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

RENAT'S ADVENTURES IN KALMUK CAPTIVITY.

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is not a rival of Prshevalskiy in the discovery of Lop-nor. For if Renat ever was at Lop-nor, it was at the old, Chinese lake, while Prshevalskiy discovered the southern, Kara-koshun, 1 io years after the journeys of d'Espinha, d'Arocha and Hallerstein. Even before the journeys of these missionaries, DE GUIGNES had, from Chinese sources, told Europe some important truths about the geography of Lop-nor and its rivers.' He speaks of two or three rivers rising in the »mountains to the west»:

L'une, soit que le terrein n'ait pas assez de pente, soit que les sables accumulés en empêchent le cours, s'arrête & se perd au milieu du dessert. Les deux autres vont plus loin, & après s'être réunies, elles se jettent dans un grand lac appellé Lop, qui est situé dans la partie la plus basse de tout ce grand terrein.

The first river is Khotan-darya, the two others Yarkand- and Aksu-darya. That Kashgar-darya is not meant can be seen by the following words : 2 Dans les mêmes montagnes Tçung-ling vers Yerken il sort un grand fleuve qui va se rendre dans celui qui part d'Aksou, l'un & l'autre se jettent dans le lac de Lop.

A new glimpse of the wonderful adventurous life of Lieutenant J. G. Renat is given us in a very able article by SIGRID LEIJONHUFVUD about his wife BRIGITTA SCHERZENFELDT, who was born in southern Sweden in 1684, and thus, 26 years younger than her third husband, Renat.3 She accompanied her first husband during the Russian campaign of Charles XII, and became a prisoner. At the fortress of Yamishoff, where her second husband was killed, she came into Kalmuk captivity. Here she made the acquaintance of Renat who became her third husband. She accompanied him back to Sweden and died in Stockholm in 1736. In her »personalia 4 we are told that she got a very high and honoured position at the court of the Kalmuk princesses. When one of them was to get married to a grandson of Ayuka Khan, Mrs Renat was sent to Little Bokharia to buy all necessary equipment for the wedding, which was to take place three years later. She passed two years in Gerken or Yarkand, and as she, a woman, could travel about in the then unknown heart of Asia, it would not be surprising if her husband, who had a still

been copied by a Kalmuk from the Chinese original, and this as well as the other map has, on my request, been given to me by the Songar Regent when I left, and this (map) he has himself made of his country. Though I should have been able to enter many names of mountains and rivers which are to be found there, I have, however, preferred to deliver it such as I received it from the Regent personally, — as I have found, on other maps, names of both places and rivers, of which I, during my 17 years living there, have heard and seen nothing., Uppsala Universitets Biblioteks handskriftssamling, G: zo: a. (Bref till och fran G. Benzelstierna). The original map is thus Chinese and copied by a Kalmuk. But probably the Jesuits in Peking have given it its European habitus, which it already had when it came into the hands of Professor Delisle. With the topography of the map Renat had nothing at all to do. Therefore it does not give us any indication about the journeys of Renat.

I Histoire générale des Huns, Paris 1756. Tome II, Introduction, p. V.

2 Ibidem p. XXXIX.

3 Två kvinnoöden från karolinska tiden. Nordisk Tidskrift, Stockholm '907, 2:dra häftet, p. 45

4 Personalier öfwer Lieutenantens of Kongl. Maij:tz artillerie Regemente Herr Johan Gustav Renats i Lifztiden Kier Elskelige Hus Fru och Maka, Fru Brigitta Schersenfeldt.

et seq.