History of the Rhinoceros 105 



what Kuo P'o intends to describe is the two-horned species of rhinoceros, 

 not any other animal: his statement in regard to "the horn on the 

 nose" excludes any other idea, and the bovine animal with such a horn 

 remains as yet to be discovered. Li Shi-chen of the sixteenth century, 

 as will be seen below (p. 150), rejects the definition of Kuo P'o as erro- 

 neous; that is to say, he did not know of any three-horned variety, and 

 recognized in it the two-horned species. An illustration of this three- 

 horned creature may be viewed in the Wa-Kan San-sai-zu-e, the Japa- 

 nese edition of the Chinese cyclopaedia San ts'ai fu hui. 1 The defini- 

 tion runs thus: "The rhinoceros has the hair of swine and three toes on 

 each foot; it has the head of a horse and three horns, on the nose, the 

 forehead, and on the skull, respectively." The three toes and three 

 horns are exactly drawn in accordance with this prescription; curiously 

 enough, however, the head is not that of a horse, but of a bull. The 

 old tradition of the draughtsmen is retained in spite of the definition. 



Kuo P'o, in all probability, is not the first or the only author to 

 speak of a three-horned variety. A work Kiao Kuang chi, 2 Account of 

 Kiao chou (northern part of what is now Annam) and Kuang-tung, 

 reports, "In the territory of the Barbarians of the South-west occurs a 

 strange rhinoceros with three horns emitting light at night like big 

 torches at a distance of a thousand paces. When it sheds its horns, it 

 hides them in a remote and dense jungle to prevent men from seeing 

 them. The sovereigns hold this strange product in high esteem, and 

 make it into hair-pins. These are capable of checking evil and rebel- 

 lion.' ' Here we have the testimony of an eye-witness or one reproducing 

 a hearsay account; and, quite correctly, he points out this variety as a 

 freak of nature. The exact date of the work in question is unfortunately 

 not known to me; but as the quotation is placed between one from 

 Kuang-cki by Ku Yi-kung, who according to Bretschneider 3 belonged 

 to the Liang dynasty (502—556), and one from Kuang chou ki, a work of 

 the Tsin period (265—419), the inference may be justifiable that Kiao 

 Kuang chi likewise is a production of the Leu-ch'ao period. However 

 remote from truth all these Chinese illustrations may be, most of them 

 are fairly correct as to the outlines of the horn, naturally because 



1 The illustration is easily accessible in L. Serrurier, Encyclopedic japonaise, 

 le chapitre des quadrupedes, Plate VIII (Leiden, 1875). This cut is not contained in 

 a recent edition of this Japanese work (Tokyo, 1906), but is replaced by a rhinoceros 

 with two horns, the one on the forehead, the other on top of the skull. These attempts 

 clearly prove that Japanese as well as Chinese illustrators did not draw the animal 

 from life, but from the definitions of the books. In the Chinese San ts'ai t'u hui 

 (Ch. 4, p. 32) only a three-horned animal (san kio shou) is depicted. 



2 Quoted in the chapter on Rhinoceros in T'u shu tsi ch'ing. 



3 Bot. Sin., pt. 1, p. 164. 



