History of the Rhinoceros 129 



can be based solely on the texts. 1 The illustrations are posterior in 

 time and mere accessories, and, even if fairly sensible, of sheer secondary 

 importance; in each and every case, however, if utilized as the basis 

 for any far-reaching conclusion, their history, sources, and psychological 

 foundation must be carefully examined. Another impressive lesson to 

 be derived from the case of the ostrich is that China, which by virtue 

 of a widely accepted school opinion appears to us as the classical soil 

 of ultra-conservative perseverance of traditions, is very liable also to 

 lose traditions, and even rather good ones. The excellent ostrich 

 representations of the T'ang have not been perpetuated, but have re- 

 mained as isolated instances. Indeed, they seem to have remained 

 unknown to Chinese artists, archaeologists, and naturalists, and hidden 

 away in seclusion and oblivion until discovered by M. Chavannes. 

 It is this very China unknown to the Chinese, which, as research ad- 

 vances, will become our most attractive subject of study. 



We referred above (p. 100) to the fact that the ancient illustrations to 

 the Erh ya are lost, and that Kuo-P'o's sketches of the rhinoceros may 

 have been nearer to the truth. In now raising the question whether 

 any representations of the animal are handed down in the ancient 

 monuments of China, we naturally remember the primeval form of 

 writing that mirrors the stage of her primitive culture. The celebrated 

 Catalogue of Bronzes, the Po ku t'u lu, published by Wang Fu in the 

 period Ta-kuan (1107-1111), has preserved to us (Ch. 9, p. 23) two an- 

 cient symbols which are veritable representations of the single-horned 

 rhinoceros se (Fig. 18). They are placed on the ends of a handle of a 

 bronze wine-kettle attributed to the Shang dynasty (b.c. 1766-1154). 

 The explanatory text runs as follows : "The two lateral ears of the vessel 

 are connected by a handle, on which are chased two characters in the 

 shape of a rhinoceros (se) . When it is said in the Lun yii that ' a tiger 

 and rhinoceros escape from their cage,' 2 it follows that the rhinoceros is 



1 And these must certainly be handled with a critical mind, as, for instance, a 

 glance at the chapter " Ostrich " in the T'u shu tsi ch'eng will convince one. The first 

 extract there given from the Ying yai shtng Ian of 141 6 deals with the "fire-bird" 

 of Sumatra, which is the cassowary (see Groeneveldt, in Miscell. Papers relating to 

 Indo-China, Vol. I, pp. 198, 262). Mo k'o hui si, a work written by P'eng Ch'Sng in the 

 first half of the eleventh century (Bretschneider, Bot. Sin., pt. I, p. 174), is quoted 

 as making a contribution to the subject in question, because a bird able to eat iron 

 and stone is mentioned there; this bird, however, called ku-t'o, occurs in Ho-chou, 

 the present Lan-chou fu in Kan-su, is built like an eagle, and over three feet high! 

 Accordingly we here have a wrong association of ideas, and the subject has nothing 

 to do with the ostrich. The editors of the cyclopaedia blindly follow the uncritical 

 example of Li Shi-chen, who embodied the same in his notes on the ostrich. Finally, 

 Verbiest's K'un yii t'u shuo is laid under contribution, as he describes the "camel- 

 bird" of South America. This is the Rhea belonging to the Ratite family, but 

 distinguished from the true ostrich by its possession of three toes. 



2 Legge, Chinese Classics, Vol. I, p. 306; and above, p. 74, note 4. 



