Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/471

 u s. xii. DEC. 11, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

463

J. B. BRAITHWAITE. I am possessed of a neat presentation copy of an Arabic Koran with fine gilt decorative " frontispiece " at the end opening. The following inscription appears in neat caligraphy : " J. B. Braith- waite from Abraham Ameerchanjants, Tiflis, 9th mo. 30th, 1883." Then underneath : " For a little sketch of his early life see Private Journal, pp. 26-31."

Can any clue be afforded as to the identity of recipient and donor ?

ANEUBIN WILLIAMS.

ENSIGNS IN THE ROYAL NAVY. I have been unable to find when ensigns were first introduced into the Royal Navy. Could any of your readers help me ? W. W.

EMPLOYMENT OF WILD BEASTS IN WARFARE.

(11 S. xii 140, 186, 209.)

ACCORDING to the Chinese ' History of the Later Han Dynasty,' written in the fifth century A.D., when Liu Hiuen levied war against Wang Mang, the usurper (23 A.D.), the latter sent his two generals, Wang Yih and Wang Tsin, to put down the rebellion. They created a captain, one Kii Wu-Pa, a remarkable giant ten feet of stature and stronger than three horses combined, and made him drive before their army tigers, leopards, rhinoceroses, and elephants, in order to aggrandize the display of its force. Notwithstanding, it was ruinously defeated by Liu Siu, subsequently the founder of the Later Han dynasty, who surprised it under cover of a very tremendous thunderstorm, putting into tremulous flight all the tigers and leopards.

The following account, already cited at 10 S. vii. 272, from Sie Chung-Chi's ' Wu-tsah- tsu,' written in 1610, I will produce now in extenso :

" Mount Shi-Chu in Fu-Tsing abounds with monkeys, which form many groups by hundreds or thousands. While General Tseh *Ki-Kwang stationed his troops there against the Japanese buccaneers, they used to espy and mimic the soldiers shoo ting. *%He caused several hundreds of them to be caught, bred well, and trained in the use of firearms. At the marauders' arrival, he laid an ambush in a hilly dale, and commanded his simian warriors to fire on their camp. Scarcely had they been terror-stricken by their earth- quaking volley, than the hidden soldiers appeared and slew them all. In olden times Chin Yin

repulsed the enemy by driving towards them elephants tied with burning fagots to their tails ; Tien Tan raised a siege by rushing among the besiegers more than a thousand oxen covered with red silk, painted dragon-like, and with naked swords and burning bundles of reeds fastened to their horns and tails ; Kiang Yu reduced to ashes all the hostile camps by flying thereto one hundred and odd cocks attached with flaming materials ; and now General Tseh well made use of his fiery monkeys thus illustrating how men of wisdom often take in a lesson from one another."

From the ' Yuen-kien-lui-han,' 1703, torn, ccxiii., we learn the ancient Chinese to have employed in warfare wild boars, antelopes, stags, swallows, sparrows, and pheasants, with ignited or inflammable substances attached to their necks or legs. Perhaps a similar fact gave rise to the Mahomedan legend of an attempted incursion to Mecca of an unbelieving Arabian army, discom- fited by the god- sent swallows that dropped burning hot stones upon its war-elephants and annihilated them (Chardin, * Voyages en Perse et autres lieux de 1 'Orient,' ed. Langles, Paris, 1811, torn. viiL p. 486).

According to the Japanese ' Taiheiki,' written about 1400, torn, xii., it happened in 1336 that the monkeys held sacred to Mount Hie gave a false alarm by the untimely tolls of a bell, which caused the Imperial army there beleaguered to fall on the enemy and overthrow them. Another Japanese work, ' Konjaku Monogatari,' written in the eleventh century, torn, xxix., gives a story of an old travelling merchant who had used at home to entertain bees with wine, and was saved from the danger when he met on a mountain a large band of bandits by their timely advent and mortal sting. Also the ' Jikkun Sho,' finished in 1252. relates how a certain Yogo no Taifu was beaten in a battle, hid himself in a grotto, there rescued a wild bee from a spider's web, and regained his castle with the help of a huge swarm of bees, which with their sting disqualified his foes for fight. It narrates, too, that Prince Munesuke (twelfth century) domesticated innumerable bees, which followed flying or alighted on his carriage at his command, and some of which he could call forth by their individual names to sting whomsoever he wished to chastise. From the Chinese translation by I-Tsing of the ' Mala-sar- vasti-vada-nikaya-nidana,' torn, iv., we learn the ancient Indians to have used bees in their defence of forts or their encounter with orsairs. On such occasions they threw among the enemy the earthen vessels en- closing a multitude of bees so violently, that they clashed and forced the maddened insects severely to sting the foes.