It was probably some unicorn animal which is referred to in the General History of China, called the Tong Kien Kang Mu (vide Père de Mailla’s translation), as having been presented to the Emperor Yung Loh of the Ming dynasty, in A.D. 1415, by envoys from Bengal. De Mailla says it was called a Ki-Lin by the Chinese out of flattery.
Again, the same History says that in the succeeding year the kingdom of Malin sent as tribute a Ki-Lin similar to that from Bengal.
The Ki-Rin, a Japanese version of the Ki-Lin, is simply borrowed from Chinese sources. It is figured in the illustrated edition of the great Japanese Encyclopædia Kasira gaki zou vo Sin mou dzu wi tai sei,[303] and represented, as in the Chinese drawings, as covered with scales; but it must be noted that nothing in any of the texts of either country warrants this furniture of the body.[304]
The same encyclopædia figures another unicorn beast under the name of the Kai Tsi, and describes it as being an animal of foreign countries, resembling a lion, and having a single horn. It is also called the Sin You or divine sheep. It is able to distinguish between right and wrong. When Kau You exercised criminal jurisdiction, he handed over those whose crime was doubtful to the Kai Tsu, and it is said that this animal destroyed the guilty and spared the innocent.
This is described in the Chinese work Yuen Kien Léi Han,[305] under the name of the Hiai Chai, and similar powers of discrimination are there attributed to it.
Fig. 84.—The Sz, or Malayan Rhinoceros.
(From the ’Rh Ya.)
A synonym for it was the Chiai Tung. It states that, according to the Si Yang Y Shu, a one-horned spiritual lamb was born in the Ping Shen district, and in the twenty-first year of Kai Yuen. The horn was fleshy, and the top of the head covered with white hair. The second chapter on the same subject says that, in ancient times, if parties were at law, the judge brought this animal out, and it would gore at the guilty one.
The Kioh Twan is yet another unicorn animal described in the Yuen Kien Léi Han,[306] which is said to have the appearance of a deer with the tail of a horse, but to be of a greenish colour, with one horn above the nose, and to be capable of traversing eighteen thousand li in one day.
The Li Kau Sing Sha Shao says that the Emperor Yuen Ti Su sent his ambassadors to the western part of India, who procured animals several tens of feet in height,[307] unicorn, like the rhinoceros. The rumour went that these were inauspicious for the Emperor, and they were immediately returned.