It is most probable that the Gilen was introduced into the pantheon under the influence of the Tai Yai who came down from Southern China to settle in Siam in ancient times, and the legend was probably incorporated into the Himapant legends of Siam in this manner. In Thailand, the qilin is known as ' gilen' ( Thai: กิเลน), and is a member of the pantheon of Thai Himapant forest mythical animals. In modern Korean, the term 'girin' is used for ' giraffe'. Girin were extensively used in Korean royal and Buddhist arts.

They were one of the four divine creatures along with the dragon, phoenix and turtle. The girin were initially depicted as more deer-like, however over time they have transformed into more horse-like. It is described as a maned creature with the torso of a deer, an ox tail with the hooves of a horse. Girin or kirin ( 기린) is the Korean form of qilin. They are also often portrayed as partially unicorn-like in appearance, but with a backwards curving horn. Alternatively, it is depicted as a dragon shaped like a deer, but with an ox's tail instead of a lion's tail. Japanese art tends to depict the kirin as more deer-like than in Chinese art. Kirin, which has also come to be used in the modern Japanese word for a giraffe, are similar to qilin. Other cultural representations East Asia Japan Porcelain qilin with the head and scaly body of a dragon, tail of a lion and cloven hoofs like a deer, its body enveloped in sacred flames. The qilin is depicted throughout a wide range of Chinese art, sometimes with parts of their bodies on fire. While dragons in China (and thus qilin) are also most commonly depicted as golden, qilin may be of any color or even various colors, and can be depicted as bejeweled or exhibiting a jewel-like brilliance. They are always shown with cloven hooves. The body is fully or partially scaled and often shaped like an ox, deer, or horse. Qilin generally have Chinese dragon-like features: similar heads with antlers, eyes with thick eyelashes, manes that always flow upward, and beards. an abstraction, in this respect being no different from the extinct mammoth or the truly mythical unicorn.' However, Janhunen cautiously remarks that 'he formal and semantic similarity between * kilin < * gilin ~ * gïlin 'unicorn' and * kalimV 'whale' (but also Samoyedic * kalay- 'mammoth') is sufficient to support, though perhaps not confirm, the hypothesis of an etymological connection', and also notes a possible connection between Old Chinese and Mongolian (*) kers ~ (*) keris ~ (*) kiris 'rhinoceros' ( Khalkha: хирс).

As even aborigines 'vaguely familiar with the underlying real animals' often confuse the whale, mammoth, and unicorn: they conceptualized the mammoth and whale as aquatic, as well as the mammoth and unicorn possessing a single horn for inland populations, the extant whale 'remains. Finnish linguist Juha Janhunen tentatively compares * gərin to an etymon reconstructed as * kalimV, denoting ' whale' and represented in the language isolate Nivkh and four different language families Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic and Samoyedic, wherein * kalay(ә)ng means 'whale' (in Nenets) and * kalVyǝ ' mammoth' (in Enets and Nganasan). Īxel Schuessler reconstructs 麒麟's Old Chinese pronunciation as * gərin. The identification of qilin with giraffes has had a lasting influence: even today, the same word is used for the mythical animal and the giraffe in both Korean and Japanese. Zheng He's fleet brought back two giraffes to Nanjing and they were referred to as 'qilins', with geri meaning giraffe in Somali. The Ming Dynasty bought giraffes from the Somali merchants along with zebras, incense, and various other exotic animals. The identification of the qilin with giraffes began after Zheng He's 15th-century voyage to East Africa (landing, among other places, in modern-day Somalia). The legendary image of the qilin became associated with the image of the giraffe in the Ming dynasty. Q i denotes the male and lin denotes the female (e.g. The bisyllabic form qilin ( 麒麟 ~ 騏驎), which carries the same generic meaning as lin alone, is attested in works dated to the Warring States period (475 - 221 BCE). Spring and Autumn Annals mentioned that a lin ( 麟) was captured in the 14th year of Duke Ai of Lu ( 魯哀公) Zuo Zhuan credited Confucius with identifying the lin as such. Earliest mention of this mythical horned beast is in the poem 麟之趾 Lín zhī zhǐ 'Feet of the Lin' included in the Classic of Poetry (11th - 7th c.

Dnd chimera