144 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



end, marvellous as it is in its present form, is thought to 

 have some foundation in fact, as the sura reciting it was 

 composed by Mohammed not more than fifty-four years 

 after the date of the supposed happening.* 



The curious fancy, often repeated by medieval writers, 

 that the elephant's legs were jointless, so that the animal 

 could not lie down, is already found in Csesar's Commentaries 

 (of the elk) and also in Pliny (Hist. Nat., viii, 39). It also 

 appears in the Alexandrian Greek writing called "Physiol- 

 ogus," which in the form now extant belongs probably to 

 the third or fourth century of our era, although this is doubt- 

 less based upon a much earlier original, from which Pliny 

 (23-79 A. D.) and possibly even Caesar (100-44 B. C.) may 

 have derived their information. An indication of the possi- 

 ble source of this tale is found by Dr. Berthold Laufer in a 

 Chinese work of the Sung period which gives a story told 

 by a seafaring man to Wu Shi-kao, a physician of the T 'ang 

 period. Here we have to do, not with the elephant, but 

 with the rhinoceros, of which it is said that the front legs 

 "were straight without joints," and that the animal there- 

 fore slept "by leaning against the trunk of a tree." Taking 

 a perfidious advantage of this interesting peculiarity, "the 

 maritime people" when seeking to capture a rhinoceros 

 would set up on a mountain path structures of decayed 

 timber. When a rhinoceros, taking one of them for a tree 

 trunk, confidingly selected it as his upright bed, the rotten 

 timber would give way under his weight and he would topple 

 in front without being able for a long time to rise. " Then," 

 we are told, "they attack and kill it," and were thus able to 

 obtain the much-prized horn.t 



*See George Sale, "The Koran," Philadelphia, 1853, p. 499 (sura 105), and also J. M. 

 Rodwell, "El Koran," London, 1876, p. 20. 



fDr. Berthold Laufer, "Arabic and Chinese Trade in Walrus and Narwhal Ivory," 

 Leyden, 1913, pp. 49-52; reprinted from the T'oung-Pao, Vol. XIV. 



