ii4 Chinese Clay Figures 



of an ox and a single horn." * Indeed in the Erh yu Vu, both creatures 

 are figured almost alike, and agree in their essential characteristics. 

 It is obvious that, as iconographic types, these creatures are not derived 

 from any rhinoceros, but point in the direction of the fabulous one- 

 horned monsters (known in archaeology as "Oriental animals") de- 

 veloped in the art of Mesopotamia. 2 In regard to the type of k'i-lin, 

 this has been aptly pointed out by A. Grunwedel; 3 and as the same 

 West-Asiatic forms found their way into the art of India, we here have 

 the basis for the origin of the single-horned gazelle (deer or antelope) 

 transferred to, or personified in, the person of Ekacrihga. In Baby- 

 lonia, these types of unicorn are very ancient, going back to the third 

 millennium B.C., 4 and could not have been developed there from a 

 rhinoceros. The conclusion therefore presents itself that the notion of 

 a unicorn cervine animal which was developed in Western Asia from 

 remote times spread together with artistic motives into India and 

 China, 5 while the identification of this fabulous creature with the 



1 Regarding the k'i-lin see Yen Shi-ku (in Ts'ien Han shu, Ch. 6, p. 5 b) ; Mayers 

 (Chinese Reader's Manual, p. 127); F. W. K. Muller (in Feestbundel aan P. J. Veth, 

 p. 222, Leiden, 1894); De Groot (The Religious System of China, Vol. II, pp. 822- 

 4); and H. Dore (Recherches sur les superstitions en Chine, pt. 1, Vol. II, pp. 446-8). 

 I do not subscribe to everything that the last two authors say about the subject. The 

 Chinese illustrations are reproduced in C. Gould (Mythical Monsters, pp. 350, 353, 

 354, London, 1886). 



2 A distinction must be made between iconographic or archaeological type or 

 artistic representation, and traditions or speculations regarding such a type. The 

 lin, as early mentioned in Shi king and Li ki, may very well be an indigenous Chinese 

 thought. Nevertheless its subsequent portrayal in art rests on a borrowed type, 

 which has again fertilized native ideas as to form and behavior of the creature. An 

 interesting example of the fact that iconography and literary tradition may move 

 along lines widely different and emanating from diverse sources is afforded by the 

 unicorn of Europe. The unicorn tradition of the Physiologus is traceable to India; 

 the iconography of the creature, however, has no connection with Indian art, but 

 leans in the beginning toward the ancient West-Asiatic types. Throughout the 

 middle ages, there is not a trace of the rhinoceros in the representations of the unicorn 

 (compare Marco Polo's astonishment when he saw the ugly beast on Java, "not in 

 the least like that which our stories tell of as being caught in the lap of a virgin, in 

 fact, altogether different from what we fancied"); now it is an antelope, now an ox, 

 now a narwhal, now a hybrid formation composed of various creatures. My opinion 

 in this respect deviates from the one expressed by Strzygowski (I. c.) that there may 

 be interaction between the animal types of the earliest Buddhist art in India and those 

 of the Physiologus. It is not there the question of interaction, but of affinity, solely 

 caused by West-Asiatic productions which both have in common as their source. 



3 Bemerkungen uber das Kilin (Feestbundel aan P. J. Veth, pp. 223-5, Leiden, 

 1894), an d Buddhist Art in India, p. 19. 



4 E. Schrader, Die Vorstellung vom monokeros und ihr Ursprung (Abhandlungen 

 der preussischen Akademie, 1892, pp. 573-581). 



6 In order to dispel the doubts of those who may not feel inclined in this case to 

 link China with the West, another striking analogy may be indicated, which will show 

 that Chinese ideas regarding unicorns coincide with those entertained in the West, 

 and which crop up in the classical authors. In the Erh ya is defined an animal called 

 chui (written with the classifier 'horse' and the phonetic complement sui, No. 10,388), 

 ' 'like a horse with a single horn; those without horn are spotted." Kuo P'o comments, 



