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

THE LAMA SURVEYORS IN TIBET.

265

Lhasa was ravaged and all the temples plundered of their immense treasures. All the Lamas that were found were put into sacks and carried away to Tartary on camels. The surveying Lamas, the authors of the map, were also very nearly taken prisoners. As soon as these Lamas heard of the approach of Tsevang's army, they made haste to finish their work. They had just returned from the source of the Ganges when they heard that a hostile army had entered Tibet, and then they thought only of saving themselves. Du Halde believes that if that had not happened, they would have been able to proceed still further.'

Here du Halde, or rather Régis whose annotations he uses, has made a mistake. Dalai Khan (Talai han) was the grandson of Gushi Khan (Couchi han), the prince of the Khoshots who had settled down in the province of Dam north of Lhasa. But it was the son of Dalai Khan, LATSANG KHAN, who was beaten in Tibet during the Dsungarian invasion.2 The Dsungars under Tseringdondob, who was the general of Tsevang Rabtan's (Tse yang raptan's) troops, had probably already ravaged Tibet for some time, when they conquered Lhasa by storm at the close of November 1717, although Father GEORGI says: »Anno tandem 1717 ire jubet, exercitus, alterum in Scelingam ad Lhamam educendum, alterum in Tibetum ad urbem Lhassam capiendam.» 3 For this second army under Tseringdondob had gone through a good many hardships before it achieved the conquest of Lhasa. KÖPPEN relates that it travelled over extremely difficult and dangerous roads through the mountains south of Khotan and entered Tibet from the north, which is a very difficult task even for an ordinary caravan. The army is reported to have taken the Tengri-nor road and passed through defilés farther south on chain bridges without meeting any resistance, as the old Latsang Khan did not believe in their hostile intentions. Other sources give the version that Tseringdondob was beaten by the Tibetans, and finally was only successful on account of several Tibetan princes going over to him.

Now, as the Lama map was brought to the Emperor in 1717, it is hard to see how the Lamas could have met any difficulties from the Dsungarians who captured Lhasa only at the close of November in the same year, unless the enemy had been plundering the country for some time before that date.4

7 DU HALDE, loc. cit. p. 465.

2 KÖPPEN : Die Lamaische Hierachie und Kirche. Berlin 1859. Bd II, p. 190 et seq.

3 Alphabetum Tibetanum, p. 334. That part of the army which was sent to Si-ning (Scelinga) with the object of liberating the Dalai Laina, was almost annihilated by the Chinese.

4 E. HAENISCH gives us the following description of the warlike events which took place in Tibet at that period. (Bruchstücke aus der Geschichte Chinas unter der gegenwärtigen Dynastie, von E. Haenisch. T'oung pao Vol. XII, Leide 191 I, p. 197 et seq.) In the middle of the seventeenth century the prince of the Khoshots, Gushi Khan, had conquered the district of Koko-nor and Tibet, and expressed, by a special mission to Emperor T'ai Tsung, his submission under China, on account of which the Manchus regarded Tibet as one of their dependencies. But only from the conquest of Potala by the generals Galbi and Jansin, in the autumn of 1720, when a garrison was placed in Lhasa, may the Chinese suzerainity over Tibet be said to be settled. There exist some detailed Chinese works on the campaign against the Dsungarians, from the first military dispositions in the summer 1717 until the Chinese

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