Gâv-dam: From Gurani Language to Chinese

The Gurani language belongs to the group of modern northwestern Iranian languages. This language has been used in post-Islamic Iran as the standard literary language of western Iran and many literary works have remained in this language since the 3 rd century AH. This language was being formed in the Achaemenes era and covered a much wider area than today. One of the words in the lexicon of this language is gâwdam دمگاو/gâw-dum مگاود) the name of two weapons) which has reached Eastern Iran (gâw-dam in Šāhnāmeh) and China (jâ-dam in Silsilat alTawārīx) in two branches. After describing and introducing the Gurani language and literature, and looking at the association of this language with gâw and its related myths, this article examines the uses of the word gâw-dam دمگاو and its overlapping words in Gurani, Persian, and Chinese languages.