Treatises of the Supervisor and Guardian of the Cinnamon Sea: The Natural World and Material Culture of Twelfth-Century China

7 Quadrupeds

67 7 Quadrupeds (Zhi shou) Among quadrupeds, none is more massive than the elephant; none more useful than the horse. Both are well suited to the southlands [nantu]. I served as director of the Horse Administration [Mazheng]1 and was very much involved in making up for 1 The main government procurement sites for horses during the Southern Song were in Guangxi and Yunnan. Most of the mounts purchased there came from non-Chinese states along or beyond the border. The Chinese government apparatus charged with buying horses was called the Horse Administration (Mazheng). In Guangxi the government official who supervised these activities initially was the inspector for supervising horse purchases (tiju maima si), who from 1133 was based in Yong County. In 1136, however, this responsibility shifted to the command-inspector of Guangxi. Songshi, 198.4956. Thus, during his term as command-inspector of Guangxi, Fan Chengda was directly responsible for horse procurement. For a useful overview of the Horse Administration in Guangxi during the Southern Song, see LWDD, 5.186–87 (Netolitzky, 5.3), and Lin Ruihan, “Songdai bianjun zhi mashi ji ma zhi gangyun,” esp. 130. For a more detailed treatment of the entire Horse Administration system under the Southern Song see Jin Baoxiang, “Nan Song mazheng kao,” 321–30, and especially Okada, Zhongguo Hua’nan minzu shehui shi, 166–245. The most thorough study of the Horse Administration during the Song dynasty in English is Paul J. Smith’s Taxing Heaven’s Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destruction of the Sichuan Tea Industry, 1074–1224 (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press, 1991). 68 Treatises of the Supervisor and Guardian of the Cinnamon Sea shortages and deficiencies [buju louxi].2 There is much to be said [about the Horse Administration], but this would be much too involved, and it is not something I can describe [here]. For now, I will just write down some general information [about the Horse Administration] as well as some information about rearing animals that is somewhat different [than in the north]. These are combined into this one chapter. Elephants [xiang] come out of the mountain valleys of Jiaozhi.3 Only the males have two tusks. Buddhist texts mention “four tusk” and “six tusk” varieties,4 but today such elephants do not exist. 2 Fan Chengda was so dissatisfied with the Song horse procurement system in Guangxi that he submitted at least two memorials concerning its various maladies . A portion of one of these memorials survives in HSRC, 67.17a–b. Local officials and horse procurement officers would first use inferior quality horses to establish a fixed market price, then use this fixed price later to buy better quality mounts; these horses would then be resold to the Song at a much higher price. Furthermore, there was no suitable grazing area at the main horse market at the Hengshan Stockade (Hengshan Zhai), and many horses sustained injuries because of the poor roads (many of which had no bridges) they had to traverse on their way to Hengshan. Finally, the horses provided by the Man were of small stature (Fan argued in favor of purchasing mounts no lower than four chi, three cun in height). For additional information on the problems of procuring horses in Guangxi during the Southern Song, see the comments in Yan Pei, 58, n. 1, Hu-Tan, 88–90, n. 3, and Okada, Zhongguo Hua’nan minzu shehui shi, esp. 236–38. Fan Chengda provides additional information about the horse market at the Hengshan Stockade below. 3 During the Shang dynasty (ca. 2100–ca. 1028 b.c.e.) elephants were common in China’s Yellow River valley. Over time, however, deforestation resulting from population increase forced the great beasts to retreat farther and farther south. In the twelfth century wild elephants were still found in Guangdong and Guangxi (Fan mentions this below) and in most, if not all, of the many kingdoms bordering China in the south and southwest. For more information on elephants in China, especially during the pre-Song period, see Bertold Laufer, Ivory in China (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1925), and Schafer , The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, 79–83. Laufer mentions that ivory from Annan (or Jiaozhi) is “small and short, and a kind yielding a red powder when cut by a saw was regarded as very excellent” (15). Marks estimates that “by the fifteenth century, elephants had become extinct in Lingnan.” See his Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt, 45. See also...