96 Chinese Clay Figures 



expected, are perfectly sound and to the point in stating what a primitive 

 observer could testify in regard to an animal so difficult of access and so 

 difficult to describe. Surely, the Chinese definitions are not worse, and 

 in several points perhaps better, than anything said about the animal in 

 classical antiquity, among the Arabs, or in Europe up to the eighteenth 

 century. And we shall soon recognize that until the very recent dawn 

 of our scientific era the Chinese were the nation of the world which 

 was best informed on the subject. 1 The Chinese likened the rhinoceros 

 to the ox, the water-buffalo, the pig, 2 and its head to that of an ape. 



as follows: "The ganda exists in large numbers in India, more particularly about the 

 Ganges. It is of the build of the buffalo [analogous to the Chinese definition], has a 

 black scaly skin, and dewlaps hanging down under the chin. It has three yellow 

 hoofs on each foot, the biggest one forward, the others on both sides. The tail is not 

 long; the eyes lie low, farther down the cheek than is the case with all other animals. 

 On the top of the nose there is a single horn which is bent upwards. The Brahmins 

 have the privilege of eating the flesh of the ganda. I have myself witnessed how an 

 elephant coming across a young ganda was attacked by it. The ganda wounded with 

 its horn a forefoot of the elephant, and threw it down on its face." The other account 

 of al-Berunl, which refers to the double-horned African species, is composed of the 

 narrative of a man who had visited Sufala in Africa, and of classical reminiscences 

 freely intermingled with it; to the latter belong the beliefs in the mobility of the 

 horn and in the sharpening of the horn against rocks, and here appears also the wrong 

 notion that it has hoofs. — Pliny (Nat. hist., viii, 21, §76) asserts that the single- 

 horned oxen of India have solid hoofs (in India et boves solidis ungulis unicornes), 

 a tradition which savors of the description of a unicorn after a sculpture (on the As- 

 syrian obelisk the animal has bovine hoofs). Even Aristotle (Hist, an., 11, 18; 

 ed. of Aubert and Wimmer, Vol. I, pp. 74, 254), who evidently speaks after Ctesias, 

 characterizes the single-horned "Indian ass" as solid-hoofed (nuvvxa) . This lacune 

 in the descriptions of the ancients was aptly pointed out by Belin de Ballu (La 

 chasse, poeme d'Oppien, p. 174, Strasbourg, 1787), who, in speaking of the familiarity 

 of the ancients with the animal, concludes by saying, "Mais ce qui doit nous 6tonner 

 c'est qu' aucun n'ait parle" d'un caractere particulier de cet animal, dont les pieds sont 

 partag£s en trois parties, revetue chacune d'une sole semblable a celle du bceuf." 



1 The only reproach that can be made to the Chinese authors is that they never 

 point to the peculiar skin-folds of the animal (with the only exception, perhaps, of 

 Fan Chen of the Sung period, who describes the rhinoceros of Annam as "clad with 

 a fleshy armor;" see p. 113), and that, despite the live specimens procured for the 

 Imperial Court (p. 80), no attempt has ever been made at a more precise description 

 based on actual observation. But we may address the same charge of omission to 

 the authors of India, the Greek writers on India, and to Pliny and Aelian. Pliny is 

 content with stating that he saw the animal in the Roman circus, but does not de- 

 scribe what he saw, while he is eager to reproduce all the fables regarding the monoce- 

 ros, emanating from India or from former sources relative to India. Aelian (Nat. 

 an., xvii, 44) thinks it superfluous to describe the form of the rhinoceros, since a 

 great many Greeks and Romans have seen and clearly know it. In matters of descrip- 

 tion the animal presents as difficult a subject as in matters of art. Exact descriptions 

 of it are due only to competent zoologists of recent times. 



2 How very natural this comparison is, maybe gleaned from the account contained 

 in Nan Ytie chi (quoted in T'u shu tsi ch'eng, chapter on rhinoceros), that at the time 

 of the Han a rhinoceros once stampeded from Kiao chi (Annam) into Kao-liang (the 

 ancient name for Kao-chou f u in Kuang-tung Province) , and that it was mistaken by 

 the people for a black ox, while those acquainted with the animal asserted that it 

 was a black rhinoceros. The resemblance of the rhinoceros to an ox or buffalo has 

 indeed obtruded itself on the observers of all times ; and this notion is so far from being 

 restricted to the Chinese, that it may almost be called universal. As seen above 

 (p. 87), the Assyrians called the animal "ox of the river Sakeya." Pliny (Nat. hist.. 



