78 Chinese Clay Figures 



bovine animals, 1 with a single horn on the head. Says Mr. Giles, 

 "The Erh ya says: the latter is like an ox, and the former like a pig, 

 while the Shan hai king speaks of both as occurring in many parts of 

 China. There is thus hopeless confusion, of which perhaps the explana- 

 tion is that a term which originally meant a bovine animal was later on 

 wrongly applied to the rhinoceros." 



The first argument advanced by Mr. Giles is not admissible as good 

 evidence in the case. "The rhinoceros is known to the Chinese as 

 pi kio, 'nose-horn,' and is approximately figured in the T'u shu." By 

 referring to the Chinese cyclopaedia we find, however, that this name 

 with the illustration is extracted from the K'un yii Vu shuo. The latter 

 is not the production of a Chinese author, but of the Jesuit Ferdinand 

 Verbiest, born in 1623, and who arrived in China in 1659 and died in 

 1688. 2 This section of the T K u shu tsi ch'eng alluded to by Mr. Giles 

 and devoted to "strange animals" contains quite a number of illustra- 

 tions and texts derived from the work of Verbiest; and neither his 

 zoological nomenclature nor his descriptions and illustrations, which are 

 based on European lore, can be laid at the door of the Chinese. The 

 evidence is here produced in Figs. 1 and 2. In Fig. 1, Verbiest pictures 

 a "single-horned animal" (tu kio shou), saying, "India, situated on the 

 continent of Asia, is the habitat of the single-horned animal which is as 

 big as a horse, very light and swift, and yellow in color. On its head 

 it has a horn, four to five feet long, of bright color. It is made into 

 drinking-vessels which are capable of neutralizing poison. As the 

 horn is pointed, the animal can charge a big lion. The lion, while 

 struggling with it, takes refuge behind a tree; and when missing its 

 aim, it butts the tree, while the lion bites it at this moment." In Fig. 2, 

 the pi kio shou referred to by Mr. Giles is pictured. Verbiest com- 

 ments, "The locality Kang-pa-ya 3 in India, situated on the continent of 

 Asia, is the habitat of an animal called 'nose-horn' [rendering of 'rhi- 

 noceros']. Its body is as powerful as that of the elephant, but its feet 

 are somewhat shorter. Its trunk is covered all over with red and 

 yellow spots, and is overlaid with scales. Arrows cannot pierce it. On 

 its nose there is a single horn as strong as steel. It prepares for its 

 battles with the elephant by whetting its horn on the rocks; and hitting 



1 This is a debatable point. The two illustrations do not resemble bovine animals, 

 but deer (see Figs. 9 and 10 on pp. 102 and 103). The "bovine animal with 

 one horn" first appears in Lionel Giles, An Alphabetical Index to the Chinese 

 Encyclopaedia, p. 5 (London, 191 1). 



2 Wylie, Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 58; M. Courant, Catalogue des livres 

 chinois, p. 95; H. Cordier, L'imprimerie sino-europ6enne en Chine, p. 59; P. Pelliot 

 Bulletin de I' Ecole franqaise d' Extreme-Orient, Vol. Ill, 1903, pp. 109, 115. 



3 That is, Khambayat or Cambay, in the western part of the province of Gujarat. 



