The ‘karkadann’ was a mythical creature said to have lived on the grassy plains of which two countries?

The ‘karkadann’ was considered a mythical creature said to have lived on the grassy plains of India and Persia (modern day Iran). In both Arabic and Persian, the word ‘karkadann’ (multiple alternate spellings) also means rhinoceros.

Part of the myth includes the story that a ‘karkadann’ can be subdued by virgins and acts ferociously toward other animals. There are depictions of the animal found in North Indian art. It was first described in the 10th and 11th century as a mythical animal “with a shadowy rhinocerine ancestor endowed with strange qualities, such as a horn endowed with medicinal qualities”.

The Persian scholar Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (Al-Biruni 973-1048) describes a ‘karkadann’ as an animal which has “the build of a buffalo...a black, scaly skin; a dewlap hanging down under the skin. It has three yellow hooves on each foot...The tail is not long. The eyes lie low, father down the cheek than is the case with all other animals. On top of the nose there is a single horn which is bent upwards.”

Another 13th century Persian physician later connected the ‘karkadann’s’ horn with poison. In the 14th century, Ibn Battuta (1304-1368-1368), a Muslim Berber Moroccan scholar who travelled extensively, calls the rhinoceros he saw in India, a ‘karkadann’, and describes it as a ferocious beast, driving away from its territory animals as big as an elephant. This is the legend that is told in “One Thousand and One Nights”, in the ”Second Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor”.