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[566] cussed by me in two articles.1 Vullers2 gives no less than seven definitions of the Persian word: (i) cornu bovis cuiusdam Sinensis; (2) secundum alios cornu rhinocerotis; (3) secundum alios cornu avis cuiusdam permagnae in regno vastato, quod inter Chinam et Aethiopiam situm est, degentis, e quo conficiunt anulos osseos et manubria cultri et quo res venenatae dignosci possunt; (4) secundum alios cornu serpentis, quod mille annos natus profert; (5) secundum alios cornu viperae; (6) secundum alios cornu piscis annosi; (7) secundum alios dentes animalis cuiusdam. Of these explanations, No. 3 is that of al-Akfani, and the bird in question is the buceros. No. 4 is a reproduction of the definition of ku-tu-si in the Liao Annals ("the horn of a thousand-years-old snake"). How the Persians and Arabs arrived at the other definitions will be easily understood from my former discussion of the subject. In the Ethiopic version of the Alexander Romance are mentioned, among the gifts sent to Alexander by the king of China, twenty (in the Syriac version, ten) snakes' horns, each a cubit long. 3
Meanwhile I have succeeded in tracing a new Chinese definition of ku-tu. Cou Mi Ml $? (1 230-1320), in his Ci ya Van tsa Pao* states, "According to Po-ki fS ^,5 what is now styled ku-tu si # $§ JP is a horn of the earth (ti kio i& m, 'a horn found underground'?)." He refers again to its property of neutralizing poison and to knife-hilts made of the substance.
