Bochart has quoted a great variety of ancient testimonies to the value of goats’-milk in his Hierozoicon, l. ii. cap. 51. pp. 629, 630. ed. Leusden.
[370] See Prichard’s Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, third edition, vol. i. pp. 247. 257-262. 303, 304. These nations are characterized by the oval form of the skull. Their distribution over the face of the earth may be seen in the Map, [Plate VII.]
The only remarkable exception to this limitation of ancient sheep-breeding, is the case of the Chinese. It would appear from the following evidence, that they had both sheep and goats in ancient times.
The Chinese character for a sacrifice is a compound of two characters, one placed above the other; the upper one, Yang, is the character for a lamb, the lower is the character for fire; so that a lamb on the fire denotes a sacrifice. See Morison’s Chinese Dictionary, vol. iii. part i.
According to the mythology of the Chinese, which as well as their written characters is of high antiquity, one of the four rivers, which rise in Mount Kaen-lun and run towards the four quarters of the globe, is called the Yang-Choui, i. e. the Lamb-River. Thomas Stephens Davies, Esq. in Dr. Robert Thomson’s British Annual for 1837, p. 271, 277.
Yang-Ching, i. e. Sheep-city, was an ancient name of Canton. Morison, p. 55. There is a character for the Goat, which means the Yang of the mountains, Yang being a general term like the Hebrew צאן, including both sheep and goats. Ib. p. 61, 62.
In the following passage of Rufus Festus Avienus, who flourished about A. D. 400, we have a distinct testimony, that the ancient Seres, the probable ancestors of the Chinese, employed themselves in the care of sheep at the same time that they were devoted to the production of silk.
Gregibus permixti oviumque boumque,
Vellera per silvas Seres nemoralia carpunt.
Descriptio Orbis Terræ, l. 935, 936.