Mo () was the Chinese name for the giant panda from the 3rd century BCE to the 19th century CE. In 1824, the French sinologist Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat misidentified the as the black-and-white Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus). Chinese woodblocks depict the as having an elephant trunk, rhinoceros eyes, cow tail and tiger paws, following the description of 9th-century Tang poet Bai/Bo Juyi. Abel-Rémusat's interpretation was adopted in Western zoology, and later accepted as modern scientific fact in China and Japan. In the 20th century, since had lost its original meaning, the giant panda was given a new Chinese name .
Zoology
The giant panda or panda bear (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is a large, black and white bear native to mountainous forests in South Central China. Its habitat is mainly in Sichuan, but also in neighboring Shaanxi and Gansu. The panda's coat is mainly white with black fur on its ears, eye patches, muzzle, shoulders, and legs. Despite its taxonomic classification as a carnivoran, the giant panda's diet is primarily herbivorous, consisting almost exclusively of bamboo.
The Malayan tapir or Asian tapir (Tapirus indicus) is a black and white odd-toed ungulate, somewhat piglike in appearance, and with a long flexible proboscis. Its habitat includes southern Myanmar, southern Vietnam, southwestern Thailand, the Malay Peninsula, and Sumatra. The animal's coat has a light-colored patch that extends from its shoulders to its buttocks, and the rest of its hair is black, except for the white-rimmed tips of its ears. The Malayan tapir is exclusively herbivorous, and eats the shoots and leaves of many plant species.
Zooarchaeology reveals that fossil bones of Ailuropoda and Tapirus occurred in Pleistocene animal remains in Southern China region.(Harper 2013: 191) The giant panda and tapir continued to occupy the lowlands and river valleys of Southern China until the Pleistocene and Holocene boundary, around 10,000 years before present.(Harper 2013: 193) Tapir fossils have been found in an emperor's tomb Xi'an in southern China, dating from 2200 years ago.
Shang dynasty animal remains excavated at Anyang, Henan included Tapirus but not Ailuropoda. Two tapir mandibular fragments are the only instance of Pleistocene or Holocene tapirs found so far north. The paleontologists Teilhard de Chardin and Yang Zhongjian believed the tapir bones were evidence of a Shang import from the south, and they are the "last zoological evidence of human-tapir contact in China, occurring in a zoogeographic region never inhabited by the tapir".(Harper 2013: 193)
The circa 13th to 11th centuries BCE Shang oracle bones, which constitute the earliest known corpus of ancient Chinese writing, include some Oracle bone script tentatively identified as < ( or glyphs. According to Harper, these Shang oracle and Zhou bronze inscriptions were more likely a name for a clan or place than a wild animal.(Harper 2013: 194–195)
Western zoologists first learned of both the Malayan tapir and giant panda in the 19th century. In January 1816, Major William Farquhar, the Resident of Malacca, sent the first account of the Malayan tapir to the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland with drawings of the animal and its skeleton. However, he did not assign a binomial name for the "tapir of Malacca", and Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest coined Tapirus indicus in 1819.(Lydekker 1900: 31) In December 1816, G. J. Siddons discovered a young tapir in British Bencoolen, Sumatra that he shipped to The Asiatic Society in Calcutta.(Maxwell et al. 1909: 100–102) The French naturalist Pierre-Médard Diard, who studied under Georges Cuvier, read Farquahr's account, examined Siddons's tapir in the Governor's menagerie at Barrackpore, and sent a description to Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest in Paris, who published an account of the tapir in 1819.(Seton 1820: 422–424, Farquhar et al. 2010 :26-27)
In 1869, the French Lazarist priest Armand David (1826–1900) acquired a specimen of a giant panda that hunters in Sichuan captured alive, which was killed and shipped to Paris for study. He coined the giant panda's original binomial name Ursus melanoleucus (from Latin and Ancient Greek "black and white bear") and the corresponding French name ours blanc et noir.(David 1869 5: 13) The first Westerner known to have seen a living giant panda is the German zoologist Hugo Weigold, who purchased a cub in 1916. Kermit and Theodore Roosevelt Jr., became the first foreigners to shoot a panda, on a 1929 expedition funded by the Field Museum of Natural History. In 1936, Ruth Harkness became the first Westerner to bring back a live giant panda, which went to live at the Brookfield Zoo.(Harper 2013: 186, 214)
Terminology
Chinese has numerous names for the "giant panda" ranging from Old Chinese ( or ) to Modern Standard Chinese . Note that Old and Middle Chinese reconstructions are from William H. Baxter and Laurent Sagart (2014).
Mo The standard "giant panda" name is written with several graphic variant characters.
< Middle Chinese < Old Chinese ( or , giant panda) are phono-semantic compound characters that combine the phonetic component < < (, "no; nothing; not") with the semantic indicators "predatory beast" or "dog" .
< < ( or ) was an "ancient ethnonym for non-Chinese people in northeast China" (cf. Korean Maek () people), which was sometimes used as a homophonous phonetic loan character to write < < (, "panda"). The graphs combine the "predatory beast" semantic indicator with < < (, "hundred") and < < (, "each") phonetic components— is usually pronounced < < meaning "racoon dog". Chinese characters for non-Chinese ("barbarian") peoples frequently used these "beast" and "dog" semantic indicators as ethnic slurs (see Graphic pejoratives in written Chinese).
