Have you ever wondered why there are 12 zodiac animals? If not, please see the article below to know the origin as well as how to trust money related to these 12 animals.
In the past, many people still mistakenly believe that the 12 zodiac animals originate from China . However, recently, in a study on ancient Vietnamese language – linguist Nguyen Cung Thong discovered the origin of 12 animals originating from Vietnam.
According to Eastern culture, the calendar is established according to the regularly changing cycle of the Moon . Therefore, the 12 zodiac animals correspond to 12 hours in a day, 12 months of the year, 12 years in an armor – these are important foundations for calculating the calendar and a sign to judge the destiny of each person according to the Zodiac. .
Historically, Vietnam and China have had a cultural exchange period of at least 2000 years. The cultural exchanges kept accumulating and piling up on each other, making it very difficult to identify the distinctive features of each ethnic group. In addition, the ancient documents are not many, if only in the archives of ancient Han documents , making the study very complicated and complicated. It is this that has prompted linguist Nguyen Cung Thong to try his best to find out the linguistic mysteries of the ancestors, which, according to him, are the “talismans ” descendants need to find solutions to.
12 Vietnamese Zodiacs in the Zodiac
Mr. Thong said that he started his Vietnamese studies in the early 1970s in Australia. In a study on the origin of the 12 animals to find the origin of Vietnamese, he discovered some ancient Vietnamese words that the Vietnamese used to refer to the 12 animals with long origins before the 12 animals appeared. present in China. In the last days of the buffalo year, at the Institute of Vietnamese Studies in Westminster (California, USA), he had a presentation of his interesting discoveries with the topic “Traces of ancient Vietnamese in Chinese”.
“ Learning about the origin of the names of the twelve zodiac animals is an opportunity for us to find the origin of the Vietnamese language. The names of the 12 zodiac animals are Rat/Tzu, Ox, Dan, Rabbit/Mieu, Thin/Thin, Snake, Horse, Mui/Vi, Body/Ki, Rooster, Tuat, and Pig. At first glance, the above dodecahedrons seem to originate from China because they are Sino-Vietnamese words, but when analyzing Vietnamese languages, and seeing there are differences, I compared them in the borrowed language system. It’s not like that,” Thong said.
According to Mr. Thong, the names of the 12 Zodiacs if read in Beijing language and by recording according to the phonetic transcription (pinyin): zi, chou, yín, môo, cup, sì, wè, wèi, shèn, yòu, ru, comedy.. . is completely unrelated to the naming of the 12 animals in Chinese today. Even the restoration of ancient Chinese sounds is still not consistent with previous animal names. Thus, if there is a certain ethnic group that uses the names of 12 animals similar to the names of the 12 animals today, that nation must be closely related to the origin of the names of these 12 animals.
From this, he started his research to find the reason why in the 12 Chinese zodiac animals, the Cat was replaced by the Rabbit. “The Chinese use the rabbit instead of the cat (symbol of the Rabbit/Tip genus) because in Chinese culture the rabbit is a very important animal and is often written in hieroglyphs as Rabbit, Beijing accent, which is the word. written in a multiplier with no word for cat. Almost only Vietnamese people use cat for the genus Mao: vowels e or iê are the older forms of a such as line/fake, draw/drawn, xe/xa, show off/khoa, summer/summer, tea/tea, Acacia/delivery, leopard/leopard… Therefore, cats are also animals present in Vietnamese people’s lives more often,” explained Mr. Thong.
In fact, there have been many works by many authors trying to prove that Chinese culture is derived from Vietnamese culture such as author Le Manh Mat through the book “History of Vietnamese music – from the reign of Hung Kings to period of Ly Nam De” or author Nguyen Thieu Dung with the book “Origin of the Kinh Dich “… Most of these books show that the cultural borrowing dimension was from the South in ancient times, not the from North to South (as well as surrounding countries) during the Han and Tang dynasties when Chinese culture was at its peak. However, no author mentions the origin of the names of the 12 animals, and very little uses the structure of Chinese and ancient Chinese characters and sound variations in the explanation.
According to Mr. Thong, in addition to the two genera Rat/Tzu/mouse, Mao/Mao/Cat are the most noticeable, the remaining genera when compared in phonetic and semantic correlation also gave quite surprising results.
For example, in the case of Than , the 9th limb in the Zodiac map . If we look at the way of writing the word Than with the fill set with a longer middle stroke with the writing of the word Khon (a basis of the I Ching from ancient times), we see that the earth set matches the word Than comedy sound. This is a direct relationship between Than and Khon, however, in ancient Vietnamese, the word khon is monkey (the Hue people or Nghe ethnic people today still have the catchphrases “tuong tuong con’s face” to refer to the useless people, do not do anything empty). So, Than is the monkey, the old Vietnamese language, although the th-kh change is very rare in today’s Vietnamese, it still has traces of pairing words such as: close – close – close, careful – careful (caution). , Careful).
Similar to the case of the Dragon. In the past, many people still believe that the dragon is an animal representing the king of the North and then it was chosen as one of the 12 animals present in the 12 zodiac signs of the Zodiac. But few people know that the dragon is really the host animal of the ancient Vietnamese and in the old days the Vietnamese had their own words to refer to the dragon or the dragon. The remnants of the dragon/god in the Beijing accent are now only cup – this sound can correspond to the ceiling, bass, and god sounds of Sino-Vietnamese. However, according to researcher Nguyen Cung Thong, if restoring the ancient sound of the Thin / Than is tlan (ancient Vietnamese – r changed to l) and python, eel (ts – lost), snake, Trinh (species) eel-like fish), dragon/long (vowel o instead of a like nom/nam, capital/ban…) and tendency to monosyllabic to produce compound words such as tlan – lizard, tlian – thuong luong… shows traces of dragons in southern languages.
Explaining the reason for being “confusion” about the origin of the 12 animals, Mr. Thong said that ” With the important influence of Chinese culture, from the Han dynasty and then the Tang, Song… With the pressure of the ruling class from the North, the names of 12 totem animals were gradually replaced by human images, bearing more Chinese cultural colors. From the specific nature of the neighboring animals, the 12 animals have become abstract and even affect human destiny (divination). However, the flashy cover of Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese characters cannot change the popular culture (speech) in Vietnamese life.
This new discovery proved the development of the ancient Vietnamese in calendar calculation and made a brilliant wet rice civilization in South Southeast Asia.
Thac Can and Thac Nhi work together to give birth to Luc Hoa Armor (a 60-year cycle called Nguyen). The calendar can only be in the 3 dynasties of Xia, Thuong, and Chu (in China) which are not the same. Currently, we use the lunar calendar of the Xia dynasty, which means that the month of the Tiger is used as the beginning of the year.
The timekeeping according to can chi is also partly related to the behavior of the animals.
Today, in parallel with using the solar calendar to coincide with the production rate with the world market, Vietnam is still using 12 animals to serve many important purposes such as calculating age, viewing good dates. To do big things like weddings, house building, grand openings… Not to mention the advantages and disadvantages that the lunar calendar brings – the 12 zodiac animals can be considered as an intangible cultural heritage. It has been passed down by our ancestors for many generations. And we need to preserve this unique culture before it is “forgotten” in the increasingly strong integration process like today.