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

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to prolong conjecture as to the extreme verge of the highest lines of level. All the waters from the northward deflexure of this mass of mountains from the great

Kylås chain and table land on both sides of it, running into the grand rivers, which form the Peninsula of India, or intersect the Gangetic plain, or tending towards an aspect comprehended between the debouchures of the Brahmaputra and Oxus.)

He regards the Satlej as the centre of this system of rivers. On its course downwards from the Manasarovar, the Satlej collects tributaries from the northern side of the Himalayas as well as from the high table land farther north. He imagines that this table land rises in bluff undulations, terminating in a rival crest, Kailas, which sends its waters to the Indus. The interior of high Tibet was in his days so little known, that he believed the whole country inhabited by »Tibetan Tartars» grazing their sheep the whole way between Yarkand and Lhasa.

He makes the Manasarovar i 7,000 feet high, for Moorcroft had snowfall at midsummer and so had Csoma de Körös in Sanskar on the day of the summer solstice and in the beginning of September. At the lake itself Moorcroft had several inches of snow on i oth August. Comparing these facts with analogous observations in Rupshu he cannot give the lake less than 17,000 feet, although European theorists estimated the table land of Tibet at 8,000 feet above the sea.

He expresses his views on the evaporation thus:

»To this accelerated vaporization is owing the fluctuation in level of the lakes in Tartary, in defiance of increasing cold. The lake of Månsarovara celebrated in Hindu mythology for giving efflux to several rivers in opposite directions, (a metaphorical figure to indicate the point of their divergence) was not admitted, upon Moorcroft's assertion, to be land-locked, from ideas of the feebleness of evaporation at that great height then unknown and unsuspected; and though the lake does appear to have an outlet in the Satlej, this does not alter the question in regard to basins (inferior it is true to Månsarovara, but under similar circumstances) having been found wholly inclosed; and Moorcroft was right as to the fact, though his reviewers could not reconcile it with their preconceived opinions..)

As a matter of fact it would be much simpler to say that if the evaporation alone balanced the level of the lake, the water would have become salt. But in certain years the precipitation is so considerable that the evaporation is not sufficient to keep down the level, and the surplus of the water goes out to Rakas-tal.

As to the supposition of any other river, except the Satlej, issuing from the Manasarovar, he is right in saying that this is a physical impossibility.

THE BROTHERS GERARD.

I Loc. cit. p. 259.

2 Lassen has extracted the following views from Gerard's information (Indische Alterthumskunde, I, p. 43): »Ausser der Sarajû und dem Sindhu, welcher hier Sind, Sing-keku und Singke-Kampa genannt wird und im NO des Mânasa-Sees seine Quelle hat, entspringt im Gebirge im 0 der nach 0 strömende Tamgu-Kampa und im S des Sees der Manga-Ku oder Kampa, welcher ebenfalls nach 0 fliesst; beide sind ohne Zweifel zwei Hauptarme des Brahmaputra. Von einem Reisenden, dem er glaubte Glauben schenken zu dürfen, wurde ihm berichtet, dass 8 oder I() Märsche im O. Garo's (Gertope's) an dem westlichen der zwei Arme des Indus ein in der Nähe des Sees entspringender Fluss NO ströme. Dieser wird aber nicht, wie er vermuthet, einer der grossen Chinesischen Flüsse sein, sondern der östliche Indusarm.»