origins in India, spread to Southeast Asia in 200 CE as Indian cultural influence spread throughout the region through trade routes. Tikbalang may have originated from Hayagriva, an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu. The worship of Hayagriva was recorded in 2000 BCE. The images for giant flying birds, the Tikbalang, and Sirena are straight out of Hindu imagery. Influence on religion was also prevalent with the concept of a multi-layered world – Heaven and Hell. According to the Hindu Puranas, there are fourteen worlds in the universe: the seven upper and the seven lower. The seven upper worlds are Bhuh, Bhavah, Swah, Mahah, Janah. Tapah, and Satyam; and the seven nether worlds are Atala, Vitala, Sutala, Rasatala, Talatala, Mahatala, and Patala. The region known as Bhuh is the earth where we dwell. Association with Tikbalang began around the 1860 discovery of a statue in Cambodia during the 10th century. It portrayed the demons that Vadavamuka, the more radical version of the avatar of Vishnu. Eventually, Buddhism changed the image of Hayagriva into a small horse's head floating in a crown of fire. In China, provided the old image of Hayagriva face with horses – one of the keepers of the demon of an inferno. The same thing probably happened to the Tikbalang as the Filipinos adopted it in their beliefs after exacting culture through trade. Nine hundred years before the Spaniards arrived, Chinese merchants settled in the Philippines and used horses. The evolution of the Tikbalang probably started then. The idea of tikbalang evolved over time telling the journey of the Filipino consciousness through colonialism and globalism. As there were no horses in the Philippines before the arrival of the Spanish, the earliest mentions of these mythological creatures did not specify horse or animal morphology (i.e. Plasencia's 16th c. account). Instead in the pre-colonial period, they were represented as ghosts and spirits of the forests, associated with the terms 'multo' and 'bibit' (some entries described them in early Spanish dictionaries as 'fantasma de montes' i.e. 'phantoms of the mountains/wilds', linking them strongly as nature spirits). In historical dictionaries (San Buenaventura's 1613 Vocabulario spelled as "tigbalang"), they were likened to the tiyanac, while in some entries they were given the definition as "satyrs" (satiro), "gnomes" (duendes) or "goblins" (trasgo). Individual tikbalangs, even today among superstitious Filipinos, are thought to inhabit trees as guardians (sometimes depicted as if the very soul