Liu Song dynasty brick-relief of a TianmaFlying Horse, East Han dynasty.Bronze. Gansu Provincial Museum.
Tianma (天馬Tiānmǎ, "heavenly horse") was a winged (perhaps metaphorically) flying horse in Chinese folklore.
Mythology
The Tianma is a flying horse was sometimes depicted with chimerical features such as dragon scales and was at times attributed the ability to sweat blood, possibly inspired by the parasite Parafilaria multipapillosa,[1] which infected the highly sought-after Ferghana horse (大宛馬), sometimes conflated with Tianma. Tianma, the flying horse, is clearly connected to Pegasus from the Western Han dynasty artwork[2] and in the Tang dynasty sources, as coming from Hellenized Central Asia.[3]