History of the Rhinoceros 97 



This is all exceedingly good: it is simply the result of that mental 

 process which classifies a novel experience under a well-known category, 



viii, 21, §72, 76) speaks of the unicorn oxen of India. Festus calls the African 

 rhinoceros the Egyptian ox, and Pausanias tells of "Ethiopic bulls styled rhino- 

 ceroses" which he saw himself in Rome (O. Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, Vol. I, 

 p. 385). The Indian physician Caraka, who lived at the Court of King Kanishka in 

 Kashmir, placed the rhinoceros in the class of buffalo (anupa, Mem. As. Soc. Bengal, 

 Vol. I, 1906, p. 371). The Arabic merchant Soleiman, who wrote in 851, compared 

 the Indian rhinoceros with the buffalo (M. Reinaud, Relation des voyages, Vol. I, 

 p. 29) ; and so did, as seen above, al-Berunl. Ibn al-Faqih says regarding the African 

 rhinoceros that it resembles a calf (E. Wiedemann, Zur Mineralogie im Islam, 

 p. 250). The Talmud, in three passages, mentions the one-horned ox as an animal sacri- 

 ficed by Adam (L. Lewysohn, Die Zoologie des Talmuds, p. 151, Frankfurt, 1858). 

 The "sea-ox" mentioned by Leo Africanus (Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua, 

 p. 145) certainly is the rhinoceros. The Malays designate the two-horned species 

 badak-karbau, "the buffalo-rhinoceros," and the single-horned species badak-gdjah, 

 "the elephant-rhinoceros." It is difficult to understand, however, why some of the 

 classical authors allude to the rhinoceros under the designation "the Indian ass" 

 (Aristotle, Hist, an., 11, 18, ed. of Aubert and Wimmer, Vol. I, pp. 74, 254). 

 Aristotle's definition is traceable to Ctesias (ed. Baehr, p. 254), who states that 

 there were in India wild white asses celebrated for their swiftness of foot, having on 

 the forehead a horn a cubit and a half in length, and that they are colored white, 

 red, and black; from the horn were made drinking-cups which were a pr ventive of 

 poisoning (compare also Lassen, Indische Altertumskunde, Vol. II, p. 646). The 

 mention of these antipoisonous cups is good evidence for the fact that Ctesias hints 

 at the Indian rhinoceros (Herodotus, iv, 191, speaks of horned asses of Libya, 

 but they are not one-horned). Ctesias is an author difficult to judge. His account 

 of India, said to have been written in B.C. 389, it should be borne in mind, was de- 

 rived second-hand, while he resided in Persia as court-physician of King Artaxerxes 

 Mnemon, so that his data may partially be based on Persian accounts of India, and 

 misunderstandings of his informants may have crept in; moreover ,_his report is handed 

 down in a bad and fragmentary condition, and may have been disfigured by Photias 

 of Byzance of the ninth century, to whom the preservation of his work is due. The 

 definition of Ctesias in the present case cannot be regarded as correct, as we do not 

 find in India, or anywhere else in the East, a comparison of the rhinoceros with an ass, 

 nor any tradition to this effect, — a tradition which is not likely ever to have existed. 

 If the ass really was contained in his original text, it must go back, in my estimation, 

 to a misunderstanding on his part of the word imparted to him by the authorities 

 whom he questioned. With the exception of the horn, Ctesias does not seem to have 

 entertained any clear notion of the animal; and his description of the skin as white, 

 red, and black, is baffling. V. Ball (Proceedings Royal Irish Academy, Vol. II, 1885, 

 and in his edition of Tavernier's Travels in India, Vol. I, p. 114) tried to show that 

 the colors seen by Ctesias were artificial pigments applied to the hide, as they are on 

 elephants at the present day; rhinoceroses kept by the Rajas for fighting-purposes 

 were, according to him, commonly painted with diverse bright colors. This forced 

 explanation, shifting quite recent affairs to the days of early antiquity, is hardly 

 plausible. It seems to me that we are bound to assume that the text of this passage 

 is not correctly handed down. The colors white, red, and black would seem rather to 

 have originally adhered to the horn. The Eastern lore of the rhinoceros, as shown by 

 the reports of the Chinese and Arabs, essentially clusters around the horn. — 

 Marco Polo (ed. of Yule and Cordier, Vol. II, p. 285) says in regard to the 

 Javanese rhinoceros that its head resembles that of a wild boar; and this characteriza- 

 tion is quite to the point, as is that of Kuo P'o when he compares the two-horned si 

 to swine. A glance at Fig. 8, representing the specimen of a Sumatran two-horned 

 rhinoceros in the Field Museum, will convince every one of the appropriateness of 

 this simile. The pig shape of the rhinoceros is apparent also in a Roman representa- 

 tion on a clay lamp from Labicum illustrating the struggle between that animal and 

 a bear (Fig. 7), so that even the most skeptic critic of Chinese animal sketches will be 

 compelled to grant a certain foundation of fact to the hog-like rhinoceros of the Erh 

 ya (Fig. 6). 



