IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Southern Tibet : vol.3 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
I
•
THE MAPS OF LAPIE, 1824, AND STIELER, 1826. 89
in a rather unusual way, for the southern comes from a little lake north of the Kailas, the northern, which partly is marked with a dotted line, has its sources in the Kwenlun and goes through the lakes Ike-namur-noor and Bacha-namur-noor, which for a very long time have occupied the N.W. corner on maps of Tibet. From the neighbourhood of the Kailas a smaller range stretches to the N.E. joining the Kwen-lun. The range of the left side of the upper Indus continues eastwards north of the Tsangpo and south of Tengri-nor, where it turns to the N.E. in the same manner as fifty years later on Saunders' map.
As Klaproth's results had not yet been published one wonders from where Lapie has drawn his information. But in his introduction' d'Ohsson gives us the sources: »La carte d'Asie, placée en tête de cette Histoire, a été dressée par M. le chevalier Lapie, d'après les meilleurs matériaux connus ... L'Inde est extraite de la grande carte d'Arrowsmith et de plusieurs cartes particulières. L'Asie centrale est le resultat de plusieurs itinéraires, combinés avec les cartes russes: on se contentera de citer celui de Caschmir à Taraz, par Badakhschan et Khodjend, qui a jeté un grand jour sur des régions jusqu'ici presque inconnues ... Le vaste empire de la Chine est extrait des cartes chinoises, appuyées sur un bon nombre d'observations astronomiques, et considérablement améliorées, à l'aide de nombreux itinéraires.»
Here Klaproth is not even mentioned. The material for Tibet is taken direct from d'Anville and the Ta-ch'ing map, the general features of which are easily recognisable. The only difference is that Lapie has joined all the source ranges of the Chinese maps into one, probably suggesting that the great river Tsangpo must
be situated between two parallel ranges, just as the Indus is bordered by two ranges. This representation of the Transhimalayan mountains is a forerunner to the conception in later years exposed by Hodgson and Saunders. Lapie has no names for his mountains.
Two years later the map of Asia in Stieler's Hand-Atlas, (Pl. X), is probably
the most important of the time. It has the title : Das chinesische Reich mit den Schutz-Staaten und 7aj5an. Entw. u. gez. v. C. G. R. (Reichard). It is published in 1826. Here Tibet hardly seems to be a terra incognita at all. The whole area of the country is filled with mountains, rivers and lakes, although no other travellers than Andrade, the Capuchins, Grueber and Dorville had crossed it, and Moorcroft visited its S.W. part. There are three salient features in the physical geography: A tremendous mountain system in the heart of Tibet, the big lake Terkiri (Tengrinoor) and the river Tsampu correctly regarded as the upper part of the Brahmaputra. The part of the great mountain system which is situated south of Lake Ter-kiri, has no name but is the same as Nien-chen-tang-la. Many of the names are perfectly identical with those given by d'Anville 1733, but the general orientation is
I Op. cit. p. LXVII.
I2-141741 III.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.