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I-fj37 RHINOCEKOS HOKNS. 233
37.
RHINOCEROS HORNS (ff ^).
The si, or rhinoceros, resembles the domestic cattle, but it has only one
horn. Its skin is black and its hair scanty; its tongue is like the burr of a
5 chestnut. Fierce and violent in its temper, this animal runs so quickly that
you may imagine it is flying. Its food consists solely of bamboo and other
woods. Since he rips up a man with his horn, none dare come near him, but
hunters shoot him with a stiff (?g) arrow from a good distance, after which
they remove the horn, which in this state is called a afresh horn» (^ -^),
10 whereas, if the animal has died a natural death the horn obtained from it is
called a «dropped-in-the-hills horn.) ('^J jjj ;^). The horn bears marks like
bubbles; the horns which are more white than black are the best.
Note.
The rhinoceros is already mentioned in Shan-hai-Mng, 10,4, where it is called si-niu ( ff
15 ^). Ling-piau-ltt-i (written in the T'ang dynasty) gives (2,io) an interesting description of the diffe-
rent varieties of rhinoceros ofIndo-China and of the peculiarities of the horns of each. When one of the
horns is high up on the head, the animal is called ssi-si (Sjl, ^), when one horn, and that a rather'
small one, is down on the snout, the animal is called hu-mau-si (^^B ^'M ffi). The largest
kind of rhinoceros is the to-lo-si ), or to-ho-lo (^ ^ ^ (^ ^ ^) rhinoceros, as the
20 name is written in T'ang-shu, 222C,io*, whose horns attain a weight of seven or eight catties.
Gerini, Kesearches, 830—831, says To-ho-lo was a district on the Gulf of Martaban.
Another classification of rhinoceros is mentioned in the Kiau-ch6u-ki (^ J>M =3 possibly
of the fifth century A. D.) as quoted in Tung-si-yang-k'au, l,io*. This work divides them into water-
rhinoceros and mountain-rhinoceros, the former, it says, have three horns, the latter two. Conf.
25 Pon-ts'au-kang-mu, 51-A,is— 15.
Our author in the first part of his work, besides mentioning rhinoceros in Tongking, Annam,
and the Malay Peninsula, says the horn was also a product of Java, India, and the Zanguebar
coast of Africa; he does not state they are fojind in Sumatra. The finest horns came, according to
him, from the Berbera coast.
30 Masudi, op. cit., I, 385, says that in his time there was a great trade in rhinoceros horns
with China from Eahma in India, which was probably about Dacca or Arracan. See also Keinaud,
Kelations, 28—30. The method followed in killing rhinoceros was described by the Arab envoy to
China in A. D. 973. See supra, p. 118. Asiatics believe that rhinoceros horn detects the presence
of poison, as does also tortoise-shell.
35 The belief in the formidable nature of the rhinoceros' tongue was old and widespread.
Marco Polo (II, 265, 271—272) says of them: «They do not mischief, however, with the horn,
but ,with the tongue only; for this is covered all over with long and strong prickles and when
savage with any one they crush him under their knees and then rasp him with their tongue.»