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The Moon
the Moon · — · —
names 17languages 12
The names
vernacular 3 · tribal 12 · borrowed 2
| Name | Language | Meaning | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kahe | Central Nicobarese (Camorta) Camorta, Nancowry group, Central Nicobars | — | tribal |
| Man Iyena | Chaura (Chowra) Chowra (Chaura) island, Nicobars | — | tribal |
| Thinkam | Cholanaikkan the reserved forests of Nilambur, Malappuram district, Kerala | Close to Malayalam tiṅkaḷ, the moon and Monday. | tribal |
| Bire-Jitje | Garo the Garo Hills, Assam (now Meghalaya) | Sister of the sun; her other name in this book is Susime, and it is her mother's funeral that the whole Garo star-catalogue commemorates. | tribal |
| Jango, Chandal, Nalend / Nalen / Nanleg | Gondi Nagpur region: Chandrapur, Yavatmal, Gondia (Maharashtra), Adilabad (Telangana), Balaghat, Seoni, Mandla (Madhya Pradesh) | The month runs from new moon to new moon. New moon to full moon is Avas and full moon to new moon is Punvi (Zashinagar, p. 36). Eleven of fifteen villages. | tribal |
| Kondor | Gondi Nagpur region: Chandrapur, Yavatmal, Gondia (Maharashtra), Adilabad (Telangana), Balaghat, Seoni, Mandla (Madhya Pradesh) | A forecast, and read against the intuition: when the ring sits close to the Moon the rain is far off, and when it stands well away from it the rain is near (Mohagaon, p. 37). Four of fifteen villages. | tribal |
| ಮೀನ್ಗಳೆಱೆಯ mīngaḷeṟeya | Kannada Karnataka (Mysore, Canara, Deccan) | lord of the stars/fishes Also ತಾರಗೆಯಾಳ್ಮ tārageyāḷma, same sense, Kittel p. 752. | vernacular |
| Rata Gomez | Korku Melghat, Amravati district, Maharashtra, and adjoining Betul and Khandwa districts, Madhya Pradesh | 'the god of the night' | tribal |
| Chanda | Lambadi (Banjara) Banjara tandas of Vidarbha, Maharashtra (villages in the Nagpur–Amravati–Yavatmal region) | — | borrowed |
| Chandani | Lambadi (Banjara) Banjara tandas of Vidarbha, Maharashtra (villages in the Nagpur–Amravati–Yavatmal region) | moonlight | borrowed |
| tala; khala | Lambadi (Banjara) Banjara tandas of Vidarbha, Maharashtra (villages in the Nagpur–Amravati–Yavatmal region) | 'broken'; 'complete' — the two states of the ring At Kasola the rule is read off the shape of the ring: a broken halo, tala, means better rains; a complete one, khala, means little rain. Four of six villages knew a halo rule of some kind. | tribal |
| yadi | Lambadi (Banjara) Banjara tandas of Vidarbha, Maharashtra (villages in the Nagpur–Amravati–Yavatmal region) | 'the old lady' — she sits under a banyan tree in the face of the Moon, spinning cotton yarn Three of the six villages in Table 1. At Katarwadi the figure is given in full: a banyan tree with an old lady beside it spinning; at Chinchkhed the informants say only that there is a tree on the Moon. | tribal |
| चांदणी cāndaṇī | Marathi Maharashtra | little moon (from चंद्र) the word is the ordinary one in weather and night-sky talk; Molesworth records under it a belief in a malign 'blast from the stars' | vernacular |
| Chand, Chandar | Pardhi fourteen Pardhi villages of the Amravati and Yeotmal districts, Vidarbha, Maharashtra, surveyed 2016-2018 | Recorded in all fourteen villages; a halo round the moon in five, and used to forecast the weather in two of those. | tribal |
| khau, khalu | Pardhi fourteen Pardhi villages of the Amravati and Yeotmal districts, Vidarbha, Maharashtra, surveyed 2016-2018 | Glossed with Marathi khaḷe. Seen in five villages and used for weather forecasting in two. | tribal |
| akhi | Sema (Sumi) Naga the Sema country, Naga Hills (now Nagaland) | The same word serves for 'month'. | tribal |
| చుక్కలరేడు cukkala-rēḍu | Telugu Telugu country (Madras Presidency: Coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema, Telangana) | king of the stars Given by Brown twice — under cukka and as the vernacular gloss of Sanskrit nakṣatreśuḍu. | vernacular |
Sources
- M.N. Vahia, Ganesh Halkare, S.A. Awaradi and Kishore Menon, 'In situ studies of astronomy of the Nicobarese tribe of Nicobar Islands', Heritage: Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies in Archaeology, 6, 1014-1039 (2018), Table 3, pp. 1026-1027 link
- M. N. Vahia, V. S. Ramachandran, Jayant Gangopadhyay and Justin Joseph, 'Astronomy of Cholanaikkan tribe of Kerala', arXiv:1702.04149 (2017), §9 'Their astronomy', p. 7 link
- Major A. Playfair, The Garos (London: David Nutt, 1909), p. 85 link
- Vahia & Halkare, 'Aspects of Gond Astronomy', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 16(1), 29-44 (2013); preprint arXiv:1306.2416, Table 5 row 2, p. 39 link
- Vahia & Halkare, 'Aspects of Gond Astronomy', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 16(1), 29-44 (2013); preprint arXiv:1306.2416, Table 5 row 3, p. 39 link
- Kittel, F., A Kannaḍa-English Dictionary (orig. Mangalore: Basel Mission, 1894); cited from the revised and enlarged edition, [Madras] University of Madras, 1968-71, as keyed for DSAL, s.v. ಮೀನ್ mīn 2, p. 1328 link
- M.N. Vahia, Ganesh Halkare and Purushottam Dahedar, 'Astronomy of the Korku tribe of India', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 19(2), 216-232 (2016), Table 2, p. 221 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), Table 1, p. 69 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 1.1.2 (Phulumari), p. 78 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), Table 1 row 19, p. 69, and Appendix 1.1.4 (Kasola), p. 79 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), Table 1 row 3, p. 69, and Appendix 1.1.3 (Katarwadi), p. 78 link
- J. T. Molesworth, A Dictionary, Marathi and English, 2nd ed. rev. and enl. (Bombay: Bombay Education Society's Press, 1857), s.v. चांदणी, p. 277 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 5, pp. 184-185 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.H. Hutton, The Sema Nagas (London: Macmillan, 1921), p. 250 link
- Brown, C. P., A Telugu-English Dictionary, new ed., thoroughly revised and brought up to date (Madras: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1903), s.v. చుక్క ṭsukka, p. 449 link