Moon Gets More Respect in Languages of Asia- An article by Anand

Anand

An acquaintance whom I had not seen for some time, said, "Hey, you appear like the Id moon."

This “long time, no see” in Hindi-Urdu refers to the elusive, sickle-shaped moon that must be sighted to mark the festival of Id that ends the Ramadan fasts observed by Muslims once a year. The remark brought forth two considerations:

That how full and rich are the Asian languages in joyful phrases and auspicious allusion to the moon, and how bereft – by way of comparison – are the European languages of such references.

And that the English expression “once in the blue moon” (meaning once in a very long while) might have non-European roots. Despite scholarly explanations of its origin including the rare phenomenon of two moons appearing in one calendar month, the expression could have first referred to the Id moon because it was seen only once a year and, being only a sliver, looked blue against the dark sky. (Logophiles, please note: you read it here first.)

Sanskrit and many other languages of India too have more than 40 synonyms for moon. The Sanskrit grammar allows linguistic permutations and combinations that makes moon both masculine and feminine, and lets one combine it (as in German grammar) with nouns, verbs and adjectives to form attributes that range from desirable and beautiful to valiant and indomitable. It is used both as a prefix as well as a suffix: names of men meaning “moon-knight” and of women meaning “moon-face” are among the most widely used first names in India.

Moonface, in English, is the kind of first name that people are apt to use behind one’s back. And “one’s back” automatically brings to mind the colloquialism “mooning” where you bare your behind, which is round as a full moon, as an insult.

In Persian, “mehtaab” is the source of a variety of expressions and first names, but mostly for women. “Yue,” moon in Chinese, is the rich motherlode that has been mined for centuries for the most eloquent metaphors used as first names: autumn moon, moon among clouds and my favourite “suei yue,” meaning moon’s reflection in water. Japanese has similar lyrical moon-related names; “Teahouse of the August Moon” was a popular 50s Hollywood film about Japan.

References to the night of full moon, the occasion for many religious and social festivals all across Asia, frequently show up in Asian languages because the moon is worshipped as a god and as a celestial influence in most of these cultures. In classical context and in folklore, and often deployed as a setting and backdrop in popular culture, the full moon as a symbol of love and the romantic effect of its light leads to numerous linguistic spinoffs.

A case in point is India, the world’s largest feature-film producer, where the majority of films have song-and-dance sequences. When these movie heroes and heroines are not singing about unrequited love and broken hearts, they are comparing each other to the moon and plotting assignations in the moonlight.

Which shows that they have not heard of werewolves and moonstruck people, the two most common references in English language to what a full moon can do to humans. As for the nocturnal activities, even a respectable-sized dictionary will mention only two: moonshine and moonlighting, both originally illicit operations by night.

English folklore is full of superstitions, mostly ominous, connected to the moon. It affects births, health and death, as well as growth of hair, nails and corns. Moon’s waning and waxing determined the time of sowing and harvesting, and both pointing at it and sleeping in its light was considered dangerous. Folklore crops up occasionally in literature: from Shakespeare (Othello v ii) It is the very error of Moone, She comes more neerer Earth than she was wont, And makes men mad; to Thomas Hardy (Return of the Native) The boy never comes to anything that’s born on the new moon ; to James Joyce (Ulysses) Gerty’s crowning glory was her wealth of wonderful hair. . . . She had cut it that very morning on account of the new moon.

Though The French “lune” is clearly the culprit for derogatory terms in English and French (lunacy, lunatic), the German language is surprisingly free of moon-associated terms that show disapproval – except for “mond-kalb” (moon calf) meaning slightly mad or touched.

This, perhaps, was the term that the Times Literary Supplement reviewer was alluding to when he described the main character in W. Somerset Maugham’s 1910 novel Of Human Bondage “like so many young men. . .so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet.” Maugham promptly used this allusion as the title of his next novel The Moon and Sixpence.

I strongly suspect that when the Christian Church began persecuting women because the ovulation rhythm was regulated by the lunar cycle (demonic influence) and burned them at stakes as witches because they worshipped the moon, some crusader brandished a literary broadsword and, in one fell swoop, purged the language of all heathen references to the moon by decreeing them as taboo. The result is this wasteland of moon words in European languages.