The Connection Between the Leatherskin and the Dugong 

Since the connection between Wolfe's leatherskin, the manticore, and the dugong seem less than obvious to me, the purpose of this section is to elaborate on the connection I cite in the Leatherskin entry. 

I have organized the connection as follows:

1. Leatherskin to Manticore
2. Manticore to Triton
3. Triton to Dugong
4. Dugong to Leatherskin

Leatherskin to Manticore

The manticore is distinctive in literature in having three rows of teeth.

The word manticore (martikhora), is presumed to come from the Iranian word martiyakhvar meaning "man-eater." This creature's earliest description as we know it is by Cstesias of Cnidus who was a Greek physician in the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes II from 404 to 397 B.C. He wrote an account of India from his research in Persia, which survives only in abstract by Photius of Constantinople, and in fragments quoted by other writers. It is in this "inquiry" that he described the martikhora which was almost certainly a confused rendition of the tiger (the Persian word for tiger was "mardomxôr").

According Ctesias, the martikhora had three rows of interlocking teeth, a human face with human ears and azure (or gray) eyes. Its color was 

The manticore had tail like a scorpion's with multiple stingers, one of which was 18 inches long. The rest were thin, a foot long. It could launch its tail-stingers in a predetermined direction over a distance of one hundred feet. Its stings were deadly to all creatures except elephants, and its claws and stingers grew back after use. Men hunted them with spears and arrows from atop elephants.

Just as the manticore had horns with stingers, so Wolfe's leatherskin "had" a Horn with deadly stinger -- the harpoon he used to battle the beast.

Manticore to Triton

Other than that they are both monsters, what relation is the manticore to the leatherskin of Blue? 

One of the writers that repeats Ctesias' description of the manticore is Pausanias in his Description of Greece (200 AD). Having first described the triton (the dugong), the unicorn (a rhinoceros), and the elk (in fantastic language), he describes the manticore: 

 ⁴The beast described by Ctesias in his Indian history, which he says is called martichoras by the Indians and man-eater by the Greeks, I am inclined to think is the tiger. But that it has three rows of teeth along each jaw and spikes at the tip of its tail with which it defends itself at close quarters, while it hurls them like an archer's arrows at more distant enemies; all this is, I think, a false story that the Indians pass on from one to another owing to their excessive dread of the beast. ⁵They were also deceived about its color, and whenever the tiger showed itself in the light of the sun it appeared to be a homogeneous red, either because of its speed, or, if it were not running, because of its continual twists and turns, especially when it was not seen at close quarters. 

And I think that if one were to traverse the most remote parts of Libya, India or Arabia, in search of such beasts as are found in Greece, some he would not discover at all, and others would have a different appearance. ⁶For man is not the only creature that has a different appearance in different climates and in different countries; the others too obey the same rule. For instance, the Libyan asps have a different colors compared with the Egyptian, while in Ethiopia are bred asps quite as black as the men. So everyone should be neither over-hasty in one's judgments, nor incredulous when considering rarities. 

For instance, though I have never seen winged snakes I believe that they exist, as I believe that a Phrygian brought to Ionia a scorpion with wings exactly like those of locusts."
Description of Greece, Book 9, section 21

 ⁴In the temple of Dionysus the image too is worth seeing, being of Parian marble and a work of Calamis. But a greater marvel still is the Triton. The grander of the two versions of the Triton legend relates that the women of Tanagra before the orgies of Dionysus went down to the sea to be purified, were attacked by the Triton as they were swimming, and prayed that Dionysus would come to their aid. The god, it is said, heard their cry and overcame the Triton in the fight. ⁵The other version is less grand but more credible. It says that the Triton would waylay and lift all the cattle that were driven to the sea. He used even to attack small vessels, until the people of Tanagra set out for him a bowl of wine. They say that, attracted by the smell, he came at once, drank the wine, flung himself on the shore and slept, and that a man of Tanagra struck him on the neck with an axe and chopped off his head. for this reason the image has no head. And because they caught him drunk, it is supposed that it was Dionysus who killed him.

¹I saw another Triton among the curiosities at Rome, less in size than the one at Tanagra. The Tritons have the following appearance. On their heads they grow hair like that of marsh frogs not only in color, but also in the impossibility of separating one hair from another. The rest of their body is rough with fine scales just as is the shark. Under their ears they have gills and a man's nose; but the mouth is broader and the teeth are those of a beast. Their eyes seem to me blue, and they have hands, fingers, and nails like the shells of the murex. Under the breast and belly is a tail like a dolphin's instead of feet.
Description of Greece, Book 9, section 20-21

Triton to Dugong

Still, the dugongs' beauty hardly lives up to the expectations set by legend. As for their voices, the Agrolink Malaysia website (http://agrolink.moa.my/moa1/dugong/ikan_dugong.html) says:

"Many cultivated minds, [have been] apparently much troubled by the problem of the nature of the song that the Sirens sang. As far as the Sirenia are concerned the answer is a loud raspberry." 

Their bodies are cylindrical and their necks are so thick that there is no distinction between their heads and bodies. They have only three or four molars, but the incisors of mature males develop into short tusks. 

Although Pausanias' testimony suggests he has seen an actual "triton," his description is at variance at many points with the physical attributes of dugongs. Their faces are covered with stiff bristly whiskers. They have fine and sparse hair dispersed over their bellies. Being aquatic mammals, they have no gills or scales. They must to breathe air, and unlike sharks, their skin is smooth. Their ears are only small openings, and their eyes are black and beady, not blue. They have flippers, not hands, which have neither fingers nor nails. Yet, if Pausanias actually believed that frogs have "hair," then perhaps his description was not so far off. The dugong's thick, ribbed neck may have suggested gills to him. It is possible (even likely) that Pausanias only saw a dead, decomposing dugong, or one in the process of being butchered, so that he saw the bony skeleton "hands" within the flippers. If the dugong were dead, its eyes might have looked blue. He clearly never touched the smooth untanned hide of a dugong, and was going by assumptions from visual observation.

