The Omen Beast That Europe Filed as a Unicorn

The qilin is a Chinese omen animal whose appearance announces the coming or the passing of a sage or a just ruler. Tradition attaches one to the birth of Confucius and records the capture of a wounded qilin shortly before his death, an event the Spring and Autumn Annals mark as the point at which the sage laid down his brush. It is a composite, variously given the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, scales, and a single soft horn, and so gentle that it is said to tread on no living grass and harm no insect, the opposite of a predator.

Two later identifications should be separated. The Japanese kirin is the same creature under another name (and, later, a beer brand). And when the admiral Zheng He's fleet brought a giraffe back to the Ming court in 1414, it was presented as a living qilin, its horns and gentle bearing fitting the description, a court identification serving the politics of auspicious omens, not a folk belief, and one that says more about Ming statecraft than about zoology.