ioo Chinese Clay Figures 



Have we any right to look down upon their artists in their naive at- 

 tempts to sketch the rhinoceros in the shape of an ox with a horn on the 

 forehead (Fig. 5), when we observe that the so-called "civilization" of 

 Assyria and the painting of Persia committed the same error, or when we 

 glance at the puerile drawings of Cosmas and recall Diirer's work with 

 the horn on the animal's neck? 



In the above definitions we recognize the elements and tools with 

 which the subsequent Chinese illustrators worked. They set out to il- 

 lustrate, not the rhinoceros, but the descriptions given of it in the 

 ancient dictionaries. They studied, not the animal, but the ready- 

 made definitions of it encountered in book-knowledge. They read, 

 and their reading guided the strokes of their brush. "The se resembles 

 in body a water-buffalo, the si a pig:" consequently such bodies 

 were outlined by the illustrator of Erh ya; and long, curved, and pointed 

 single horns were placed on the heads (Figs. 5 and 6). 1 He apparently 

 shunned the three horns, as the matter was difficult to draw; and no- 

 body knew how to arrange them. He carefully outlined the three toes 



1 Our illustrations are derived from a folio edition of the Erh ya printed in 1801 

 (3 vols.), which is designated as "a reproduction of the illustrated Erh ya of the Sung 

 period" (Ying Sung ch'ao hut t'u Erh ya). The ancient illustrations of the Erh ya 

 by Kuo P'o and Kiang Kuan are lost (see Bretschneider, Bot. Sin., pt. 1, p. 34), 

 and were renewed in the age of the Sung, presumably without any tradition connect- 

 ing the latter with the former. This fact may account for the purely reconstructive 

 work of some illustrations, and we may well assume that the earlier sketches were far 

 better. Many other illustrations of the Erh ya have been brought about in the same 

 manner as those of the rhinoceros. Compare, for instance, the picture of the fabulous 

 horse po (No. 9393) surrounded by flamed fluttering bands and about to lacerate a 

 tiger seized by its carnivora-like, sharp claws; while a panther is swiftly making for 

 safety to escape a similar fate. Of course, the craftsman has never observed this 

 scene, but faithfully depicts the definition of the book, "The animal po is like a horse 

 with powerful teeth, devouring tigers and panthers." This notion, as indicated by 

 Kuo P'o, goes back to the Shan hai king, which says, "There is a wild animal styled 

 po, like a white horse with black tail and powerful teeth, emitting sounds like a 

 drum and devouring tigers and panthers." (Here we have a parallel to, and pre- 

 sumably an echo of, the flesh-eating horses of Diomed and the man-devouring 

 Bucephalus of the Alexander legend; see J. v. Negelein, Das Pferd im arischen Al- 

 tertum, pp. 43, 75, Konigsberg, 1903.) Otherwise the horses pictured in the Erh ya, 

 aside from their technical drawbacks, are quite realistic; and so are the oxen and 

 other animals which came under the every-day observation of the Chinese. It is 

 still a mystery, and a problem worth while investigating, why the Chinese were rather 

 good at drawing some animals and completely failed in others. It may be pointed 

 out that the tapir of the Erh ya, aside from the exaggerated trunk and wrong tail, is 

 rather correctly outlined with its white saddle, and corresponds to a well-known 

 species (Tapirus indicus). In view of the retrospective and reconstructive sketches 

 of this work, we have the same state of affairs as in the illustrations accompanying 

 the Shan hai king, and as formerly shown by me in Jade, in the San li t'u, and to 

 a certain extent in the Ku yii t'u p'u. The illustrators of the ancient Rituals did 

 not directly picture the actual, ancient ceremonial objects, most of which were lost 

 past hope in their time, but reconstructed them from the descriptions supplied by 

 the commentators of the ancient texts, and for better or worse, based their illus- 

 trations on these artificial reconstructions, which to a large extent are erroneous or 

 imaginary. 



