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

NAIN SING'S TOURNEY 1865-1866.   103

crossed the Mariam-La mountains, which were called the watershed between the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej . He returned to British territory by Thdjung.

The other Pundit had in the meantime made a route survey of his journey to Gartok. Both reached headquarters of the Survey on October 27th, 1 866. The result of the journey was I200 miles survey, 31 latitudes, 33 heights determined by boiling water, and notes. It was no exaggeration when Montgomerie said this Pundit had performed a feat of which a native of Hindustan, or any other country might well be proud.

Montgomerie summarises in the following words the western part of the %johnglam or tsalam» : it >crosses the Kailas range by a very high pass, descends to about 15,000 feet in Ngari Khorsum, the upper basin of the Sutlej, and then coasting along the Rakas Tâ1, the Manasarowar, and another long lake, rises gradually to the Mariham-la Pass, the watershed between the Sutlej and Brahmaputra, 15,500 (feet) ». The very high pass mentioned here can only be the Jerko-la, as there is no other pass on the road between Gartok and Rakas-tal. Montgomerie understood that the lakes belonged to the system of the Satlej, although he was mistaken in reckoning the Gunchu-tso to the same system. Maryum-la cannot be said to be the watershed between the Satlej and the Brahmaputra, as the basin of Gunchu-tso, which has no outlet, comes in between the two. And it is interesting to notice that on Nain Sing's own map there is even a low mountain ridge drawn between the

Gunkyud Cho» and the ; Some Chu» of the Manasarovar.

Curiously enough, everybody listening to this important paper, to which we shall have to return later on, did not seem quite to have understood the real hydrographical situation. Sir H. RAWLINSON, after the paper, said, talking of the course of the Brahmaputra, that >it had been followed down carefully from its source in the Manasarowar Lake to Lhasa», thus putting the problem back a hundred years to the standpoint of Tieffenthaler and forgetting that the Pundit followed the river in the opposite direction. In his address of 1868 h'IuRCHISON speaks still of the extensive plateau beyond the crests of the Himalaya, which stretches west and east from Mount Kailas and the Manasarovar Lake to Lhasa in Great Tibet, and, like Rawlinson, he says the Pundit returned > along the banks of the Brahmaputra to the source of that river in the Mansarowar Lake,. I The two famous presidents do not seem to have realised the existence of one of the most important watersheds in Asia between the Brahmaputra and the Manasarovar. And still the title of Montgomerie's paper, and that of another paper of his: Report of a Route-Survey made by

Pundit* —, from Nepal to Lhasa, and thence through the Upper Valley of the Bralznzaputra to its Source, 2 clearly enough give a general idea of the situation. I turn to the part round the lakes as represented on Nain Sing's classical map, Pl. XIII, of his journey in 1865-66, and compiled with admirable skill by Capt.

I Proceedings Royal Geogr. Society, Vol. XII, 1867-68, p. 267. Journal Royal Geogr. Society, Vol. 38, 1868, p. 129 et seq.