The Cultural Meaning of The Tiger Myth in Asia: A Comparative Literary Study
Open accessAbstract
The Tiger is one of the most essential predatory animals in the food chain, so it is feared and respected animal among in the wild.Some of tiger's myth in Asian countries such as Bangladesh, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, and India tell relationship between tiger and humans being.Some tiger myths relates to the spiritual matters such as creation of myths, cosmology, religion, and esoteric philosophy.Likewise, the naming of tiger have a lot of names which means human respectfull to this animal.The lot of name of the tiger in Asian is adapted from the local beliefs and local culture.In Sumatra, tigers have several honourable names for instance Inyiak balang 'striped grandmother', palimo 'panglima', Dubalang 'Hulubalang' Datuak Pangulu 'Datuk Penghulu' (West Sumatra), Ulubalang 'hulubalang' (Aceh), Ompung (North Sumatra), Imaw Srabat, Rimueng , Imaw, Ulubalang (Jambi), Puyang (Bengkulu), The Mustache (Lampung), Maung Bodas (West Java), and Si Mbah (Java).In India and China, tigers are depicted as vehicles or mounts of Gods, and some others regard tigers as representatiof of gods.This paper aims to compare tiger stories from various countries with the perspective of the comparative literary study and topos analysis.The method used in this study is a qualitative descriptive.Data were collected through a literature study.Data will be analyzed using close reading and critical analysis techniques to compare the intrinsic and extrinsic elements.The comparison results found differences and similarities in the story's version like topos, and theme.The important topos which found in the tiger myths in Asia are the incarnation topoi, the creation topoi, the agreement between tigers and humans, the sacrifice, revenge, the battle, and the peace.Semantically, the tiger myths in Asia is a reflection of how people respectfull to the tiger.The results of this study can be developed as an enrichment of digital literacy from the Asian region and an enriching understanding of culture and fauna, especially tigers,which have cultural meanings among the people in Asian.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
White tigers and other leucistic species are known global crowd-pleasers often seen as lucky or pure.
“This reflects broader preferences, as white tigers and other leucistic species are known global crowd-pleasers [21] often seen as lucky or pure [88].”
From Tiger colour morphs in zoos raise conservation and welfare concerns (2026) · cites this paper as [88]
Section 5.1 (page unavailable) links a mythical white tiger’s appearance to an emperor’s absolute goodness or worldwide peace. That offers limited support for a positive cultural association with white tigers, but the paper does not say they are seen as lucky or pure, and it does not address other leucistic species. The crowd-pleaser claim is attached to a different citation, [21]. (LLM, conf=0.76)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
The publisher hasn’t deposited this paper’s reference list.
Research works printed but not linked: 11
- Andrew, K. (19997). The Natural History of the Wild Cats. Cornell University Press, Comstock Publishing Associates.
- Boomgaard, P. (2001). Frontiers of Fear: Tigers and People in the Malay World, 1600-- 1950. Yale University Press.
- Chang, K. D. and T. (2014). Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature. A Reference Guide Part Three and Four, 3(4), 1937. ISBN 9789004271852.
- Christie, J. S. (1999). Ridding the Tiger: Tiger Conservation in Human Dominated Landscape. Cambridge University Press.
- Courcham Jaric Albert Meinard Ripple Chapron. (2018). The Paradoxical Extinction of the Most Charismatic Animals. PLOS Biology, 16(4), e2003997.
- J Seidensticker Jackson, P, C. S. (1999). Riding the Tiger: Tiger Conservation in Human Dominated Landscapes. Cambridge University Press.
- Sunarti, S. (2020). Dengan Bailau Memanggil Harimau: Tradisi Lisan Bailau dari Bayang Pesisir Selatan Sumatera Barat. LIPI Press.
- Sweeney, A. (1987). A Full Hearing: Orality and Literacy in the Malay Word. University of California Press.
- Tilson, N. (2004). Characterizing Human Tiger Conflict in Sumatra, Indonesia: Implications for Conservation. Orix, 38(1), 38--74.
- Wibisono, P. (2010). Sumatran Tiger: A Review of Conservation Status. Integrative Zoology, 5(4), 313-323.
- Zentgraff, H. C. (1938). Atjeh. Koninklijke Drukkkerji "De Unie." Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated in
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Tiger colour morphs in zoos raise conservation and welfare concerns
Erzinçlioğlu, T. S., Piaz, M. T., Chinpilas, T., Hunnestad, A. V., Godfrey, L., & Fourage, A. (2026) · Discover Animals · doi:10.1007/s44338-026-00163-5
- Authors
- Syahrul, N., Sunarti, S., Mulyanah, A., & Iswanto, A.
- Affiliations
- National Research and Innovation Agency (ID)
- Corresponding author
- Syahrul, Ninawati
- Venue
- Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research
- Publisher
- Atlantis Press SARL
- Published
- 2024
- Pages
- 327-344
- ISSN
- 2352-5398 (ISSN-L)
- 2731-8060
- OpenAlex
- W4397005679
- Cited by
- 1
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1
- FWCI
- 9.03
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research/Advances in social science, education and humanities research (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Comparative and World Literature
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › General Arts and Humanities › Cultural and Mythological Studies
- Keywords
- Asian folklore, tiger symbolism, comparative mythology
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
