This carving may represent the story of the Han Dynasty statesman and traveler, Zhang Qian, floating down the Yangtze river in a boat in the form of a hollow log. This was a popular theme during the late Ming and early Qing period and can be seen in other rhinoceros horn carvings of the period: one in the Shanghai Museum, signed Bao Tiancheng (a Ming Dynasty artist), included in the exhibition, Treasures from the Shanghai Museum, 6,000 Years of Chinese Art, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, May-September 1983, Catalogue no. 21; one from the collection of Dr. Ip Yee included in the exhibition, Ten Centuries of Chinese Rhinoceros Horn Carving, International Asian Antiquities Fair, Hong Kong, May 12-15, 1982, Catalogue no. 34; and another in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, illustrated by Soame Jenyns, Chinese Art III, New York, 1982, no. 143. Three other vessels of this type are illustrated by Bo Gyllensvard, "Two Yuan Silver Cups and Their Importance for Dating Some Carvings in Wood and Rhinoceros Horn", B.M.F.E.A., No. 43, 1971, pp. 223-233, pls. 4 and 5. Compare, also, the similar vessel from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections sold in these rooms, December 1, 1994, lot 17

In the exhibition Catalogue, Chinese Art Under the Mongols: The Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), Cleveland Museum of Art, 1968, the entry for no. 37, a silver representation of this theme, suggests an alternative identification of the figure as Taiyi Zhenren, an important Tang deity, as oppossed to the traditional identification of Zhang Qian