Roka (Rooster)

The four portraits below come from an illustrated Khmer manuscript of the Musée Guimet in Paris (MA 1903), a folding book of the kind called krāṃṅ, bought by the museum in 1957; a name pencilled on one of its covers suggests it was acquired during Doudart de Lagrée's expedition of 1866–68. Its first part briefly interprets the horoscopes by the cycle of the twelve year-animals, as a memory aid for the astrologer (horā); the translation is Sunseng Sunkimmeng's (1977). Porée-Maspero gives the principle: according to the quarter of the year in which one is born, the particular variety of the animal determines character and destiny.

The quarters are lunar months of the Khmer calendar. The European months beside them are only a guide: as the translator warns, in reality the two overlap.

Khmer treatises do not group the months in the same way: some begin the first quarter with Meakase, others with Phalkun or with Chet (Porée-Maspero). We follow the Guimet manuscript, which begins with Chet.

Chet, Pisakh, Jesth (about April–June)

Sleeping cock
Earns his living, middling.
In the manuscript: A chocolate cock with variegated plumage (yellow, red, blue), red comb, white wattles; its head turned back.

Asadh, Srap, Photrabot (about July–October)

Lunar cock
Middling.
In the manuscript: A chocolate cock with variegated plumage, on guard as for a fight.

Asoch, Kadoek, Meakase (about October–December)

Cock kept in an aviary (literally "in a cage")
Middling.
In the manuscript: A chocolate cock with variegated plumage.

Bos, Meak, Phalkun (about January–March)

Divine cock
Would be illustrious, surpassing all the others.
In the manuscript: A pink cock with variegated plumage, beak and spurs chocolate, raising its right foot.

The Prohmocat (Prohmočatě) is the second part of a manuscript that an ācār, a master of ceremonies, of Phnom Penh lent to Éveline Porée-Maspero, who calls it ms. B. She found no Khmer work on the twelve-year cycle as a whole: what is known lies scattered in the treatises of the ācār. She summarised this one in two tables, given here column by column; because it reaches us as a summary and not as a full translation, it comes after the Guimet manuscript. The months are the ones the manuscript writes, grouped its own way; those she prints in italics are "out of place".

Part of the body of Prohmocat

Pelvis

Planet in the mouth

Saturn

Race

yăk, male

Element

Iron

Origin

The tôy bamboo

Dangerous ages

5, 15, 12, 13, 23, 26, 40, 55, 58, 70, 79, 89

Episode

Vésantàr, with Métrĕiy, Vočaliy and Krasnàr, goes into the forest of Mount Kirivoṅkot and there receives holiness (Vessantara, Jātaka no. 547).

General forecast

An obstinate mouth, a wide-open character that knows meritorious works. In old age one will surpass in merit those of one's generation. If one leaves the country, one will succeed by one's shrewdness in trade and farming. One will care for mother, father and family, without mutual help.

Chet, Pisakh, Jesth

Animal: Cock fed by man
Element: Klàr iron [?]
Character: Difficult in childhood, a good character in maturity. A supple character, words…
Agriculture, commerce and administration: Always good.
Other forecasts: If one is of the male sex, one may be a leader of men.

Asadh, Srap, Photrabot

Element: Wrought iron
Character: A liar. Obstinate. In disputes, seems to keep out of the way. Intelligent. Thinks that others have the same feelings as he. Does meritorious works.
Agriculture: Middling.
Other forecasts: Feeds himself with difficulty.

Asoch, Kadoek, Meakase

Animal: Cock that scratches the earth
Element: Excellent iron
Character: No intelligence. Sufferings of the heart in childhood, some joys of the heart in maturity. Hardly tells the truth. An obstinate character.
Agriculture and commerce: Middling.
Administration: Will be able to subsist like the others.

Bos, Meak, Phalkun

Animal: Wild cock — cock-king that the bodhisattva feeds excellently
Element: Raw iron
Character: A bad character. Perception of the feelings of others. A supple character.
Administration: May become important.
Other forecasts: Many slaves, followers, oxen, buffaloes, horses. Many children and grandchildren.

For the planet in the mouth of the Rooster, Porée-Maspero prints Saturn and marks it [sic].

The animal changes at Moha Songkran, the Khmer New Year, in April. In 2026 the Ministry of Cults and Religion announced Moha Songkran for 14 April at 10:48 in the morning, the start of the year of the Horse; so the first days of a Western year still belong to the animal before — of 1910, Leclère writes that its first hundred and two days belonged to the previous Cambodian year. The table gives the day of Moha Songkran for each year of the Rooster from 1900 to 2027, as the calendar of the site computes it after Eade; only the day is given, not the hour.

• Victory: Tuesday
• Happiness: Wednesday
• Ruin: Thursday
• Luck: Friday
• Power: Saturday
• Death: Sunday
• Karma: Monday

The days of the week that a treatise of the Commission of Customs of Cambodia (MCC 30.012) gives this animal for victory, happiness, ruin, luck, power, death and karma, as Porée-Maspero reproduces it; another manuscript (ms. A) inverts the last two. Many farmers begin the harvest on one of the lucky days of their year of birth.

Khmer treatises tie each year to a whole series of correspondences (Porée-Maspero). The Rooster year is the child of Sdeč Khmôc, the King of the Dead. Its "seat" (tinan) is Khara, a hero of the Rāmāyaṇa, in the tables of Porée-Maspero; the list that Bizot quotes gives Rāvaṇa (Rāp). Among the agents of the children's illness called skan, the one linked to it is the Original Mother: some believe she is the mother of all mankind, others the spirit of a woman who, in a former life, was the baby's mother; in any case she wants to have the baby for herself, which would kill it if she succeeded. Amulets, medicines and offerings vary with the agent. The sacred text recited in Rooster years, or in private ceremonies by the date of birth, is the Attharin.

