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

288   FATHER TIEFFENTHALER, FATHER GAUBIL AND ANQUETIL DU PERRON.

The whole aspect of the river, and its meridional running in long bends is rather good. We find Taklakot on the left bank, not as now on the right one. The Gagra of Tieffenthaler is in its upper parts called Map-chu, lower down Karnali, Kauriala.

Ritter has no high opinion of the maps drawn by natives. I

But when he says that now (1833), as we know the real hydrography of the place, it is easy to explain the mistakes of the Lama map and the Hindu map of Tieffenthaler, he is wrong and too much influenced by Moorcroft. Ritter could not know that although the Lama map was quite a different thing than Moorcroft's map, both were perfectly correct, depending on the periodical changes taking place in precipitation. And still he suspects the possibility of a periodicity.

The big map of the Jesuit Father has the following title: Carte Générale du Cours du Gange et du Gagra, dressée sur les Cartes ftarticulières du P. Tiefen-thaler ... Par M. Anquetil du Perron, Paris 1781.

Anquetil du Perron has only digested the material brought home by Tieffenthaler, and as the material is provided by ordinary pilgrims, and the two European scholars have never been to the place, the result cannot be expected to be particularly good. On Fig. III (Pl. LII) we read the legend: »Calqué sur l'Original fait par un Indien». I will now try to show that this map, made by a Hindu, in spite of its terrible errors, is still an important and valuable document. The Hindu has written some explanations in Persian, and Anquetil has added some observanda of his own.

Beginning from the east, we find a big river issuing from the Mansaroar, and the following Persian words written along it: Dariaï taraf Neijal raftéh, or the river that goes in the direction of Nepal. And Anquetil du Perron adds: »It is said that the Brahmaputra, which goes to Ascham and Rangamati, issues from this lake». The Lama explorers would never have made themselves guilty of such a grave error. The Indian explorer of Tieffenthaler or his predecessor in Akbar's time has wandered round the lake close to the water's edge, for the pilgrims keep as near as possible to the brim of the sacred lake; so he has seen and crossed all the

I He says : »Alles, was über die Vergleichung dieser scheinbar officiellen und doch in jeder Hinsicht zwar nicht ganz falschen, aber doch nur halbwahren Chinesischen Daten der Tübetischen Lama's, mit eben so halbwahren durch Hindu-Pilger verfertigten Original-Kartenzeichnungen, von den Gangesquellen, mit Erläuterungen in Persischer Sprache, welche beide der Pater Tieffenthaler aus Hindostan nach Europa gesandt hatte, sich nur sagen lässt ...», well all that is to be said of these maps, has already been pointed out by Anquetil du Perron.

The following golden words which Ritter adds are as true nowadays as they have ever been: »Möge jener scharfsinnig und mit vieler Gelehrsamkeit geführte Streit über beiderlei Darstellungen der Ganges-Quellen, in Behauptung der Hypothesen auf geographischem Felde behutsam machen, um das an fruchtbaren Thatsachen so überreiche Feld der Erdkunde nicht noch durch unfruchtbare Hypothesen und Consequenzen, daraus über Dinge, die man noch nicht genau wissen kann, zu überschwemmen; ... eine einzige positive Beobachtung an Ort und Stelle klärt alle Zweifel schneller und besser auf, als Probabilitäten, die wir darüber aufstellen könnten.» Die Erdkunde von Asien, Band II, p. 476 et seq.