208 TIBET IN EUROPEAN BOOKS AND NARRATIVES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
As the magnificent atlas of JEAN BLAEU, of which the eleventh volume I appeared in 1663, was an »encyclopedia cartographica and geographica», we cannot expect to find any new information about our regions in it, no more than in the compilations of Sanson, Visscher, Coronelli, and others. The maps are brought together from different authors and epochs; maps from Iansson's and Sanson's offices are seen at the side of such from Ortelius, and others. The same is the case with the text where several paragraphs are more than a hundred years old, and uncritically accepted as true. India is said to be bordered to the north by branches from Mount Taurus, or Imae, a part of Caucasus. The most famous rivers of India, Indus and Ganges, take their origin »from Mount Imae, called by its inhabitants Dalanguer & Naugracot, & are born, according to the opinion of the natives, from one and the same source; in spite of the distance between their mouths being 300 lieues».2
All the rivers of »Pang Ab», so far as they were known in 1663, are enumerated from different travellers. The part of the Imae where Ganges has its source, is known as Montagnes Ussontes. Caximir has the kingdom of Rebat to the east. Then follows, from Iarric, the notion of the source of Chenab as situated in Kashmir, and from authors quoted above, the comparison between the climate of Kashmir and Tibet. Blaeu's volume was published the year after Grueber's return, but the uncertainty about the situation of Tibet is still very great. Having placed the Kingdom of Rebat east of Kashmir, the compilator of this text says of the province of Thebeth, the capital of which is also called Thebeth, that it confines, on one side with the countries of Sindinfu and Caindu, and on the other with Mangi or China, where Marco Polo is his source. The province is said to be great but much devastated by the Tartars. A few pages further on we meet a third Tibet, the Kingdom of Thibethe, bordering upon the dominions of Mogor and specially Kashmir, and being separated from it by very high mountains, which, on account of the snow, cannot be crossed except at certain seasons of the year. »Beyond it is the Little Kingdom of Thibethe under the power of the Moors of the sect of Sofi. The residence of the King is called Babgo.»3 One feels quite at a loss when the compilator tells us that the inhabitants of this last edition of Tibet are all Christians, and have many churches, and a bishop called Lamhao, — all rumours current amongst the Jesuits at Goa, and giving an impulse and a reason to the journeys of Goës and Andrade. Already before Goës' start, these rumours had been proved to be fables by the famous Father M. Ricci.
When Blaeu's compilator gives the boundaries of China he says that it has »Tibet» to the west. We have therefore in one and the same work a Kingdom Rebat, a province Thebeth, a Kingdom Thibethe, a Little Kingdom Thibethe, and
I Onziéme volume de la Geographie Blaviane, contenant l'Asie. Amsterdam, Jean Blaeu 1663, p. 163, 219, 25o et seq.
2 This is taken from Barros in Ramusio, p. 427, c.: Et secondo la fama delle genti circonuicine, si crede the ambi dui naschino da vn medesimo fonte.
3 By Little Tibet Baltistan ought to be meant. But Babgo sounds more like Badgao, a city in Nepal, later on known from the journeys of Desideri and the Capuchins.
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