History of the Rhinoceros hi 



literature, justly points out that all our mediaeval versions of the story, 1 

 as a last resort, go back to the Greek Physiologus, and that the last 

 clause of the Greek text contains a visible trace of the old Indian legend 

 of the king's daughter who carries away the penitent into the palace 

 of her father. Luders rises also against the view of Lauchert, who inter- 

 prets the story in Physiologus from a misunderstood passage of Aelian 

 (XVI, 20) ; and I am in full accord with the criticism of Luders, to which 

 the argument should be added that this alleged influence of Aelian on the 

 Physiologus is out of the question, as Aelian is in time posterior to the 

 latter. 2 F. W. K. Muller studied the same question in connection 

 with a Japanese No play, the plot of which is the legend of Ekacrihga. 3 

 Muller likewise thinks Lauchert's explanation to be hardly plausible, 

 and admits, with excellent arguments, the dependence of the Physiologus 

 story on the tradition of India. There is but one point in which my 

 opinion differs from the one expressed by Muller. Muller, at the close 

 of his highly interesting study, advances the theory that the real unicorn, 

 as already recognized by Marco Polo, may always have been the 



1 Of the mediaeval versions, that of John Tzetzes, the Byzantine poet and gram- 

 marian, who flourished during the twelfth century, in his Chiliades (v, 398), deserves 

 special mention: "The monoceros carries a horn on the middle of its forehead. This 

 animal is passionately fond of perfumes. It is hunted in this manner. A young man 

 disguised as a woman exhaling the odor of the most exquisite perfumes takes his 

 position in the places frequented by this quadruped. The hunters lie in ambush at a 

 short distance. The odor of the perfumes soon attracts the monoceros toward the 

 young man; it caresses him, and he covers its eyes with perfumed woman's gloves. 

 The hunters hasten to the spot, seize the animal which does not offer resistance, cut 

 off its horn, which is an excellent antidote to poison, and send it back, without in- 

 flicting on it further harm." 



2 Claudius Aelianus flourished under Septimius Severus, and probably outlived 

 Elagabalus (218-222 a.d.). His writings come down from the beginning of the third 

 century (Baumgarten, Poland, and Wagner, Die hellenistisch-romische Kultur, 

 p. 615, Leipzig, 1913), while the Physiologus was written in Alexandria as early as the 

 second century (ibid., p. 622). Little is known about Aelian's life; only Philostratus 

 and Suidas have some brief notes regarding him. He availed himself of the writings 

 of Athenaeus, who wrote at the time of Elagabalus, or in the first years of Alexander 

 SeverusK222-235) ; Philostratus mentions his death in his Lives of Sophists composed 

 between 222 and 244. As regards the Physiologus, it is necessary to discriminate 

 between the final Greek recension clothed in a Christian-theological garb, as we have 

 it now, and the primeval source or sources of animal stories without the allegories, 

 from which the former was extracted. Lauchert (/. c, p. 42) certainly is quite right 

 in rejecting the hypothesis of an " Ur physiologus" in the sense that it was a literary 

 production serving as model to our Physiologus; but a primeval Physiologus must be 

 presupposed for about the beginning of the first century, in the sense that it simply 

 was an assemblage of verbal stories current in Alexandria, and some of which were 

 imported from India (compare T'oung Pao, 1913, pp. 361-4). 



8 Ikkaku sennin, eine mittelalterliche japanische Oper (Bastian Festschrift, 

 PP- 5 I 3~538, Berlin, 1896). Luders, whose work appeared in 1897, did not take note 

 of M tiller's investigation; it seems that the treatises of both scholars originated about 

 the same time, and independently of each other. Compare also J. Takakusu, The 

 Story of the Rsi Ekasrhga (Hansei Zasshi, Vol. XIII, 1898, pp. 10-18); and K. 

 Wadagaki, Monoceros, The Rishi (ibid., pp. 19-24). 



