Chinese guardian lions However, Chinese reference to the guardian lions are seldom prefixed with 佛 or 福, and more importantly never referred to as "dogs". Reference to guardian lions as dogs in Western cultures may be due to the Japanese reference to them as "Korean dogs" (狛犬・高麗犬) due to their transmission from China through Korea into Japan. It may also be due to the misidentification of the guardian lion figures as representing certain Chinese dog breeds such as the Chow Chow (鬆獅犬, Pinyin: sōngshī quǎn, lit. "puffy-lion dog") or Pekingese (獅子狗; Pinyin: Shīzi Gǒu, lit. "lion dog"). The lions are traditionally carved from
Buru (legendary creature) a large Komodo dragon-like monitor lizard, and there are fossils of such a creature to be found in the Indian subcontinent. Heuvelmans notes similar reported creatures from Western India under the name of "jhoors" where they seem to merge into the Iranian traditional dragon or ahi (Azi Dahaka), which in Iranian art is basically a local stylistic adaptation of the Chinese dragon. George Eberhart notes rumors of a similar creature in the Tigris marshes of Iraq, called the afa, possibly the same thing as ahi. Heuvelmans also notes in his checklist of unknown animals that similar reports to the buru