the album article, it was either due to legitimacy or to obscurity of the topic. If it's the former, the link has every right to be here; if it's the latter, it will disappear more quickly now that I'm linking here from less obscure places. --Ozy 14:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I put the disputed notice up because I know that "a bao a qu" cannot possibly be Italian and that it is not even close to any Italian phrase that could possibly mean what the article says that it means. The rest of the claims in the article are beyond my knowledge so I can't say whether they could be false as well, although I can say that A Bao A Qu is definitely not a Malay phrase either and so if it is a Malaysian legend it must be a name loaned from some other language.
 * It would be better if you cited your source on the point about Italian, but at any rate both these complaints have now been addressed. --Ozy 14:22, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Borges was Argentinian and wrote in Spanish about a supposed Malay/Indian entity, so why are we talking about Italian? 95.89.18.195 (talk) 11:52, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

A Bao A Qu
wat ifthis creature is still alive were would it be wat would it do  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.65.119.228 (talk) 20:41, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Questionable Copyright, right?
Because the text of this article pretty much looks like a copy & paste job straight out of the Borges book.--75.17.118.93 (talk) 17:49, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

The tower of victory.
Note that the top floor of the Tower of victory has been sealed of, the article of the tower it self has no mention of this creature. this makes you wander why they sealed of the top floor, was it simply for the protection of the room/artifacts, or was it because of this creature? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scorpiofirerat (talk • contribs) 11:52, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Myth?
Anyone have any sources other than Borges? Borges is unreliable in reference to mythological creatures, he often invented things and claimed they were sourced. He was a great fantasy writer, but he's not a good source for mythology. As such, I've taken this article out of WikiProject Mythology and put it in Literature instead. Simon Burchell (talk) 16:13, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Cayetano Cordoba Iturburu was an Argentinian writer, and nothing about Malaysia appears in his bibliography. I think this indicates that Borges made the myth up and jokingly attributed it to one of his colleagues. (Also, I think if it weren't a joke attribution, Borges would have said C. Cordoba Iturburu rather than C. C. Iturburu, just as one says G. Garcia Marquez and not G. G. Marquez.) 132.198.22.255 (talk) 15:16, 12 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that's what I suspected. I've taken it out of "Legendary Mammals" and recategorised as "Fictional mammals". Simon Burchell (talk) 22:59, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

This is Chris Zielinski. Allow me to straighten out a few misapprehensions here. I love literary quests, and am probably the person who started this particular ball rolling when I asked a Malaysian friend if she had ever heard of Borges's A Bao A Qu. I gave her all the background, and she contacted her friend Antares, who ran the Magick River site. Antares knew nothing about it, and made the contribution that "Maybe it was a reference to the Orang Asil, as foreigners are known". He then edited and posted my letter of enquiry up on his site, and it is this which is quoted all over the place (attributed to Antares, not to me). Now, I have done the following to track this story down: 1) I went to Chitor (the modern Chttorgargh,, Mewar, Rajasthan, India), the place mentioned in Borges's story, and climbed the tower. As someone mentions above, the top story of the tower is damaged and access is prevented by barbed wire. According to the guard at the site, the top storey had been hit by lightning and damaged. Deciding to ignore A Bao A Qu, I clambered over the barbed wire (at considerable risk, since the pit of the circular stairway winds down beneath it, and you risk a fall of 30 metres). The view from the top is unremarkable. I eventually came to the conclusion that A Bao A Qu may have some link to Akbar - it was Akbar the Great who surrounded the defenders of Chitor and slaughtered them, while their wives incinerated themselves in a giant fire. For the defenders standing at the top of the Tower of Victory in Chitor, the view to the Rajasthani plains out beyond Akbar's army were indeed "the most beautiful view in the world", since that was the place they could escape being slaughtered. All this is assuming that there really was such an old story about A Bao A Qu, and that it is not just an invention by Borges. 2) One of Borges's two attributions is to a CC Iturvuru's "now famous treatise On Malay Witchcraft". I went to the National Library of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur and spoke with several of the top librarians there, including the Head of the National Library. None of them had heard of this treatise or could find it in their indexes or holdings. We must conclude it doesn't exist, and thus this attribution is a joke. 3) The second of Borges's attributions is to "a footnote in Richard Burton’s A Thousand Nights and One Night". I spent three days in the British Library going through all the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of footnotes in the many volumes of Burton's original translation (there is a whole other story about that as well). I went through the books several times but never found a relevant footnote. So after all this, my conclusion (and Borges is chuckling in his grave) that this story is his invention, along with the footnotes. Borges had a friend, Cayetano Córdova Iturburu, who among his creative works wrote the script of a film called Ponchos Azules – Blue Ponchos. I suspect this is why A Bao A Qu is a floaty blue presence. So this is my final verdict. I had a lot of fun on this literary quest (it is something I do) and believe I have arrived at an explanation of this one. Ziggy119 (talk) 19:49, 17 January 2019 (UTC) User:ziggy119 86.12.100.27 (talk) 19:45, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

This was not invented by Borges, it is a corrupted name for an actual myth
The real name for the mythical creature is the Yam Bhaya Akhoot, or Abang Aku, as described in the book Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India and this blog post: https://abookofcreatures.com/2021/02/19/yam-bhaya-akhoot/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.111.195.160 (talk) 20:34, 15 July 2024 (UTC)