The dugong is hardly the aggressive creature described at the the Temple of Dionysus -- they eat only seaweeds and occasionally algae and crabs -- but that does not preclude a single uniquely large and aggressive representative.

Dugong to Leatherskin

So Pausanias mentions the dugong in the same place he spoke of the manticore -- a creature with triple jaws -- and of winged snakes. Intriguing, but sea cow is a docile animal, not the vicious killer Horn battled in On Blue's Waters. Are there any other connections? Yes.

The dugong's body, like the leatherskin, is "infexible." The dugong's thick ribbed neck could be described as "corded", explaining Pausanias' belief that they had gills. Finally, although dugongs do not have claws and the leatherskin does, Pausanias did described them as having them.

In the end, however, it is the name "leatherskin" that finally ties this creature to the lowly dugong...

In the Bible in the books of Exodus and Numbers when the materials of the Tabernacle is discussed, there is frequent mention of the hide of an animal, the identity of which has long been debated. The word used is tachash. The following verse is typical:

And you shall make a covering for the tabernacle of rams' skins dyed red, and a covering above of tachash skins.
Exodus 26:14

There is also a single use of the word outside the Pentateuch:

I clothed you also with broidered work, and shod you with tachash, and I girded you about with fine linen, and I covered you with silk.
Ezekiel 16:10

Note that in the first reference, tachash means the animal itself, but in the second it refers to skin of the animal.

The King James Version (KJV) translates this word as "badger" or "badger skin" but that cannot be right because there are no badgers in Sinai or Palastine. The New International Version translates it "sea cow" in the Pentateuch verses, but "leather" in Ezekiel. The Ezekiel verse shows that the NIV translators were probably right, because the dugong's inch thick skin makes a durable leather that the Bedouins still use to make shoes.

So in Hebrew, the word for dugong can mean the animal or the leather made of its skin -- "dugong" is synonymous with "leatherskin."

Starting with a docile aquatic mammal whose name means "leatherskin," he has increased the size of the Steller's Sea Cow, tripled its pectoral flippers (just as the manitcore's jaws have tripled the tiger's), given it the claws of Pausanias' triton, given it the jaws and appetite of the legendary manticore, and the disposition of the manticore and triton in the Boeotian Temple of Dionysus. For the manticore's stinging horns, Wolfe has given to the leatherskin Horn with a harpoon.

Other Sources Reporting on the Manticore

Aristotle

[Ctesias] assures us that the Indian wild beast called the 'martichoras' has a triple row of teeth in both upper and lower jaw; that it is as big as a lion and equally hairy, and that its feet resemble those of the lion; that it resembles man in its face and ears; that its eyes are blue, and its colour vermilion; that its tail is like that of the land-scorpion; that it has a sting in the tail, and has the faculty of shooting off arrow-wise the spines that are attached to the tail; that the sound of its voice is a something between the sound of a pan-pipe and that of a trumpet; that it can run as swiftly as deer, and that it is savage and a man-eater. 
The Parts of Animals, Book II (350BC) 
Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

Pliny the Elder

Ctesias writeth, that in Æthiopia likewise there is a beast which he calleth Mantichora, having three rankes of teeth, which when they meet togither are let in one within another like the teeth of combes: with the face and eares of a man, with red eyes; of colour sanguine, bodied like a lyon, and having a taile armed with a sting like a scorpion: his voice resembleth the noise of a flute and trumpet sounded together: very swift he is, and mans flesh of all others hee most desireth. 
Historia Naturalis, Book 8, 75 (A.D. 77)
Translated by Philemon Holland (1601)

Photius of Constantinople

The martikhora is an animal found in this country [India]. It has a face like a man's, a skin red as cinnabar, and is as large as a lion. It has three rows of teeth, ears and light-blue eyes like those of a man ; its tail is like that of a land scorpion, containing a sting more than a cubit long at the end. It has other stings on each side of its tail and one on the top of its head, like the scorpion, with which it inflicts a wound that is always fatal. If it is attacked from a distance, it sets up its tail in front and discharges its stings as if from a bow; if attacked from behind, it straightens it out and launches its stings in a direct line to the distance of a hundred feet. The wound inflicted is fatal to all animals except the elephant. The stings are about a foot long and about as thick as a small rush. The martikhora is called in Greek anthropophagos (man-eater), because, although it preys upon other animals, it kills and devours a greater number of human beings. It fights with both its claws and stings, which, according to Ctesias, grow again after they have been discharged. There is a great number of these animals in India, which are hunted and killed with spears or arrows by natives mounted on elephants.
Myriobiblon (ninth century)

Jorge Borges

"Flaubert has improved upon [Pliny's] description, and in the last pages of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, we read:

'The Manticore is a gigantic red lion with a human face and three rows of teeth.
The iridescence of my scarlet hide blends into the shimmering brightness of the desert sands. 
Through my nostrils I exhale the horror of the lonely places of the earth. I spit out pestilence.
I consume armies when they venture into the desert.

My nails are twisted into talons, like drills, and my teeth are cut like those of a saw; my restless tail prickles with darts, which I shoot left and right, before me, behind. Watch!'

The Manticore shoots the quills of his tail, which spread out like arrows on every hand. 
Drops of blood drip down, spattering the leaves of the trees."

The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges, Margarita Guerrero, Norman Thomas di Giovanni

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