82 Chinese Clay Figures 



Naturally the skin of the animal is as soft and sensitive as that of any 

 other living creature, and arrows are certainly painful to it. Only 

 when properly prepared and dried does the skin assume that iron-like 

 hardness which has achieved its reputation and probably caused the 

 fable of its being impenetrable in the live beast. The account of the 

 Arab envoy given in 993 to the Chinese Emperor, that "to capture a 

 rhinoceros, a man with a bow and arrow climbs a big tree, where he 

 watches for the animal until he can shoot and kill it," as narrated by 

 Chao Ju-kua, is entirely trustworthy. 1 The fable lies entirely in the 

 " arrows cannot pierce the hide," to which Mr. Giles gives credence. 

 When it is said, "he rips up a man with his horn," Chao Ju-kua simply 

 accepts the belief of all his contemporaries, eastern and western; and the 

 remark certainly proves that he speaks of the rhinoceros, while it is no 

 argument in favor of Mr. Giles's opinion that the animal in question is 

 not the rhinoceros. 



While the general result at which Mr. Giles has arrived is not 

 novel, being partly anticipated, as we have seen, by Biot, Palladius, and 

 Couvreur, his arguments, as summed up above under No. 3, are original, 

 and deserve serious consideration and discussion. What appears to 

 Mr. Giles as the most weighty evidence in favor of his view are the 

 queer Chinese illustrations of the two animals. Queer they are, but 

 we must make an attempt at understanding and explaining them. For 

 this reason, we shall first enter on a somewhat lengthy digression into the 

 iconography of the rhinoceros; and it will be seen that this, as every- 



1 The effect of arrows on the rhinoceros is well illustrated in the following story of 

 Gaspar Correa, who went to India in 1512, and wrote a detailed chronicle of the 

 Portuguese possessions there. He describes a battle of King Cacandar, who availed 

 himself of elephants fighting with swords upon their tusks, and in front of them were 

 arrayed eighty rhinoceroses (gandas) "carrying on their horns three-pronged iron 

 weapons with which they fought very stoutly . . . and the Mogors with their 

 arrows made a great discharge, wounding many of the elephants and the gandas, 

 which as they felt the arrows, turned and fled, breaking up the battles " . . . (quoted 

 by Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 363). In India rhinoceroses were hunted 

 with sabre, lance, and arrows. Timur killed on the frontier of Kashmir several rhi- 

 noceroses with sabre and lances, although this animal has such a hard skin that it can 

 be pierced only by extraordinary efforts (Petis de la Croix, Histoire de Timur Bee, 

 Vol. Ill, p. 159, quoted by Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 762). In Baber's 

 Memoirs (quoted ibid.) a rhinoceros-hunt is described in these words: "A she 

 rhinoceros, that had whelps, came out, and fled along the plain; many arrows were 

 shot at her, but . . . she gained cover." The hunters of Java hide sickle-shaped 

 knives under the moss on steep mountain-paths; the animal, dragging its paunch 

 almost close to the ground, rips up itself, and is then easily mastered (P. J. Veth, 

 Java, Vol. Ill, p. 289, Haarlem, 1903). Hose and McDougall (The Pagan Tribes 

 of Borneo, Vol. I, p. 145, London, 1912) have this observation to report: "Punans, 

 who hunt without dogs (which in fact they do not possess), will lie in wait for the 

 rhinoceros beside the track, along which he comes to his daily mud-bath, and drive 

 a spear into his flank or shoulder; then, after hastily retiring, they track him through 

 the jungle, until they come upon him again, and find an opportunity of driving in 

 another spear or a poisoned dart through some weak spot of his armor." 



