jewpinthethird
August 28th, 2005, 05:33 PM
There are two types of Unicorns: the Western variety, which originates in Greece, and the Chinese variety. They differ completely in appearance and in people's perception of them.
The Greek Unicorn: His body resembles a horse, his head a stag, his feet and Elephant, his taile a boar: he loweth after an hideous manner, one black horne he hath in the mids of his forehead, bearing out two cubits in length (the description of a rhinoceros)...the West saw the unicorn as fierce and aggressive. According to Leonardo Da Vinci, the only way to catch a unicorn was to snare its passions. A young virgin is set down in front of it and the beast is so overcome with desire that it forgets to attack, and instead its rests its head on the lap of the maiden. The significance of the horn is not easily missed.
The Chinese Unicorn: It has the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, and the hooves of a horse. Its short horn, which grows out of its forehead, is made of flesh; its coat, on its back, is of five mixed colors, while its belly is brown or yellow...the Chinese unicorn is a sacred animal of portent. It ranks along with the dragon, the phoenix, and the tortoise as one of the Four Auspicious Creatures, and merits the highest status amoungst the Three-Hundred-Sixty-Five Land Animals. Extremely gentle in temperment, it treads with such care that even the smallest living this is unharmed, and eats no growing herbs but only withered grass. It lives a thousand years, and the visitation of a unicorn heralds the birth of a great sage. The mother of Confucius came upon a unicorn when she bore the philosopher in her womb.
Within the mammal class, single-horned or odd-number-horned animals are a rarity and even something of an evolutionary anomaly. That is to say, they are evolutionary orphans, and for the most part, odd-honred species like thiese have virtually perished from the earth. Even amoung the dinosaurs, the three-horned giant tircerotops was an exception.
-Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by 村上春樹
The Greek Unicorn: His body resembles a horse, his head a stag, his feet and Elephant, his taile a boar: he loweth after an hideous manner, one black horne he hath in the mids of his forehead, bearing out two cubits in length (the description of a rhinoceros)...the West saw the unicorn as fierce and aggressive. According to Leonardo Da Vinci, the only way to catch a unicorn was to snare its passions. A young virgin is set down in front of it and the beast is so overcome with desire that it forgets to attack, and instead its rests its head on the lap of the maiden. The significance of the horn is not easily missed.
The Chinese Unicorn: It has the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, and the hooves of a horse. Its short horn, which grows out of its forehead, is made of flesh; its coat, on its back, is of five mixed colors, while its belly is brown or yellow...the Chinese unicorn is a sacred animal of portent. It ranks along with the dragon, the phoenix, and the tortoise as one of the Four Auspicious Creatures, and merits the highest status amoungst the Three-Hundred-Sixty-Five Land Animals. Extremely gentle in temperment, it treads with such care that even the smallest living this is unharmed, and eats no growing herbs but only withered grass. It lives a thousand years, and the visitation of a unicorn heralds the birth of a great sage. The mother of Confucius came upon a unicorn when she bore the philosopher in her womb.
Within the mammal class, single-horned or odd-number-horned animals are a rarity and even something of an evolutionary anomaly. That is to say, they are evolutionary orphans, and for the most part, odd-honred species like thiese have virtually perished from the earth. Even amoung the dinosaurs, the three-horned giant tircerotops was an exception.
-Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by 村上春樹