1837 LEONE ED ALTRI ANIMALI
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6. Suanni: Legend says this creature can eat tigers and leopards.
http://english.visitbeijing.com.cn/t...215174893.html
Suanni (a kind of lion) A beast specific at eating tigers and leopards,
http://library.taiwanschoolnet.org/g...sh6685/4_3.htm
2. The sixth is the Suan Ni, is a beast can be eating tigers and leopards.
http://danci.911cha.com/狻猊.html
suan-ni mentioned in ancient Chinese books, as eating tigers and leopards,
https://archive.org/stream/notesonch...tgoog_djvu.txt
However, for su´nní (21) there is clear evidence in the ryă 爾雅 andthe Mù Ti´nzĭ zhuàn 穆天子傳 (two texts dating — at least in parts —from around the third century B.C.55), that the expression was used to designate the lion several centuries before the first attestation of shīzĭ. InOld Chinese texts, the term is basically a hapax compound, and only rarely reoccurs in pretentiously archaizing literature during the Middle Chinese and Modern periods. Cf. the following pre-Middle Chinese
attestations34) ryă (18.26, Xú ed.: 336): “狻麑如虥貓，食虎豹”“The su´nní is like a zhànm´o , a‘light-haired tiger fierce cat’, cf. 18.7]; it eats tigers and leopards.” 54) For a careful study of the ‘white tiger’ and its variants, proceeding from the assumption that all forms except (23) are derived by dimidiation from an under lying mono syllabic cluster-initial root, cf. Serruys (1967: 273-4). For a handy collection of classical references to these creatures see ryă yì (18: 185-6).55) See on this dating Mathieu (1978, 1993), Frühauf (1998-99) and Behr (1999)
http://www.iacd.or.kr/pdf/journal/09/9-01.pdf
https://books.google.com/books?id=ix...ers%22&f=false
The other intriguing reference, also mentioned in the paleography section, is the name of the animal in strip 18 which “eats tigers”: “狻猊食虎 ▄”. As mentioned above,this animal is generally agreed to be the Asiatic lion, “狻猊” being the transliteration that Prof. Li associates with a name for the lion brought in from a foreign language. In my opinion, the most compelling argument comes from the statement in the Han period text〈郭璞〉 which is virtually identical to the line in the “San de”: “狻猊，獅子，亦食虎, and the definition of “狻麑” in the 〈爾雅〉: “狻麑如虦貓，食虎豹. The title of the text comes from strip 1, line 5, which seems to be describing the“triad of powers” laid out in lines 1-3. The concept of “三德” is also defined in two major received works, the Shang Shu and Zhou Li, though these definitions are some what different than the triad found in the Shanghai Museum manuscript:
http://home.uchicago.edu/~jcarlsen/a...n_SanDe_MA.pdf