These correspondences follow the general table of Porée-Maspero, who studies their divergences separately; for the sacred texts, she warns, the documents do not agree, and she gives four different lists.

According to Bizot, by the year of one's birth one receives as "seat" one of eight figures of the epic. The seat serves to draw forecasts and to know, in illness, which offerings to make and in which direction to carry them; the treatises then distinguish the childhood, youth, middle age and old age of each figure, periods that correspond to the four quarters of the year (Porée-Maspero). In the method that Bizot calls the "Eight influences", the seat is found from the person's age on a grid of numbers; and he warns that lists matching the years to the figures are "incomplete, scattered, hard to use", later than the introduction of the first versions of the Rāmāyaṇa at Angkor, and in the end little used by the diviners themselves.

Two Khmer legends tell where the cycle comes from. In the first, after the earth was formed an ascetic came down, created a man and a woman, and allowed them to count time by the twelve years named after animals. In the second, Práḥ Eysór (Śiva) wished people to be able to count time and summoned all the animals to draw lots for the names of the years. The King of the Elephants was nearly there when a little rat living in a tree asked him where he was going; the elephant told him, and the rat asked leave to climb onto his ear, which was granted. When the elephant came before Práḥ Eysór, the god wished to know who had arrived first. Just as the elephant was about to answer, the rat jumped to the ground, sat in a winnowing basket, joined his hands and said: "It is I who am first." The furious elephant refused to be counted among the animals drawn by lot.

The animal of birth rules many rites. Writing of the peoples of the Indochinese peninsula as a whole, Bizot says that it settles the treatment and the sacrifices for the sick, the prayers against misfortune, the right moment to enter a new house, and the horoscopes that allow or forbid a journey or a marriage. In Cambodia many farmers begin the harvest on one of the lucky days of their year of birth; and when the nine stone "roots" of a pagoda's sema fall all together, if the animal of birth of the chief of the monastery is that of the year of the ceremony, he must go far enough away not to hear the signal of their fall, or he would die (Porée-Maspero). Faraut writes that believers wear jewels showing the animals, whole or in part, as amulets, to protect themselves from the spells of the evil genie. If a baby's elder brothers and sisters died young, it may be given a name after its animal, such as Mân (cock, hen) for the year of the rooster, and a ceremony detaches it from the Original Mother and turns the misfortune onto the animal (Porée-Maspero).

For a marriage, the "races" of the spouses must agree. The years are divided among three races: the gods (tevoda) — Rat, Naga, Horse, Goat; the humans — Ox, Hare, Snake, Pig; and the yăk, giants who eat human flesh, can move through the air and can take human form — Tiger, Monkey, Rooster, Dog. A union between a human and a yăk is bad, like that of Nang Kangrei and Práḥ Puthisen: the ogress, abandoned by her human lover, died of despair, and her body became the Phnom Nang Kangrei. A union between a human and a god brings trials but in the end is very happy, like the marriage of Nang Monorea and Práḥ Sothon. A union between two people of the same race "has no story" (Porée-Maspero).

The Rooster belongs to the yăk. Its seat is Khara (Porée-Maspero) or Rāvaṇa (Bizot). The seats of the spouses must not be hostile, as Rāvaṇa and Sītā are (Porée-Maspero); Bizot adds that young people whose seats are Rāvaṇa and Sītā, or who belong to the race of the yăk and to that of the gods, cannot marry without danger.

Below, the fortune and the forecast of each couple according to a treatise of the Commission of Customs of Cambodia (MCC 54.015), as Porée-Maspero gives it. Words in square brackets are, as a rule, the version the treatise gives when the couple is named the other way round. Porée-Maspero notes that, contrary to the usual Khmer practice, the man is named first in the texts that give the element of each spouse; so in the couple Rat + Ox the man might be the Rat, and in Ox + Rat the Ox — but the differences might also come from corrupted texts. The variants of two other treatises are not given here.

Jut (Rat) + Roka (Rooster)

Fortune: Ox merchant. [Sugar-palm merchant.]
Forecast: Bad. [Very good.]

Chhlov (Ox) + Roka (Rooster)

Fortune: Dignitary.
Forecast: Many goods. Long life. [Good if one attaches oneself to a courtier.]

Khal (Tiger) + Roka (Rooster)

Fortune: Sethĕi.
Forecast: Many children, slaves. More and more misfortunes. [Many elephants and horses.]

Thos (Hare) + Roka (Rooster)

Fortune: Sethĕi.
Forecast: Many illnesses.

Rong (Naga) + Roka (Rooster)

Fortune: Head of a canton. [Fortune at everyone's disposal.]
Forecast: Many goods. Short life. [Always very bad.]

Masanh (Snake) + Roka (Rooster)

Fortune: God. [Fortune at everyone's disposal.]
Forecast: Much happiness. [Always very bad.]

Mami (Horse) + Roka (Rooster)

Fortune: Fish merchant. [An ox in the pen.]
Forecast: Modest means. [Always bad.]

Mame (Goat) + Roka (Rooster)

Fortune: Asura. [Mandarin.]
Forecast: Good for rice-growing. Quarrels. [A very good union.]

Voak (Monkey) + Roka (Rooster)

Fortune: Mandarin. [An ox in the pen.]
Forecast: Some goods. Much happiness. [Always bad.]

Roka (Rooster) + Roka (Rooster)

Fortune: Sethĕi.
Forecast: Very good.

Roka (Rooster) + Cha (Dog)

Fortune: Sethĕi. [Dignitary.]
Forecast: Many oxen and buffaloes. [Wealth. Much happiness.]

Roka (Rooster) + Kor (Pig)

Fortune: [Pig.]
Forecast: Many goods. Short life. [Quarrels.]