History or the Rhinoceros 133 



Sumatra, and Borneo. 1 Judging from this remarkable case of dis- 

 continuous distribution 2 and from historical records, there is every 

 reason to believe that in ancient times this animal, like all the large 

 mammals now facing extinction, was distributed over a much larger 

 geographical area; and this fact is fully confirmed by palaeontological 

 research, as well as by the records of the Chinese. 



For the purpose of our inquiry it should be particularly borne in 

 mind that it is in the territory of Assam where we meet the three species 

 together. "The Imperial Gazetteer of India " 3 states, in the chapter on 

 Assam, "Rhinoceros are of three kinds: the large variety (unicornis), 

 which lives in the swamps that fringe the Brahmaputra; the smaller 

 variety (sondaicus) , which is occasionally met with in the same locality; 

 and the small two-horned rhinoceros (sumatrensis) , which is now and 

 again seen in the hills south of the Surma Valley, though its ordinary 

 habitat is Sumatra, Borneo, and the Malay Peninsula." Assam is 

 inhabited by numerous tribes, a large portion of which ranges among the 

 Indo-Chinese family. What now holds good for Assam, as will be 

 recognized from a survey of Chinese sources, two millenniums and more 

 ago was valid for the south-western and southern parts of China, the 

 Tibeto-Chinese borderlands, and Indo-China in its total range; in short, 

 the historical fact will be established that in the past the rhinoceros in its 

 two main varieties, the single-horned and two-horned, had occupied 

 the whole territory of south-eastern Asia. 



The greater part of the knowledge possessed by the Chinese in re- 

 gard to the rhinoceros has been digested by Li Shi-chen in his materia 

 medica Pen ts'ao kang mu (Ch. 51 a, p. 5) completed in 1578 after twenty- 

 six years' labor. He first quotes a number of authors beginning from 

 the fifth century, and then sums up the argument in his own words. 

 This discourse is also of value for zoogeography, in that it contributes 

 materially to the possibility of reconstructing the early habitats of the 

 rhinoceros in China. The text of this work is here translated in extenso, 

 but rectified and supplemented from the materia medica of the Sung 

 period, the Cheng lei pen ts'ao, first printed in 1108. 4 



1 Al-BerunI (973-1048) states that the rhinoceros existed in large numbers in 

 India, more particularly about the Ganges (Sachau, /. c, Vol. I, p. 203). In the 

 sixteenth century it occurred in the western Himalaya and also in the forests near 

 Peshawar (Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 762). Linschoten found it in 

 great numbers in Bengal (ibid., p. 1); so also Garcia Ab Horto (/. c, p. 66): multos 

 in Cambaya Bengala finitima, et Patane inveniri tradunt. Abul Fazl Allami 

 (1551-1602), in his Ain I Akbari written in 1597 (translation of H. S. Jarrett, 

 Vol. II, p. 281, Calcutta, 1891), mentions the occurrence of the rhinoceros among the 

 game in the Sarkar of Sambal (near Delhi). 



2 Compare E. Heller, The White Rhinoceros, p. 39. 



3 Vol. VI, p. 20 (Oxford, 1908). 



4 See T'oung Pao, 1913, p. 351. 



