What kind of 羊 is in a 三牲?

[Lu]

Translating a book, Chinese to Dutch. A city somewhere in Southern China is having very bad weather and the people decide to sacrifice 三牲, in the hopes of persuading Heaven to change that. The 三牲 (Three Sacrificial Animals) in question are 牛，羊，猪.

 

Dutch, like many other languages, has a strict distinction between 'goat' and 'sheep', so I have to specify what kind of 羊 is being sacrificed here. I've peered over Google Image and 百度图片 to try and find out what animal it should be, but I can't figure it out: I see goats, but also sheep, and many cases where I'm just not sure. Does anyone here happen to know which it is, or which is more likely?

 

Many thanks in advance!

[Dlezcano]

I did an image search with the keywords "三牲 牛 羊 猪" and almos all images show a goat. Besides I also would have chosen the goat before making the search because I think this animal is more present in Chinese tradicional culture; for instance I am thinking in the animal depicted in images related with 羊年.

[TheBigZaboon]

I'd check with a real Chinese here, to be sure. But my experience in all of Asia leads me to lean towards goat, even though when you go to Chinese (or even Indonesian) restaurants what would be goat in China or Southeast Asia will wind up being mutton in Europe or North America, but the menu entry or wording in the original language is never changed on the menus.

 

Sheep, when they graze, tend to pull up the tufts of grass and it's roots, meaning you have to move them often, and it takes a while for a grazed-out area to recover. Goats, however, are famous for being able to survive on anything, and very little of it. Thus a sheep is not really a viable animal for farming in Asia or China. In North America, sheep farming ruining the grazing land for cattle grazing led to a number of historic "range wars" in the US in the 19th century.

 

https://youtu.be/3opoCWqrEPI

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/2eZCSfzIxwg?feature=share

 

Just my opinion, but I'm willing to listen...

 

TBZ

[Jim]

I've got a copy of Animals Through Chinese History Animals Through Chinese History. Earliest Times to 1911. Edited by Roel Sterckx, Martina Siebert, and Dagmar Schäfer. pp. xii, 277. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019. | Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society | Cambridge Core and it seems to suggest sheep there; the section on Shang sacrifices translates yang as sheep though in other essays in the compilation it's rendered as "sheep and goats".

On page 31 this section:

Quote

Ancestors that shared the same temple-day, as demonstrated in the sequence
below, were referred to by a distinctive formula that put two kinship terms next
to each other and used the single day name they had in common after it. As one
can see, the selection of animals was deductive. It began with a category
(sheep) (4a) and continued on to a refined item level (4b). The inability to
validate the category of sheep led to a subsequent divination proposing, in a
more resolute fashion, an alternative category (4c).
乙卜惠羊于母妣丙 一
(4a) On Yi divined: Let it be sheep to Mother, Ancestress Bing. #1 (401.1)
乙卜惠小 x 于母祖丙 三
(4b) On Yi divined: Let it be small pen-raised sheep to Mother, Ancestor Bing. #3

has a rare character meaning pen-reared sheep that doesn't seem to be in my character sets, 羊 with a 冖 above.

Elsewhere it says goats remained a more northern livestock animal, so if your city is in the south expect that would also make them less likely.

ETA The only direct reference to 三牲 rather unhelpfully says: "In classical texts, and in practice until Song times, the three victims were a bovine, an ovine and a pig" keeping it vague.

[TheBigZaboon]

Ovine does refer to sheep, the corresponding term for goats is caprine, so both John Wayne and I bow to superior scholarship...

 

But my experience, and my belly, cry out for goat, both in your translation and on my restaurant plate, even though Indonesian is similarly ambiguous: dictionary kambing is "sheep or goats," but in Southeast Asia, in menus to table, goat predominates.

 

Just my gustatory opinion...

 

TBZ

 

Edit: For those who care, both of you, I just found a separate word for sheep in Indonesian that I've never heard in my life: domba... And kambing biri-biri in Malay... John Wayne and I are equally being humbled and edified by this little question. We both thank you from the soles of our boots...

[Minnesänger]

Maybe some more food for thought.
I checked my copy of "Outlines of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives" by C.A.S. Williams.
Under sheep it says:"The goat is one of the six artificial animals and was undoubtedly known in China long before the sheep, which was a later importation called the "Hun-goat" 胡羊."
So maybe they used goats originally and later also used sheep. Just my uninformed guess though.
The book is also quite old, so maybe this isn't quite cutting-edge science.
Still fun to try to look up stuff like this.

[Lu]

Thanks everyone! Looks like Jim has the best information, I'll tentatively go with sheep.

The story in my book takes place around 1900, so both goats and sheep are known.

[Kenny同志]

It'd be 山羊.

 

PS: But I think sheep would do, too.

[EnergyReaper]

I'm not familiar with 祭祀, never seen it. But in 广西 where I'm in, 山羊 is more common. When I want to eat 羊肉, I can only buy 山羊肉.

Maybe in some provinces of Northern China, 绵羊 is more common.

文成公主：赞普祭祀要杀一千只绵羊，文成看到直呼不可以

云南边境少数民族风俗之“神”羊祭祀活动

黑龙江杜尔伯特县, 体重40斤左右的小绵羊，祭祀的首选

[Lu]

Thanks everyone, again! With this new information, I am now leaning towards goat. Fortunately, my deadline is still a long way off.

[TheBigZaboon]

Purely to set the record straight, I think the phrase "The goat is one of the six artificial animals" that appears in a previous post is a spell checker inspired error, and should actually be "...sacrificial animals..." Same with "hun-goat...">>>"hu-goat..."...

 

Sorry to be so picky...

 

TBZ

[vellocet]

The "real" meaning of 羊 is "mustelid", as I learned here on a thread some time back. (mustelid is the meaning of 鼠 not 羊）

 

 

Edited February 7, 2023 at 05:47 PM by vellocet

[sanchuan]

On 2/2/2023 at 7:45 AM, TheBigZaboon said:

Ovine does refer to sheep, the corresponding term for goats is caprine

 

Very true, but worth noting that both the genus of Capra (山羊) and that of Ovis (绵羊) belong to the Caprini tribe (羊族) & Caprinae subfamily (羊亚科) of the Bovids (牛科).

 

So both ovines and caprines can ambiguously be referred to as "caprine" (羊族的) - or, to use the equivalent term of art in paleontology, "ovicaprid" - which is what 羊 means outside of any specific context.

 

 

 

 

[Minnesänger]

On 2/3/2023 at 3:42 PM, TheBigZaboon said:

Purely to set the record straight, I think the phrase "The goat is one of the six artificial animals" that appears in a previous post is a spell checker inspired error, and should actually be "...sacrificial animals..." Same with "hun-goat...">>>"hu-goat..."...

 

Thanks for the correction. Hun-goat is correct though.

But it is of course sacrificial not artificial. Sadly I can't blame a spell checker for that. Just my own mistake for some weird reason.