Bati—Ldentification of the Animals and Plants of India. 317 
curved into the most natural wreaths, and is of a black colour. This 
horn is said to be extremely sharp. The animal, as [ learn, has a 
voice beyond all example—loud, ringing, and dissonant.”’ 
Photios’s* account of the ‘‘horned wild ass”’ of Ktesias agrees, in the 
main particulars, with one by Ailian.** That by the former is as follows : 
‘‘Among the Indians there are wild asses as large as horses, some 
being even larger. Their head is of a dark-red colour, their eyes blue, 
and the rest of their body white. They have a horn on their fore- 
head, a cubit in length (the filings of this horn, given in a potion, are 
an antidote to poisonous drugs). This horn, for about two palm- 
breadths upwards from the base, is of the purest white, where it tapers 
to a sharp point, of a flaming crimson, and in the middle is black. 
These horns are made into drinking-cups, and such as drink from them 
are attacked neither by convulsions nor by the sacred disease (epi- 
lepsy); nay, they are not even affected by poisons, if either before or 
after swallowing them they drink from these cups wine, water, or 
anything else. While other asses, moreover, whether wild or tame, 
and indeed all other solid-hoofed animals, have neither huckle bones 
(astragulus) nor gall in the liver, these one-horned asses have both. 
Their huckle bene is the most beautiful of all I have ever seen, and is 
in appearance and size like that of the ox. It is as heavy as lead, and 
of the colour of cinnabar, both on the surface and all throughout. It 
is an exceedingly fleet and strong animal, and no creature that pur- 
sues it, not even the horse, can overtake it,”’ &e. 
Regarding the astragulus, or huckle-bone, the statement of its 
absence in solid-hoofed animals is incorrect, and I can offer no expla- 
nation of the reputed characteristics of that of the horned wild ass, ex- 
ceptthatan example seen by Ktesias had simply been dyed and weighted 
with lead. For short distances the rhinoceros can charge with great 
speed and force, and its voice is such as to merit to some extent the 
description by Megasthenes. 
In reference to the colours of the animal, when I recall that I have 
often seen in India horses with tails and manes of a bright magenta, 
and with spots of the same colour all over their otherwise white bodies ; 
that I have also seen elephants belonging to rajahs ornamented on 
their heads by the application of various pigments—1! am led to con- 
clude that the rhinoceros from which Ktesias’s description was taken 
was a domesticated one which, in accordance with the natives’ taste 
for bright colours, had been painted to take part in some pageant. 
Domesticated rhinoceroses are still kept by many natives; and they 
have, I believe, sometimes been trained like elephants to carry how- 
dahs, with riders in them. I once met a native dealer in animals who 
had taken with him, for several hundred miles through tae jungles, 
a rhinoceros, which he ultimately sold to the rajah of Jaipur, im 
33 Ecloga in Photii, Bibl. Ixxii. 25; Cf. Anc. India, by J. W. M‘Crindle. 
33 Hist: Anim., iv. 52. 
