臆想世界:明代犀牛的形象失真

Imaginary World: Image Distortion of Rhinoceros in Ming Dynasty

商周时期,犀牛曾生活在华夏平原地区,但随着气候、人口等原因逐渐在北方绝迹,其形象也开始失真。然而,明代初期朝贡活动频繁,宫廷曾多次获得域外贡犀,但朝廷官员在极有可能见到真实犀牛的情况下,所绘犀牛仍然出现失真现象。此外,同时期不同类别文本中的犀牛图像完全不同,存在颇多疑惑。本文从博物学角度剖析犀牛图像如何失真、为何失真以及谁使得图像失真等问题,进而探讨图像中的"臆想世界"。

During the Zhou dynasty,rhinoceroses had lived one the plains of China before disappeared with the with the change of climate and population.As a result,the Chinese image of rhinoceroses began to be distorted.In the early Ming dynasty,through the tribute activities,rhinoceroses from other countries were repeatedly obtained.Despite the fact that officials of the Ming dynasty saw real rhinoceros,the image of rhinoceros might still get distorted at times.In addition,images in different types of texts might be completely different at the same time.This paper analyzes how and why the rhinoceros images got distorted and who distorted them from the perspective of natural history,and in doing so it explores the "imaginary world" in the images.