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『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

THE GENOESE MAP OF THE WORLD. - FRA MAURO.   175

notions, especially from the discoveries of CONTI, though I cannot see any greater

difference from Ptolemy than in the case of the Indus. The three feeders, Jumna,

Ganges and Gaghra (?), come down from the great water-parting range; a right

tributary from the S.W. may be the Son, and the two great tributaries from the

east may be intended for the Brahmaputra and Barak, if not, as Fischer suggests, the

northern one should represent the Irrawaddi, for Ava is situated on its banks and a

legend, »maius gange am(nis) aliter daua dicitur», is taken from Conti. So far as

I can see, the northern tributary can therefore under no conditions be the Brahma-

putra. In spite of this mistake by the cosmographer his map is in these regions far

superior to that of Fra Mauro, which shows a hopeless confusion in the hydrography.'

Between the Indus and the Ganges is the lake, of which Conti, as recorded in RA-

MUSIO's collection, has some stories to tell and of which he says that the whole re-

gion drinks of its water. Fischer identifies it with the lakes of Udaipur and Debar.

At the mouth of the Ganges is a city called Berngalia. The eastern part of the

great range Fischer suggests to be the mountains of eastern Tibet, though they are

more likely meant to correspond to the eastern ranges of the Himalayan system.

On our reproduction, Pl. XII, the legends are illegible, but only a few of them

may be of some interest. Along the northern range with its several towers we read:

has turres con(struxit) presbiter Johannes rex ne inclusis ... ad eum patet accessus».2

The range is also adorned with a gate, from which the Ganges issues. The

five feeders of the Indus come down from the »porta ferrea: ubi Alexander Trataros

in(clusit)». On the part of the map which corresponds to the present Tibet and at

the side of the golden image of a kneeling king the following legend was still visible

in the 18th century: »rex Cambalech hic (?) est magnus canis».3

Imaus montes inaccessibiles is a great range which starts from the western end

of the principal range and runs to the N.E. To the east of it is Scythia ultra

Imaum montem and still further east two other ranges called montes inaccessibiles.

In this region, which in later years went under the denomination Great Tartaria, a

legend reads: »Hic adeo . . . habitantur ex ebreorum g ... t ... ne (generatione)

tribus decem (r)ec(lus e) qui leges suae ... gener.» These degenerated Hebrew tribes,

as well as the Magog in the eastern part of the region, were the Tartars, who had

been excluded by Alexander.

There are no traces of Marco Polo who, some 170 years before, had trav-

elled through the whole of »Scythia ultra Imaum montem».

In 1457 to 1459 FRA MAURO, the learned Camaldolensian from Murano, drew

a map of the world (Pl. XIII), which, though famous, was, so far as Asia is con-

I Compare also: Zurla: Di Marco Polo e degli altri Viaggiatori Veneziani ... Vol. II, p. 345, Venezia, 1819.

2 Épilogue de la Géographie de moyen age étudiée par Joachim Lelewel, Bruxelles, 1857, p. 169.

3 Heinrich Wuttke: Zur Geschichte der Erdkunde in der letzten Hälfte des Mittelalters . . . VI. und VII. Jahresbericht des Vereins für Erdkunde zu Dresden. Dresden 187o, p. 47.