39
of the past showed that mo was a grey and white mammal with black limbs, thick hide and short hair. It ate leaves and fruit, was said to be tame, slept by day and roamed about by night. Unfortunately, however, this animal turned out to be a native of Malaya, Java and South America, but was unknown in China. Further investigations found it to be a member of the tapir family, Tapirus indicus, thus not a panda at all.
The other version of the animal called mo offered more possibilities. A monumental work compiled by Li Shizhen (1518-1593) during the sixteenth century, Studies of Animals, Minerals and Plants, a compendium that was a great deal more than a mere pharmacopoeia, had included all information on the world of nature Li had found in ancient Chinese texts as well as data he had gathered on his own. This work and its contents had been known through the scholarly world in Asia and Europe since its publication. A copy had been brought to Japan and made available to scholars there. Several editions in Japanese were subsequently published. The contents were included in Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza's Historia, which was printed in Rome in 1585. (This work, incidentally, was brought back into China by Portuguese missionaries in a later century). Further, the Historia was translated into English in 1588 as Historie of the Great and Mightie Kingdom of China, Part I, Book III, Chapter XII.
Even better for scholars in search of an ancestor of the modern giant panda, the mo in Li's work was a native of Sichuan. It subsisted on a diet of bamboo and plantain.
Only, alas, its colouring was said to be yellow and black.
Of more comfort, on the other hand, were Erya and the Book of Odes. Both proclaimed the mo to be a "white and black leopard, resembling a white bear with a small head and large body, which licks plantain plants but eats exclusively bamboo". Despite several contradictions in this definition, it was possible to think of the mo as the giant panda, with certain reservations, of course.
Problems arose when an illustration in the Synthesis of Books and Illustrations showed the mo to be a rather fantastic being with spotted body, long limbs, wolf's ears and a trunk like an elephant. This version