ARRIAN AND THE GREAT CONTINENTAL MOUNTAIN SYSTEM. 33
between the rivers flowing to the Indian Ocean and those which direct their course northwards. Later years have shown that the great water-parting is far more complicated than the ancient geographers believed.
The quotations from different writers of Greek and Roman antiquity given above will be sufficient to represent the standpoint of the knowledge about southern Asia which existed in those days. Tibet, or rather what we mean under the signification the Tibetan Highland» was completely unknown. None of the classical writers seems to have had the slightest suspicion of this enormous upheaval of the earth's crust, in fact the highest and largest in the interior of any continent. Of the sacred lake there is, therefore, of course, no sign. If it be correct that the Oedanes of Artemidorus and Strabo, and the Dyardenes of Curtius, are one and the same river and identical with the lower Brahmaputra, this great river should at least have been known to the ancients. But this is doubtful. So much is perfectly sure that the upper, Tibetan course of the river Tsangpo, remained unknown to them. What they knew comparatively well was the southern front of the Himalaya, and the Indus and Ganges from the points, where these rivers emerged from the mountains.
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