What is the official order of the 3 monkeys?
To my knowledge, there is no official order or sequence of the three monkeys. In Japan, the origin of the 3 monkeys, the sequence on Koshin stones and on Koshin scrolls is erratic. For example the famous 3 monkeys of the temple in Nikko are in the sequence: hear – speak – see In my collection of over 3500 items there also is no fix pattern. However, in spoken and written form, the sequence hear – see – speak is most commonly used, not only in English, but also in many other languages.
