国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

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4

part, treats the hydrographical problem of which Manasarovar forms the centre, and which has through centuries been the subject of a more or less well informed

discussion. But while Vol. I was chiefly devoted to Tibet in general, and, from its

peripheral regions, step by step became concentrated in the direction of the sacred lake and the sources of the great rivers, Vol. II is divided between the different

details of the problem in question. We have thus gradually proceeded from ge-

neral views to particulars, and the volume ends with my own observations, made at the two lakes, and at the sources of the Indus, the Satlej and the Brahmaputra. In his map of 1782, Major Rennell lets the Indus take its origin from the mountains West of Kashgar, and the Satlej from the southern side of the Hima-

layas. What is in reality the upper course of these rivers, is by him changed into source-rivers of the Ganges. He had certainly nothing better to do than to trust the Lamas of Rang Hi, who traced the origin of the Satlej from Rakas-tal, but had called the river the Ganges. Also Wilford who, at the beginning of the 19th century, collected all materials then existing regarding the geography of these parts, lets the Ganges take its origin from Manasarovar.

Elphinstone and Macartney tried in vain to solve the problem of the source of the Indus, while Webb and Raper in 1808 succeeded in penetrating to the true source of the Ganges on the southern side of the Himalaya, without knowing that this feat already had been achieved 184 years earlier by Andrade.

In 1812, Moorcroft at last penetrated to the two lakes, of which he gave an exceedingly valuable description. He confirmed that, at the said period, no river flowed out of Manasarovar, and his reliability was questioned from certain quarters, when Henry Strachey in 1846 and Richard Strachey in 1848 found a lively flow coming from the sacred lake. During the decades which have passed since then, different statements have apparently stood against each other. Some explorers have maintained that a current of water was running out from the lake, while others have positively denied the existence of such an outflow. At the time of both my visits, in 1907 and 1908, I found the outgoing channel dry, but I learnt from a reliable Mohammedan merchant at Leh, whose caravans every year take this road to Lhasa, that in 1909 to 1911 an abundant stream of water flowed from Manasarovar to Rakas-tal, while, in 1912 and 1913, these two lakes were again cut off

from each other.

With the support of all this material, I prove that the apparently contradictory statements in reality are standing in the greatest and most natural harmony with each other. The outflow from lake Manasarovar is a periodical phenomenon, whose