On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, Andrew Cunningham wrote:
> From memory, although my memory may be faulty, there are some slight
> differences between the animals assigned in the Chinese calendars and
> the animals assigned in the Vietnamese calendar.
There's also a Turkic cycle of animals borrowed from the Chinese one, and
it also has some differences. This has been used in Iran mostly because
there most of post-Caliph Iranian kings have been Turks in some way or
other.
Also, it should be noted that some of the words used in Persian and Turkic
for these are a little general. For example, we only have a single word
for referring to a mouse or a rat. I have added the extra meaning of the
Persian word in parentheses:
moosh: Mouse (also Rat)
gaav: Cow (also Ox)
palang: Leopard
khargoosh: Rabbit
nahang: Whale (also Crocodile, actually only Crocodile when the words
were first devised)
maar: Snake
asb: Horse
goosfand: Sheep
meymoon: Monkey
morgh: Hen
sag: Dog
khook: Pig
There is a Persian poem that lists this all, sometimes using the Arabic
name of the animal (for the sake of meter, of course):
"moosh" o "baghar" o "palang" o "khargoosh" shomaar,
zin chaar cho bogzari "nahang" aayad o "maar",
aan-gaah be "asb" o "goosfand" ast hesaar,
"hamdoone" o "morgh" o "sag" o "khook" aakhar-e kaar.
roozbeh
