History of the Rhinoceros 135 



Other texts of importance apt to throw light on the matter have been 

 added from the T'u shu tsi ch'eng and several other works, so that the 

 result is a fairly complete digest of what Chinese authors of the post- 

 Christian era have to say about the rhinoceros and its horn. After this 

 survey, we shall turn to the times of early antiquity, and discuss the 

 subject in the light of such information as has been handed down to 

 us from those days. 



Li Shi-chen opens his discourse on the rhinoceros with the explana- 

 tion of the name. "The symbol for the word si still has in the seal 

 character chuan wen the form of a pictograph, 1 and is the name for the 

 female rhinoceros. The se is styled also 'sand rhinoceros' (sha si). The 

 Erh ya i 2 says that the words se and tse (female) approach each other in 

 sound like the two words ku ('ram,' No. 6226) and ku ('male'). In 

 general, si and se are one and the same. The ancients were fond of 

 saying se, the people of subsequent times inclined toward the word si. 

 In the northern dialects the word se prevails, in the southern dialects 

 the predilection is for si. This is the difference between the two. In 

 Sanskrit literature the rhinoceros is called khadga." 3 



Li Shi-chen then proceeds to quote the ancient work Pie lu, 4 which 

 makes the following important statement in regard to the former 

 localities where the rhinoceros occurred: "The habitat of the rhinoceros 



1 This is indeed the case in the Shuo wen (see p. 92). The names of the rhinoceros 

 and the various kinds of its horn are here reproduced from T'u shu tsi ch'ing (p. 134). 



2 An appendix to the Erh ya by Lo Yuan of the twelfth century (Bretschneider , 

 Bot. Sin., pt. 1, p. 37). 



3 Written with Nos. 1456 and 1558 (k'et-ga); compare Eitel, Hand-book of 

 Chinese Buddhism, p. 76. (Other Sanskrit words for "rhinoceros" are ganda, gandaka, 

 gandanga.) The work Sheng shut yen fan lu, written by Wang P'i-chi about the end 

 of the eleventh century (Wylie, Notes, p. 195), seems to be the first to impart this 

 Sanskrit name (see the Chinese text opposite) ; it further gives a Sanskrit word for 

 the horn in the Chinese transcription pi-sha-na corresponding to Sanskrit vishdna 

 ("horn"). The latter and the word khadga were among the first Sanskrit words in 

 Chinese recognized by Abel R£musat (see S. Julien, M6thode, p. 3). 



4 The Pie lu is not identical with the Ming i pie lu, as first stated by Bret- 

 schneider (Bot. Sin., pt. 1, p. 42), but later rectified by him (in pt. 3, p. 2). It is an 

 independent work, which must have existed before the time of T'ao Hung-king, and 

 which was known to the latter and commented on by him. This is quite clear in the 

 present case, as Li Shi-chen first introduces the Pie lu, and then proceeds, "T'ao Hung- 

 king says." And since the latter starts with the phrase "at present," it is apparent 

 that he had the words of the Pie lu before his eyes, and gave his definition in distinc- 

 tion from the older work. This is also proved by the text of the Ching lei ptn ts'ao 

 published in 1108 by the physician T'ang Shen-wei (edition of 1523, Ch. 17, fol. 21), 

 where the two quotations are separated and marked by type of different size. As in 

 Bretschneider's opinion nearly all the geographical names occurring in the Pie lu 

 refer to the Ts'in (third century B.C.) or Han periods, although some of them can 

 be traced to the Chou dynasty (b.c. 1122-249), the above passage surely relates to 

 a time antedating our era by several centuries; and it goes without saying, that as a 

 matter of fact, in the age of the Chou and at a far earlier date, the two-horned 

 rhinoceros must have been a live citizen in the south-western parts of China. 



