. Chinese clay figures. Sculpture -- China; Arms and armor, Chinese; China -- Antiquities. History of the Rhinoceros 127 time as magistrate of the district of P'eng-k'i in the prefecture of T'ung- ch'uan, province of Sze-ch'uan. The chances are that he had never seen the sculptures of ostriches in the mausolea of the T'ang emperors near Li-ts'uan, Shen-si Province; but, be this as it may, his woodcut proves that the T'ang tradition of the representation of the ostrich was wholly unknown to him, and moreover, that he himself had never be- held an ostrich. We have no records to the effect that o
. Chinese clay figures. Sculpture -- China; Arms and armor, Chinese; China -- Antiquities. History of the Rhinoceros 127 time as magistrate of the district of P'eng-k'i in the prefecture of T'ung- ch'uan, province of Sze-ch'uan. The chances are that he had never seen the sculptures of ostriches in the mausolea of the T'ang emperors near Li-ts'uan, Shen-si Province; but, be this as it may, his woodcut proves that the T'ang tradition of the representation of the ostrich was wholly unknown to him, and moreover, that he himself had never be- held an ostrich. We have no records to the effect that ostriches were transported to China during the Ming period; and they were then probably known merely by name. Li Shi-chen's production is simply a reconstruction based on the definitions of the texts ("marching with outspread wings, feet of a camel," etc.); the only exact feature is the two toes, which are mentioned also in the older descriptions of the bird; everything else, notably the crane's head, is absurd, and a naturalist of the type of Bretschneider should have noticed this. In the great cyclopaedia T'u shu tsi ch'eng, published in 1726, we find a singular illustration of the ostrich, which is reproduced in Fig. 17 as an object-lesson in Chinese psychology. This accomplishment must open every one's eyes: here we plainly see that the illustrator had not the slightest idea of the appearance of an ostrich, but merely endeavored, with appalling result, to outline a sketch of what he imagined the "camel-bird" should look like. He created a combination of a camel and a bird by illustrating the bare words, as they struck his ears, without any recourse to facts and logic; he committed the logical blunder (so common among the Chinese from the days of the Sung period) of confounding a descriptive point of similarity with a feature of reality. All Chinese texts are agreed on the point that the bird is just like a camel, or conveys that impression. This case is m
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublisherchica, bookyear1914
