The Twelve Animals of the Zodiac

Or, Camel vs. Mouse

It's almost time for the Цагаан Сар (Tsagaan Sar), the old Mongolian New Year, so it's soon going to become the Модон Хонины Жил (Modon Honiny Jil), or the Year of the Wooden Sheep. In America the twelve-year cycle of animals is often called the Chinese Zodiac or Chinese Horoscope, but it is found far beyond China. The practice of twelve-year cycles with animals presiding over each of the years is found not only in Sinosphere nations like Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, but also among the Thai, Tibetans, Kazakhs, ancient Persians, and even the ancient Bulgars.

These far-spread cultures use much the same assemblage of beasts, but here and there they swap one animal for another. Instead of the rabbit, the Vietnamese have the cat,¹ and instead of the tiger, the Kazakhs have the snow leopard. More bizarrely, the Kazakhs also replaced the dragon with the snail.²

Of course, this system is used in Mongolia too. The cycle for the Mongolians is:

1. хулгана (hulgana) - mouse
2. үхэр (üher) - cattle
3. бар (bar) - tiger
4. туулай (tuulai) - rabbit
5. луу (luu) - dragon
6. могой (mogoi) - snake
7. морь (mori) - horse
8. хонь (honi) - sheep
9. бич (bich) - ape
10. тахиа (tahia) - chicken
11. нохой (nohoi) - dog
12. гахай (gahai) - pig

The practice of naming years after animals predates history. Throughout Chinese history, Chinese scholars have not even been sure that the practice is Chinese. In fact, some suggested that the practice was borrowed from the nomads to the north!³ While the actual origin of the practice is a mystery, it has not stopped people from coming up with their own stories about it - usually involving a god or Buddha judging animals. The Mongolians are no exception. The following little story is the explanation I heard in Mongolia.

The Mouse, the Camel, and the Twelve-Year Cycle

Once upon a time the Buddha decided to assign names to the years of the 12-year cycle and called a conference of animals. Thirteen species applied for the twelve positions available. After assigning animals to eleven years, it came down to the camel and the mouse. The Buddha couldn't decide between them, so he proposed a tie-breaker: Whoever saw the morning sunlight first would get a year named after him. The next day, the camel faced east and stretched his neck to see as far to the horizon as he could. The mouse, however, climbed on the camel's back and faced west. While the camel was still waiting for the sun, the mouse saw the sunlight strike the peaks of the western mountains and cried out.⁴ Thus the mouse won, and he got a place in the zodiac instead of the camel. However the Buddha decided to give the camel a consolation prize. He declared that the camel would have:

1. a mouse's ears
2. a cow's stomach
3. a tiger's paws
4. a rabbit's nose
5. a dragon's body
6. a snakes eyes
7. a horse's mane (albeit underneath his neck)
8. a sheep's wool
9. an ape's hump
10. a rooster's crest
11. a dog's legs
12. and a pig's tail

I don't personally see the resemblances, but who am I to question the Buddha? Anyway, the camel, so gifted with the attributes of all twelve of the other animals, thus represents the whole twelve-year cycle.

Happy Tsagaan Sar! Сайхан шинэлээрэй!

---

1. “Year of the Cat,” http://www.viethoroscope.com/year-of-the-cat/. Accessed Feb 16, 2015.
2. Kazakh zodiac: “Architect tells story behind Almaty’s renowned fountain,” (Foster, Hal - http://www.universalnewswires.com/centralasia/viewstory.aspx?id=2278. Accessed Feb 16, 2015) and "The historical information of the architectural complex" (http://www.library.kz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=214&Itemid=49. Accessed Feb 16, 2015). Interestingly, the words for dragon or snail in several languages sound similar. Kazakh ұлу (ulw) and Kyrgyz  үлүл (ülül) mean "snail," while Chinese (Mandarin) lóng, Kyrgyz улу (ulu), and Mongolian луу (luu) mean "dragon." Mongolian has water spirits named лус (lus), and Tibetan has water spirits named klu which are snake-like (more info at James Alvarez's "The Klu: Their Roles Within the Shamanic and Buddhist Contexts," https://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/relb2054_jea6c/2010/11/06/the-klu-their-roles-within-the-shamanic-and-buddhist-contexts/). Note that Mongolian луу and лус must be borrowed because native words almost never begin with L. So there may be some secret connection between snails and dragons. Or maybe the snail took advantage of phonetic confusion to usurp the dragon. Those clever snails! (For your curiosity, the Mongolian word for snail is эмгэн хумс, "old woman fingernail.")
   
3. I have read around the nets that Zhao Yi 赵翼 ascribed a nomadic origin to the zodiac, but I have not found anything that Mr. Zhao himself wrote.
   
4. This, by the way, is true. If the sun rises over a plain, mountains to the west will light up before the sun itself appears, and conversely, at dusk mountains to the east will stay lit up after the sun itself is no longer visible.