These panda-name variants and were easily distinguished from context. The notion of "whiteness" is a common factor among names for the black-and-white "giant panda". < () has a variant or (), with a < < () phonetic component. The earliest dictionary definition of is < (, see the below). Chinese auspicious creatures were frequently white, such as the and below.(Harper 2013: 218)
Paleography confirms that early graphs for < ( or ) occur in bronze script on Chinese bronze inscriptions from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE) and Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–256 BCE), and in seal script standardized during the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). The ancient bronze and seal scripts combine an animal pictograph semantic indicator with a phonetic component written with double or "grass" and "sun" elements, but the bottom "grass" was changed to "big" in the modern phonetic .
The Old Chinese etymology of < () words connected with < ().(Schuessler 2007: 390, 393) In 5th and 4th century BCE southern Chu manuscripts excavated in Hubei, < () was used to write "animal pelt".(Chen 2004: 251)
Other panda names The giant panda has some additional Chinese names. Ancient myths that pandas can eat iron and copper led to the appellation . The Chinese variety spoken in the main panda habitat of Sichuan has names of and , (reiterating "whiteness" mentioned above), which is now the usual Chinese name for the "polar bear".(Harper 2013: 191)
The modern Standard Chinese name , which was coined from the taxonomic genus Ailuropoda from Neo-Latin ailuro- "cat". The related name refers to the lesser or red panda (Ailurus fulgens) native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China.
Associated names
Besides the above panda-specific terms there are several related animal names.
In early Chinese zoological terminology, the < ( was considered a kind of < (). The below defines as < * (.
< () or < () was a "mythical fierce grey and white tiger- or bear-like animal" that scholars have associated with the giant panda. The defines as < () and its young is called < (). Guo Pu's commentary gives an alternate name of < (), and groups with tigers and leopards (). The entry links with the northeastern region Mo ( or , also used for "panda"): "Belongs to the group leopard (), comes from the country Mo (). 'The says, "offer as a gift that pelt ()", and the says, "like tiger like ." is a ferocious beast ." Three entries after this one, the is said to have come from Shu in the southwest. Thus, in pre-Han and Han texts the words and "did not denote the same animal and cannot be the giant panda".(Harper 2013: 219)
< () was a regional product that the northeastern Yi people of Lingzhi (present day Hebei) submitted to the Zhou court, according to the pre-Han . The 3rd century commentator Kong Chao () referred to the definition of as or in a variant text reading, and defined as or . However, since came from northeast of China it is unlikely that the referent was the giant panda from the southwest.(Harper 2013: 217)
< () is an obscure animal name that could be related to the . The and have the phrase " generates , generates horse, horse generates humankind" () in a passage on cyclical processes. A medieval quotation from the lost book Shizi said was equivalent with the standard Chinese name and the Yue (southeast coastal region) regional name . The commentator Shen Gua (1031–1095) said the ancient meaning might be the same as the contemporary usage in Yanzhou (in present-day Shaanxi), where was the local word for . Harper concludes that even if we assume the quotation is authentic, the information that , , and were ancient synonyms in regional languages is not evidence that any of them referred to the giant panda.(Harper 2013: 217)
< () is an iron-eating animal related to the . It is recorded in the , compiled by the Daoist Wang Jia (d. 390 CE) from apocryphal histories. "The cunning hare found on Kunwu Mountain is shaped like rabbit, the male is yellow and the female white, and it eats cinnabar, copper, and iron. Anciently, when all the weapons in the King of Wu's armory went missing, they dug into the ground and discovered two hares, one white and one yellow, and their stomachs were full of iron, which when cast into weapons would cut jade like mud. The cunning hare is in the panda category." ().
Mo giant panda Chinese texts have described the "giant panda" for over two millennia.
Erya The circa 4th or 3rd century BCE Erya lexicon section defines as a . The snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is an alternate identification of this "white leopard".(Read 1931, no. 352) The commentary by Guo Pu (276–324) says the , (tr. adapted from Harper 2013: 185, 205) The next two definitions of animal names are parallel with : < () is a < (); < () is a < (). Guo's commentary says the names referred to white-colored and black-colored tigers, not zoologically different animals. Unlike the giant panda's familiar cultural identity and history, neither nor occurs in any early texts besides the .(Harper 2013: 216)
Shanhai jing The c. 3rd or 2nd century BCE (Classic of Mountains and Seas) mytho-geography does not directly mention , but says one mountain has panda-like , and Guo Pu's 4th century CE commentary to another mountain says it was the habitat of pandas.
The description of says, "On its summit are quantities of granular cinnabar . The River Cinnabar rises here and flows north to empty into the River Rapids. Among the animals on this mountain are numerous wild leopards . Its birds are mostly cuckoos ."(tr. Birrell 2000: 15) Guo Pu says, "The ferocious leopard resembles the bear but is smaller. Its fur is thin and brightly glossy; it can eat snakes and eat copper and iron; it comes from Shu. Alternatively, the graph is written ." ().(tr. Harper 2013: 220) The sub-commentary of Hao Yixing () identifies < () or < () as the similarly pronounced < ().