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

THE GANGES TAKING ITS ORIGIN FROM LAKE MANASAROVAR.   I I 7

view in my original report: the Tage-tsangpo is the source of the Satlej. In a problem like this the eastern view may be of extremely great weight. It is built up on tradition and old historical facts and comes down from times in which Europe had no contact with the countries in question and no idea of their geography and hydrography. The religious view of course plays its part, and troubles the sober explanation of the phenomena. Only the Chinese are untroubled by religion. So long as our good Japanese priest sticks to what he has seen with his own eyes, he is all right. But when religion gets hold of him he becomes unreliable. When he tells the world the alarming news that the Ganges rises from the Manasarovar, he is blind, and he never says where the sacred river again goes out of the lake. But in searching the real and original source of the river supposed to go out of the Manasarovar, he points to the Tage-tsangpo, exactly as the Lama surveyors did 200 years ago, and as the Tibetans do, so far as the genetic source of the Satlej is concerned.

He refers to some legends of the Mapham Yum-tso or Anavatapta of Sanscrit and continues : It is said that the lake has four outlets for its waters : Mabcha Khanbab, Langchen2 Khanbab, Tamchok Khanbab and Senge Khanbab, which respectively form the sources of the four sacred rivers of India.» He says that »it is from these notions that the sacredness of the Anavatapta is evolved, the name of Zenbu derived, and the religious relations between Tibet and India established.»

He does not mention the Ganges, although he had found that its source, the Ganga, falls into the Manasarovar, and he is even aware that „there is not one of the four rivers that actually flows directly out of the lake.,; He understands that they have their sources in the mountains surrounding the lake. Only »the sources of the Tamchok Khanbab have hitherto defied investigation.»

He does not believe in the European travellers who have surveyed the lake, as they have represented it far smaller than it actually is. In reality, he says, its circumference is about 200 miles! The shape also, on European maps, is misleading, as it has, in reality; the shape of — a lotus flower. All western maps he finds wrong and incorrect. Here he is a little too rash, for the circumference of the lake

is only 45 miles.

The Gurla-mandata he calls Manri. He stayed at a temple called Tse-ko-lo,

obviously Tugu-gompa. Next morning he made his way

)to the range of mountains that stands like a great wall to the north-west of the Lake. A zigzag climb of ten miles or so brought me within view of Lake Lakgal-tso, ... Rakas-tal. It is in shape something like a long calabash, and in area smaller than Manasarovara. Another seven and a half miles brought me to a spot whence I could see the whole of its surface, and here I made a further discovery. A mountain, some two and a half miles round at the base, stands like a wall of partition between the two lakes, and where this mountain slopes into a ravine it looks for all the world, as though there were a channel of communication for

I Op. cit. p. 142.

2 Here again he gives a more correct spelling than formerly was found on European maps.

In the word Khanbab he has mixed Kabab and Kamba.