88 Chinese Clay Figures 



between the eyes, as it occurs in the armorial unicorns. It is very- 

 instructive to compare this Babylonian representation with those of the 

 Chinese; and whoever will view them together will certainly grant 

 attenuating circumstances to the latter. The Babylonian production 

 is the more surprising, as the supposition is granted that the live animal 

 was sent as tribute; and the "artist," we should think, had occasion to 

 actually see it. The outcome is such a caricature, however, that this point 

 of view seems impossible; the "artist" simply acted on hearsay, or had 

 been instructed to represent a queer foreign animal of the appearance of 

 an ox, but with only a single horn on its forehead. And here we are again 

 landing right at the threshold of the psychology of the Chinese draughts- 

 man who, most assuredly, had never throughout his life viewed any 

 living specimen of a rhinoceros, but merely reconstructed it in a vision 

 of his mind from what he had heard or read. Nevertheless his product 

 is not what it may seem to us on the surface, but it is and remains what 

 it is intended for, — the rhinoceros. 



Another instructive example for the iconography of the rhinoceros 

 is furnished by Cosmas Indicopleustes, the Egyptian monk and traveller 

 of the sixth century a.d. Cosmas 1 discriminates between the unicorn 

 (monokeros) and the "nose-horn" (rhinokeros) , and has handed down to 

 us sketches of both. In regard to the former, he remarks that he has 

 not seen it, but that he had had occasion to notice four brazen figures 

 of it set up in the four-towered palace of the King of Ethiopia, from 

 which he was able to draw it. His figure 2 looks somewhat like a missing 

 link between a horse and a giraffe, carrying on its head a straight, long 

 horn. "In Ethiopia," Cosmas assures us, "I once saw a living rhi- 

 noceros from a great distance and saw also the skin of a dead one stuffed 

 with chaff, standing in the royal palace, and thus I was able to draw it 

 accurately." The result of this "accurate" drawing is the figure of a 

 maned horse with bushy tail, with two horns planted upright on its 

 nose. 3 Nobody, as far as I know, has as yet inferred from this figure 

 that the Greek word rhinokeros relates to an equine animal and should 

 be translated by "horse." 



An interesting example of a Persian conception of the rhinoceros 

 is depicted in the Burlington Magazine. 4 This is derived from an 



Vol. I, p. 371, Calcutta, 1906). In the commentary of Kuo P'o to the dictionary Erh 

 ya (see below, p. 94) and in the Kiao chou ki of the fifth century a.d. it is clearly stated 

 that the rhinoceros has three toes. Compare p. 95, note 6. 



1 Ed. Migne (Patrologia, Vol. 88), p. 442. 



2 Christian Topography, translated by MacCrindle, Plate IV, No. 28 (Hakluyt 

 Society, 1897). 



3 Ibid., No. 23. 



4 Vol. XXIII, July, 1913, Plate III. 



