CHAPTER I.
MAJOR RENNELL'S MAP, 1782.
On Major RENNELL's famous and beautiful map of India, I which was published both in the French and German editions of Bernoulli's work, southern Tibet is also entered.
The Indus or Sinde River is supposed to rise from the mountains situated west of Kashgar (Cashgur), and the Satlej, as a comparatively small river, to start from the southern side of the Himalayas. The real upper Indus, passing Latac, is turned down to the Ganges and the real upper Satlej likewise. This is an artificial >capture» of river-courses that looks very strange on the map: the Ganges has captured the upper courses of the Indus and the Satlej. The great Surveyor General in Bengal had really no other sources to consult than the survey of Emperor Kang Hi's Lamas, carried out some 7o years earlier. We have seen that the Lamas never went westwards from the lakes, so the whole of this part of Rennell's map had to be built up on the hypotheses of people who had never been to the country in question.
It is not easy to find out what Rennell really believed in this matter. In his text he describes the Indus as formed of some ten principal streams descending from the Persian and Tartarian mountains on the N.E. and N.W. The Ain-i-Akbari places the source at Cashgur and Cashmere, from which it appears that the natives consider the N.E. branch as the main river. Looking at the map one would think he had great confidence in the Lamas' representation of the sources of the Ganges, for these river-courses are drawn in unbroken lines, whereas the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra, which is correctly represented, is drawn with a dotted line. But on the other hand he says in his text : 2 »In placing the heads of the Ganges and Sanpoo rivers, I have followed M. D'Anville's correction of the Lamas' map in Du Halde, as given in his first part of the map of Asia, published in 1751 : and have continued the
I Hindoostan. By J. RENNELL, F. R. S. 1782. Copied at Berlin by BENJ. GLASBACH, 1785. 2 Memoir of a map of Hindoostan etc. Second Edition, London 1785, p. 55. and 104.
IIIFカラー高解像度
