History of the Rhinoceros 79 



the elephant's paunch, it kills it." The alleged combats of the rhinoceros 

 with the lion and elephant are classical reminiscences (see p. 84) which 

 are absent from Chinese folk-lore. Verbiest repeats the popular tradi- 

 tions current at his time in Europe, and like Cosmas Indicopleustes, 

 still discriminates between the monoceros or unicornis (tu kid) and the 

 rhinoceros (pi kio) , illustrating the former by the unicorn of European 

 heraldry. Consequently the terms employed by Verbiest are literal 

 translations of European nomenclature into Chinese, made by Verbiest 

 for his purpose; and the word pi kio cannot be claimed, as has been done 

 by Mr. Giles, as a genuine term of the Chinese language. It is a foreign 

 term not employed by the Chinese. Indeed, in a long series of Chinese 

 texts dealing with the rhinoceros, and given below, not any use of this 

 name is made. Only a single case is known to me: the Manchu- 

 Chinese dictionary Ts'ing wen pu hui of 1786 (Ch. 4, p. 23) explains the 

 Manchu word sufen by the said pi kio, adding the definition, "a strange 

 animal bred in Cambaya in India, like an elephant, with short feet, " etc., 

 the same as given by Verbiest. This, accordingly, is a mere repetition 

 of the latter's statement, and is not conclusive. Curiously enough, that 

 expression which Mr. Giles credits as the only authentic word for 

 "rhinoceros" is given a quite different meaning in the Polyglot Dictionary 

 of K'ien-lung (Appendix, Ch. 4, p. 75), where we find the series Chin. 

 pi kio shou, Manchu sufen, Tibetan ba-men, Mongol bamin. The Tibet- 

 an word ba-men, reflected in Marco Polo's beyamini, 1 denotes the gayal 

 wild ox (Bos gavaeus). Whether this equation, as a matter of fact, is 

 correct, is certainly a debatable question; but this point does not concern 

 us here. The point to be brought out is that pi kio in the sense of 

 "rhinoceros" is a term coined by Verbiest, and that it has not yet been 

 pointed out in any Chinese text prior to his time. 2 Simultaneously 

 Mr. Giles's argument directed against Hirth — "the T K u shu expressly 



1 See the writer's Chinese Pottery, p. 260, note 4. 



2 The general Chinese expression for rhinoceros-horn which is even now traded 

 to Canton and there made into carvings is still si kio; hence it follows that at the 

 present day the designation of the animal itself, as it has been for several millenniums, 

 is the word si. The English and Chinese Standard Dictionary of the Commercial 

 Press, issued by a commission of Chinese scholars, who must know their language, 

 renders the word "rhinoceros"' into se niu and se (Vol. II, p. 1919). Couvreur (Diet, 

 frangais-chinois, 2d ed.) has likewise se niu. Doolittle (Hand-Book of the Chinese 

 Language, Vol. I, p. 411) gives under "rhinoceros" si, se niu, and si niu. Schlegel 

 (Nederlandsch-chineesch Woordenboek, Vol. Ill, p. 622) renders the word by se, si, 

 and si niu. True it is that in recent times the words se and si have been transferred 

 to bovine animals, and the Chinese themselves are well aware of this fact. Thus 

 Li Shi-chen, in his Pin ts'ao kang mu, remarks that the term "hairy rhinoceros" is at 

 present referred to the yak (see p. 1 50). This, however, as will be established by abun- 

 dant evidence, was not the case in former times. In fact, these recent adjustments 

 prove nothing for conditions which obtained in earlier periods. The question as to 

 how the word se became transferred to the buffalo is discussed on p. 161, note 5. 



