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

BRIAN HODGSON AND THE NYENCHHEN-THANGLA CHAIN.

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plain fact it is apparent, that these grand peak crowned ridges will determine the essential character of the aqueous distribution of the very extended mountainous chain along which they occur at certain palpable and tolerably regular

intervals.»

The article is full of suggestive theories in physical geography and touches

many other problems of natural history. It shows an author of unusual perspicacity and clearsightedness. The map, partly the same as Pl. XV, has nowdays only the value of being a document in the history of Himalayan cartography. Its almost geometrical regularity of the relations between Himalayan orography and hydrography has in later times been succeeded by a much more complicated system of ridges and rivers. On his map he has drawn the head ranges and the transverse ridges with the high peaks but not the watershed between the Brahmaputra and Ganges.

He includes the Yamdok-tso within the drainage area of the Indian rivers, although already the Lama surveyors and Klaproth on his map of 18281 knew that the lake formed a self-contained basin and the Kashmiri Amir, whose itinerary he had published some 18 years earlier, had described the lake as salt. If he had examined the materials existing, he would never have represented the Manas river as beginning from the Yamdok-tso.

In a third article by Brian Hodgson the Nien-chen-tang-la appears.' The subject is chiefly linguistic but the indefatigable author also gives some geographical hints: »HOrsok is a compound Tibetan word by which the people of Tibet designate the Nomads who occupy the whole northern part of their country, or that lying beyond the Nyenchhen-thangla range of mountains, and between it and the Kuenlûn chain. Horsok designates the two distinct races of the Hor and Horpa and the Sok or Sokpa, neither of whom, so far as I have means to learn, is led by the possession of a native name at once familiar and general, to eschew the Tibetan appellations as foreign ... The Hôrpa occupy the western half of the region above defined, or northern Tibet; and also a deal of Little Bucharia and of Songaria, where they are denominated Kao-tsé by the Chinese, and Ighûrs (as would seem) by themselves. The Sokpa occupy the eastern half of northern Tibet as above defined, and also, the wide adjacent country usually called Khokho-nûr and Tangût by Europeans, but by the Tibetans, Sokyeul or Sokland. In southern Tibet, or Tibet south of the Nyenchhen-thangla chain, there are numerous scattered Horpas and Sokpas, as there are many scattered Bodpas in northern Tibet; but, in general, that great mountain chain, the worthy rival of the Himalaya and the Kuenlûn, may be said to divide the nomadic Hôrpas and Sokpas from the non-nomadic Bodpas or Tibetans proper. "Though the major part be Buddhists, vet there are some followers of Islam among

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I Mémoires Relativs à l'Asie, III, p. 416.

2 »Sifan and Hôrsôk Vocabularies, with another special exposition in the wide range of Mon-

golian affinities and remarks on the lingual and physical characteristics of the family.» Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. XXII, 1853, p. 121.

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