What is the origin and evolution of the unicorn?

The worship of the Qilin in China is later than the worship of the dragon and the phoenix, and began in the Spring and Autumn Period. As a legendary rare beast, the Qilin is shaped like a deer, but larger than a deer, with a horse's hoof and a cow's tail, and a single horn on its head. The male is called Lin and the female is called Ki, collectively known as the Kirin. The unicorn is hideous on the outside, but benevolent on the inside. Because of its gentle nature, it does not harm humans or animals, and its hooves do not step on grass or insects, the Song Shu Fu Rui Zhi says: "The unicorn is a benevolent beast." The Ruiying Tu also said. The Rui Ying Tu also said: "Lin is also a benevolent beast, the peony is said to be Ki, the female is said to be Lin, sheep head and deer body." Because the body of the unicorn is larger than a deer, similar to the horse, folk saying "staring at the unicorn said horse".

We have heard the story of "Confucius weeping Lin", that is, Lu Ai Gong fourteen years, Shusun's hunting captured a monster, we do not know it is a unicorn, mistakenly thought it was ominous, the unicorn even trick abandoned and died. Ran Qiu, a disciple of Confucius, told him about it, calling it "like a roe deer with horns". Confucius went to see it for himself, and said to the driver of the car, "If it is what Ranqiu said, isn't it a Qilin? When he arrived, he saw that it was. Confucius said, "When the world is at peace, the appearance of the unicorn, phoenix, tortoise and dragon is an omen of good fortune. Now that the Zhou family is about to be destroyed, why did it appear?" Then thinking of himself, he said with tears in his eyes, "I am to man as the Lin is to the beast; the Lin appeared and died, and my Tao has come to an end." In fact, although Confucius's Tao has suffered a lot, it has not come to an end until today.

What is the relationship between Confucius and the unicorn? The Gleanings said, "When Confucius was not yet born, a unicorn spit out a jade book in the house of Que Li." That is to say, when Confucius was about to be born, the Qilin appeared and spat out a piece of square silk from its mouth, on which it was written, "The descendant of the water spirit, the king of the declining Zhou, the symbol of the wise and bright." The next day the sage Confucius was born.

If the dragon and phoenix is a symbol of the emperor, then the unicorn is more associated with the generals, such as Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty built the unicorn pavilion, recognizing the achievements of the ministers; Song Dynasty, there is a "thousands of people by the Confucian generals, a hundred beasts ambush the unicorn." The poem; Qing Dynasty military officials of the unicorn emblem is second only to the dragon pattern of the royal family; in folklore, there is a "unicorn send son" of the circulation, so that the family prosperity, it is said that it also evolved from the spitting scholar Kong Zi.

In the ancient auspicious patterns, in addition to the dragon and phoenix, there is also the unicorn. Wu Yue Spring and Autumn Annals says: "Yu raised ten thousand people, the phoenix perched in the tree, the unicorn steps in the court." This shows the peace at that time. There is an idiom called Wei Feng Xiang Lin (威凤祥麟), which refers to the majesty of the phoenix and the auspiciousness of the unicorn. Ancient people believed that the phoenix and the unicorn were both auspicious beasts, and that the presence of the phoenix and the unicorn together also symbolized the peace of the world. The phoenix and the unicorn mean that they are very rare.

What is the overseas counterpart of the unicorn? I searched the Encyclopedia Britannica, where it is directly replaced by pinyin, perhaps no corresponding animal was found. But in the online Encyclopedia of Mythology, it says that the Unicorn is called the Kirin in China, and that the Unicorn is also a mythical animal in the West, but the English-Chinese dictionaries do not use the word "unicorn", or "dragon horse". However, some dictionaries refer to it as "unicorn", while others translate it as "dragon horse", neither of which uses the word "unicorn" directly. In fact, unicorn and dragon horse are two animals in ancient Chinese legends, the former is literally translated; the latter takes its auspicious meaning: "Emperor Yao and his government, the dragon horse armored." Dragon and horse also refers to bringing about social peace. But in English there is another word called Monocerotis (unicorn constellation), next to the note is exactly Unicorn, so we take Unicorn and unicorn as a comparison, although it is called Dragon Horse, but it is really a western unicorn, its cultural function is similar and comparable to the Chinese unicorn.

According to the ancient Greek prophetic legend, the Dragon Horse is a fierce animal. Only when a virgin appeared in the place where it haunts, the Dragon Horse, seeing the virgin, will lose its wild nature, quietly crouching in front of the feet of the virgin. For this reason, it was also known as "the beast of purity". This story became a prophetic story in the early church, with some comparing Jesus to the dragon horse and his mother to the virgin. The Dragon Horse, called Reem in Hebrew and Monoderos in the Old Testament, meaning "one-horned" because of the spiraling horn in the center of its forehead, was a divine beast with the body of a horse, a goatee and a lion's tail. The body is white, the head is red, and the eyes are blue.

The dragon horse was first described in detail by the Greek historian Ctesias in 398 B.C. Based on traveler's accounts from India, he recorded the dragon horse as a "wild ass". Based on this account, it has been hypothesized that the original form of the dragon horse may have been a hybrid of the Indian rhinoceros, the Himalayan antelope, and the donkey.

In medieval Europe, it was widely believed that the horns of the dragon horse could protect against poisons in any liquid and cure diseases, so vessels with the mark of the dragon horse were good luck. There is a legend that a large group of animals were unable to drink because a pond was poisoned. The dragon horse came after defeating the elephant that was fighting with him and dipped his horn into the water, which was soon clean. The animals jumped for joy. Because of its legendary power and noble temperament, the Dragon Horse is not only preserved in a large number of European and Arabian art, it is also chosen as the patron saint of the British and Scottish royal families.

Although the legends of the Chinese and foreign dragons and phoenixes and unicorns have different origins and are not exactly the same in content, they are marked with their own cultural imprints, and the Chinese culture of the dragons and phoenixes and unicorns can be said to be even more intense, being a weaving of myths and histories. East and West of the phoenix and unicorn can be said to be the world identified with the auspicious beasts, but the dragon culture for my China alone, and y affected the other countries in the East.