Sin-you

The Sin-you is presented in comparative and encyclopedic sources as part of the repertoire of extraordinary single-horned composite beasts in East Asia. Rather than arising from a single narrated cosmogony in the cited materials, the creature's origin in the folkloric record is as an otherworldly arbiter of moral truth: a divine or sacred ovine/feline beast (noted in Japanese with the characters 神羊) that circulates in descriptions and imagery alongside rulers and judges. The provided sources frame the Sin-you functionally—its significance derives from its role in guaranteeing correct judgment and revealing inner truth—rather than from an extended origin myth recorded in the available summaries.

Accounts describe the Sin-you as a large quadruped with either a feline or ovine body and a shaggy mane. It bears a single, unbranching horn centered on the forehead; limbs are variably depicted with hooves or feline paws. Modern popular summaries sometimes represent it as lion-like with orange and brown coloring and a thick mane, but classical descriptions emphasize the single horn and composite, imposing form rather than standardized coloration.

The consistently attested faculty of the Sin-you is truth-detection: sources state it can know if a person is lying or guilty with a glance. In narrative accounts it will leap forward and impale a perjurer through the heart with its horn; it has been described as being presented before a judge so that guilty persons are slain while the innocent remain unharmed. Its temperament in the sources is more feral and imposing than related auspicious beasts, combining a predatory aspect with a moral-judicial function.