124 Chinese Clay Figures 



ually forgotten by the people, the word bse or bse-ru of this meaning 

 continued in literature; the people retained the recollection of its being 

 a single-horned animal, and in their attempts at finding this creature, 

 the legend of Hermit Single-Horn, the son of an antelope or gazelle, 

 flashed into their minds ; so that the unicorn bse-ru was finally identified 

 with a species of antelope named for this reason bse-ru. This unicorn 

 bse-ru we now recognize also in the Chinese drawing of Ching lei pen 

 ts'ao (Fig. 13). Since the proof is now established that the interaction 

 and intermingling of deer and rhinoceros have taken place in China, in 

 Tibet, and in the West with the first conspicuous allusion in the Cy- 

 ranides, 1 and that this process of adjustment and affiliation has radiated 

 from the Indian legend of Single-Horn born from a gazelle, we are justi- 

 fied in concluding that the foundation, or at least the commencement, of 

 this transformation, must have arisen in India. The development of the 



# 



matter in Tibet shows sufficiently that Ekacrihga is disguised also 

 under our Chinese illustration. So much about the latter. 



A most interesting psychological parallel to the representations of 

 the rhinoceros in China is formed by the ostrich. We now know from 

 the reproductions of Chavannes 2 that in the T'ang period the ostrich 

 was chiselled in stone in a very naturalistic manner on the imperial 

 burial-places (Fig. 15). 3 



1 A counterpart of the rhinoceros of cervine character occurs also among the 

 Arabs. In Ethiopic, the word charish corresponds to the monokeros of the Septuaginta 

 (Job, xxxix, 9), and in all probability signifies the "rhinoceros." According to Qazwinl, 

 charish is an animal of the size of a ram, of great strength and swiftness, with a single 

 horn on its forehead like the horn of the rhinoceros (karkadan). Some Arabic lexicog- 

 raphers even take it for a marine animal, others identify it directly with the rhinoce- 

 ros. Hommel (Die Namen der Saugetiere bei den sudsemitischen Volkern, p. 333, 

 Leipzig, 1879), to whom this information is due, regards the Arabic word as a loan 

 from Ethiopic. Damlri, in his Lexicon of Animals, avails himself of this word in trans- 

 lating the text of the Physiologus regarding the unicorn (K. Ahrens, Das Buch der 

 Naturgegenstande, p. 43). What escaped Hommel is the fact that Cosmas Indico- 

 pleustes (McCrindle, Ancient India as described in Class. Lit., p. 157) states that the 

 Ethiopians, in their language, call the rhinoceros arou or harisi. G. Jacob (Studien 

 in arabischen Geographen IV, p. 166, Berlin, 1892) holds that Qazwini is the only 

 Arabic author to discriminate between charish and the rhinoceros, and identifies the 

 former with the Saiga-antelope of southern Russia. The rendering "unicorn" by 

 the Seventy and the English Bible is erroneous. The Hebrew word, thus translated, 

 is reem, corresponding to Assyrian rlmu. It is now generally interpreted as a wild 

 buffalo, and on the basis of Assyrian monuments is ingeniously identified with Bos 

 primigenius by J. U. Durst (Die Rinder von Babylonien, pp. 8-1 1, Berlin, 1899). 

 The animal, called in Hebrew behemoth (Job, xl, 15-24), and formerly taken for the 

 rhinoceros (p. 83), is the hippopotamus of the Nile. The Bible does not mention the 

 rhinoceros or the unicorn. 



2 Mission archeologique, Nos. 458, 459, 472, 481. 



3 These ostriches belong to the very best ever executed in the history of art. They 

 are much superior to any representations of the bird by the Egyptians (O. Keller, 

 Die antike Tierwelt, Vol. II, p. 170), the Assyrians (P. S. P. Handcock, Mesopotami- 

 an Archaeology, p. 307), and the classical nations (Imhoof-Blumer and O. Keller, 

 Tier- und Pflanzenbilder auf Munzen und Gemmen, Plates V, 52; XXII, 33-36). 



