94 Chinese Clay Figures 



the water-buffalo, 1 but has the head of a pig, a big paunch, short legs, 

 and three toes on its feet; it is black in color and has three horns, one on 

 the head, another on the forehead, and the third on the nose. The horn 

 on the nose is the one by means of which it feeds [that is, uproots shrubs 

 and trees]; 2 it is small and not long; it likes to eat thorny brambles; 

 there is also a kind with but a single horn." Kuo P'o, accordingly, 

 is fully acquainted with the single-horned rhinoceros (his three-horned 

 species is discussed farther on) , and renders it plain enough that in his 

 opinion neither the se nor the si is a bovine animal, as he treats them in a 

 different section; while in his section on bovines, with twelve illustrations 

 of such, no hint is made at se or si. 3 The last doubt which might still 

 exist as to the acquaintance with the single-horned rhinoceros on the 

 part of Kuo P'o and Hu Shen, the author of Shuo wen, will be banished 

 by another word, tuan 4 (or kio tuan), of which Shuo wen (Ch. n, p. 2) 

 says that it is an animal of the shape of swine, with a horn which is 

 good for making bows, and which is produced in the country Hu-siu. 5 



catties." Yen kien lei han (I. c.) has the erroneous reading "ten," which is impossible. 

 Also Chang Yu-si, the author of the Pu chu pin ts'ao of the year 1057, as may be seen 

 from the Ching lei pin ts'ao, quotes the Erh ya as saying that "the se resembles an 

 ox and has a single horn." Kuo P'o, accordingly, concurs with Liu Hin-k'i in the 

 view that se is the single-horned rhinoceros. 



1 Yen kien lei han (Ch. 430, p. 1) offers the variant, "The si resembles swine, but 

 is in shape like an ox;" then the same text as above is given, but the clause in regard 

 to the three horns is wanting. 



2 While feeding, the point of the horn of the animal may come in contact with the 

 ground, so that the point is sometimes worn flat on its outer face (E. Heller, The 

 White Rhinoceros, p. 31). According to Ibn al-Faq!h, the African rhinoceros tears 

 herbage out with the anterior horn, and kills the lion with the posterior one (E. 

 Wiedemann, Zur Mineralogie im Islam, p. 250). 



3 The rhinoceros is incidentally mentioned in another passage of Erh ya (Ch. B, 

 fol. 29), where nine mountains with their famed productions are enumerated: "The 

 finest productions of the southern region are the rhinoceros (si) and elephant of Mount 

 Liang" (Liang shan, in Chung chou, Sze-ch'uan; Playfair, 2d ed., No. 3790, 2; 

 Bretschneider, Bot. Sin., pt. 3, p. 575, No. 187). Kuo P'o adds, "The rhinoceros 

 furnishes hide and horn, the elephant ivory and bones." It follows therefrom, as 

 is also confirmed by other sources, that in the third century a.d., the lifetime of 

 Kuo P'o, the rhinoceros still existed in Sze-ch'uan, as seen above; its existence was 

 attested there by Se-ma Ts'ien several centuries earlier. 



4 Composed of the classifier kio ('horn') and the phonetic element tuan (No. 

 12,136). Not in Giles; see Palladius, Vol. I, p. 189. A unicorn is represented on 

 the Han bas-reliefs (Chavannes, Mission archlologique, Vol. I, p. 60, Paris, 1913). 



B Nos. 4930 and 4651. Other editions write Hu-lin. A horn bow is not a bow 

 exclusively made from horn, which is technically impossible; but horn is only one of 

 the substances entering into its manufacture. Technically the Chinese bow belongs 

 to the class of composite bows, the production of which is a complicated process and 

 requires a large amount of toil and dexterity. The foundation of the bow is formed 

 of flexible wood connected with a bamboo staff. Along the back a thick layer of 

 carefully soaked and prepared animal sinew is pressed, which, after drying, stiffens 

 into a hard elastic substance. The inner side of the bow is then covered with two 

 long horn sticks joining each other in the centre. The opposite of the horn bow is the 

 wooden (or simple) bow (mu kung), as it is mentioned, for instance, as being used by 



