230 



NATURE 



[October 28, 19 15 



these animals extracted from ancient literature 

 and art, Dr. Laufer has elicited historical refer- 



haps noteworthy that there seems to us a sugges- 

 tion of purity also (or is it phallic?) in respect 



IJgEkLitM-^. 



Fig. I.— Eskimo armour of ivory plates and fragment of iron plates. From " Chinese Clay Figures." 



ences to these animals, as royal presents and j 

 otherwise, in the official annals, which are im- 

 portant as indicating some chronology for the 

 former geographical range of these animals in 

 northern China and central Asia, where they have 

 long been extinct. It appears that the two-horned 

 (or Sumatran?) rhinoceros no longer existed 

 within China proper in the first century a.d. , and 

 was only to be found to the south of the Yangtse ; 

 while the one-horned species survived in China in 

 the Upper Yangtse valley down to the Middle 

 Ages. In connection with the former range of 

 these animals we would suggest that the Arabic 

 name " Kargadan " is obviously cognate with the 

 Indian title for the rhinoceros, which in the 

 Sanskrit is '^ Khadga,'^ which means literally "the 

 cutter," or "sword," evidently with reference to 

 the horn. 



The association of the rhinoceros with the myth 

 of the unicorn is examined in great detail ; also 

 the mystic use of the horn as anti-poison goblets 

 up to the present day in China. It appears to 

 us possible that this latter use was derived from 

 India, or at least through false etymology by con- 

 fusing the Sanskrit name for "horn," namely 

 Vishana, with the Sanskrit word for "poison," 

 namely, Visha ; for the Chinese are known to have 

 called the rhinoceros-horn in the eleventh century 

 A.D. by the name pi-sha-na (Wylie, "Notes," 195), 

 their version of the Sanskrit word. This false 

 etymology would also readily lend itself to the 

 astrological view that the horn of the rhinoceros 

 symbolised the ascending node, and as such re- 

 presents hostility to the powers of darkness, and 

 as a poison-destroyer. In this regard it is per- 

 NO. 2400, VOL. 96] 



to the armorial unicorn, which, according to the 

 legend, was only to be caught at the lap of a 



Fig. 2. — The anim;.! "Si resembling swine" (from the illustrated edition 

 of £r/t ya). From '•Chinese Clay Figures." 



virgin maid. It is clear, however, that Pliny 

 ("Nat. Hist.," 8, 21), who must have been 



