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

36

PTOLEMY.

According to Ptolemy the sources of the Indus are situated in the country of the Daradr e, which is mountainous and higher than all other countries. Both the Indus and the Ganges and their tributaries are represented by him as coming from the southern side of Paropamisus and Imaus. In this respect Ptolemy has not proceeded any farther 'than Strabo and all the rest of his predecessors.

The Satlej is one of the three rivers which will especially occupy our attention in this work. It had escaped the knowledge of Alexander's historians as the Greeks did not reach so far. But Ptolemy has it and locates its source as the easternmost of the tributaries of the Indus. With the source of the Zadadros or çatadru, we have, however, only to understand that part of the river which traverses the mountainous country immediately above Jalandhâra. I It would require a very long time before European geographers advanced beyond Ptolemy regarding the situation of the source of the Satlej. Even on a map published by Major RENNELL so late as in 1800, the source of the river has the same situation in relation to the mountains as on Ptolemy's map.2

On the accompanying Pl. I is Ptolemy's representation of the Indus, and on Pl. II that of the Ganges. They are facsimiles from the Codex Constantinoj5olitanus the maps of which, in 1901, were photographed by Dr. F. MARTIN for Baron A. E. NORDENSKIÖLD, and a complete set of photographs is kept in the Royal Library at Stockholm. The general outlines of the Indus and the Ganges on this map are nearly the same as on other Ptolemxan maps, for instance the edition Ptoloniæus Revue 1490.3

East of the Ganges (Pl. III) Ptolemy has a mountain range called Bepyrrus. Generally his ideas of the Eastern Himalaya are confused, for this Bepyrrus is no doubt meant to be a part of the Eastern Himalaya. He also shows some of the rivers in this region as coming down from different ranges, though he has not been able to place the ranges in a correct relation to each other. From Bepyrrus two nameless Gangetic tributaries flow westwards. Saint-Martin suggests that they may be the Kâouçikî and the Gandakî or the Tistâ. Farther east we find a range called Damasi, giving rise to the river Daona, which has also a western source in the Bepyrrus.4

I SAINT-MARTIN, IOC. Cit. Deuxième Memoire, p. 372. SAINT-MARTIN adds the following

reflexion : car la source réelle de ce grand affluent est très-loin de là dans l'intérieur du Tibet, a peu de distance des sources du Sindh.

2 The Geographical system of HERODOTUS   . p. 229.

3 Vide Pl. III, which shows a part of it in reproduction. The maps of the Codex have not been published before, but they have, as Dr. CURT FISCHER of Dresden tells me, very little scientific value.

Regarding the manuscript to which the maps belong Dr. Fischer writes: »Die 2 Kartenblätter stammen aus einer Constantinopolitanischen Handschrift (Nr. 27 der griechischen Handschriften der Serailbibliothek.) Die Handschriftg ehört dem XV. Jahrh. an, ist auf Papier geschrieben und zählt 112 Blätter ...D As

illustrations of the situation of the sources of the two rivers in relation to the mountains north of them the maps will always be of a certain interest to us.

4 Loc. cit. Troisième Mémoire: Le bassin du Gange. P. 185. Vivien de Saint-Martin expresses the following opinion: »Il suffit d'un coup d'oeil sur la carte pour voir que, d'après cette