80 Chinese Clay Figures 



says that arrows cannot pierce the hide of the rhinoceros" — falls to the 

 ground. This is a verdict of Verbiest, and not to be encountered in any 

 Chinese report regarding the rhinoceros. It is, moreover, an argument 

 of no meaning and no value; it is simply a popular notion of fabulous 

 character. 



The numerous stories formerly current anent the rhinoceros chiefly 

 culminated in three points, — its ferocity, the use of its horn as a weapon 

 of attack, and its invulnerability. These notions have been refuted by 

 close observation. We quote an authority, R. Lydekker : 1 "Fortunate- 

 ly, in spite of stories to the contrary, the creature in its wild state appears 

 to be of a mild and harmless disposition, 2 seeking rather to escape from 



1 The Game Animals of India, Burma, Malaya, and Tibet, p. 31 (London, 1907). 



2 Certainly; it is easily kept in confinement and tamed, and has often been trans- 

 ported over vast tracts of water and land. A good example of the overland trans- 

 portation of a tamed rhinoceros or several animals is furnished by Se-ma Ts'ien, in the 

 chapter on the Imperial Sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, when this animal together 

 with an elephant was conducted as far as the foot of Mount T'ai in Shan-tung with 

 a possible view to their being sacrificed; but the Emperor spared their lives, and the 

 animals were allowed to return (see Chavannes, Les M6moires historiques de Se-ma 

 Ts'ien, Vol. Ill, p. 502). The following tributes of living rhinoceroses are on record. 

 In the year 2 A.D. the country Huang-chi (south of Tonking, 30,000 li from the capital 

 of China) sent a living rhinoceros as tribute to the Court of China, as mentioned 

 three times in the Ts'ien Han shu (Ch. 27 B, p. 17b). These texts have recently 

 been studied by Paul Pelliot (T'oung Pao, 1912, pp. 457-460), who has revealed 

 their fundamental importance for the history of Chinese relations with the countries 

 of the Indian Ocean in the first century of our era. On the basis of Pelliot's transla- 

 tions, the country Huang-chi has recently been made the object of an interesting 

 geographical study on the part of A. Herrmann (Ein alter Seeverkehr zwischen 

 Abessinien und Siid-China bis zum Beginn unserer Zeitrechnung, Zeitschrift der 

 Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde zu Berlin, 1913, pp. 553-561). This author identifies 

 Huang-chi with Abyssinia mainly on the ground that the rhinoceros occurs there. 

 This argument is not cogent, since the home of the animal is in all parts of both In- 

 dias, Borneo, Java, and Sumatra as well. Also for other reasons this identification is 

 unfortunate. The transportation of a live rhinoceros from Abyssinia to China over 

 a maritime route would have been a feat impossible in those days, in view of the im- 

 perfect state of navigation, while it could easily have been accomplished, if Huang-chi, 

 as assumed by me, was located on the Malayan Peninsula ; and as shown by the Chinese 

 records, the live rhinoceroses all hailed from Indo-China or Java. The name Huang- 

 chi, moreover, cannot be derived from Aghazl, as Herrmann thinks. His decisive 

 argument in support of this theory is, of course, the statement in the Chinese text 

 that Huang-chi is 30,000 li distant from Ch'ang-ngan, the then capital of China. Mr. 

 Herrmann unreservedly accepts this as a fact, and is in this manner carried away to 

 eastern Africa. We have known for a long time (in fact, the Jesuits of the eigh- 

 teenth century knew it) that the Chinese definitions of distances over maritime routes 

 must not be taken at their surface value. Nor have we any reason to be more Chinese 

 in this respect than the Chinese themselves. The following is expressly stated in the 

 Sung shu, the History of the Liu Sung Dynasty (420-478 a.d.; Ch. 91): "The 

 southern and south-western barbarians, generally speaking, live to the south and 

 south-west of Kiao-chi (northern Annam), and also inhabit the islands in the great 

 ocean; the distance is about three to five thousand li for those that are nearer, and 

 twenty to thirty thousand li for those that are farther away. When sailing in a 

 vessel it is difficult to compute the length of the road, and therefore we must recollect 

 that the number of li, given with respect to the barbarians of the outer countries, 

 must not be taken as exact" (see Groeneveldt, in Miscellaneous Papers relating to 

 Indo-China, Vol. I, p. 127). It is plainly indicated in this passage that the distances 



