The Gibbon in China: An Essay in Chinese Animal Lore

The main text is divided into three parts, treating the subject-matter in chronological order. Part I describes the earliest data available, from ca. 1500 B.C. till the beginning of the Han dynasty, 202 B.C. Part II deals with the early centuries of our era, and gives a general picture of the gibbon as he appears in the literature of the T’ang dynasty which ended in 907 A.D. Part III is mainly concerned with pictorial representations of the gibbon in the art of the Sung, Yuan and Ming dynasties. The survey ends with the beginning of the Ch’ing dynasty, in 1644 A.D.; for after that date the gibbon became so rare in China that what is written about him is largely repetitious. An appendix gives a brief account of the gibbon in Japan.