Home › Sky objects › Eclipses
Eclipses
a lunar eclipse · — · —
names 5languages 5
The names
tribal 4 · borrowed 1
| Name | Language | Meaning | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| ކޭތަ keytha | Divehi (Mahl) the Maldives, and Minicoy (Maliku) in Lakshadweep, which speaks the same language and keeps the same calendar | Maniku glosses it 'eclipse, occultation' and derives it from Sinhala ketu, the dragon's tail or descending node. | borrowed |
| Gongpatad; Beduk | Kolami Kolam villages of Yavatmal and Chandrapur districts, Vidarbha, Maharashtra, and adjoining Adilabad, Telangana | the caterpillar; the frog The colour of a lunar eclipse tells you which creature is eating the Moon: pale if it is the caterpillar Gongpatad, dark if it is the frog Beduk. Bhimnala reverses the pair, giving red for the scorpion and black for the frog. | tribal |
| Āwk | Mizo (Lushai) the Lushai Hills, Assam (now Mizoram) | The verb is impersonal and takes the creature as subject: 'the Āwk eclipses the sun'. | tribal |
| Giran | Pardhi fourteen Pardhi villages of the Amravati and Yeotmal districts, Vidarbha, Maharashtra, surveyed 2016-2018 | Glossed with Marathi grahaṇ. Solar and lunar eclipses were reported in ten villages each, a story about them in six, and an omen — bad in eight villages, good in three — in eleven. | tribal |
| — | Rengma Naga the Rengma country, Naga Hills (now Nagaland), and the Mikir Hills | When the sun is eclipsed it is believed that some very great man has died somewhere; the moon is eclipsed when a tiger eats it. | tribal |
Sources
- Hassan Ahmed Maniku, A Concise Etymological Vocabulary of Dhivehi Language, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, Special Volume XLIV (Colombo, 2000), s.v. keytha, p. 144 link
- M.N. Vahia, Ganesh Halkare, Kishore Menon and Harini Calamur, 'The astronomy of two Indian tribes: the Banjaras and the Kolams', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 17(1), 65-84 (2014), Appendix 1.2.6 (Landgi Pod), p. 82 link
- J. Herbert Lorrain, Dictionary of the Lushai Language, Bibliotheca Indica Work No. 261 (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1940), s.v. Āwk, p. 20 link
- Ganesh Halkare, Purushottam Dahedar, Wayne Orchiston and M.N. Vahia, 'Astronomy of the Pardhi tribe of central India', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 22(1), 179-194 (2019), Table 4, p. 184 link
- J.P. Mills, The Rengma Nagas (London: Macmillan, 1937), p. 245 link