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

IO2

BRIAN HODGSON AND THE NYENCHHEN-THANGLA CHAIN.

The source Ritter has used is, as he says in a note, Klaproth: Carte de la route de Tching-tou fou a H'lassa, 1830, and Description du Tuba, trad. Père Hyacinth etc. Paris 1831. The original source is Chinese.

Hodgson himself quotes Ritter as his source. He says that his important range »is indicated by the Nien-tsin-tangla of Ritter's Hoch-Asien and by the Tanla of Huc». According to him those writers use a name in a contracted sense, which he, »following native authority», uses in a wide sense. But which native authority we are not told. Ritter and Huc were not so wrong after all, as Nien-chen-tang-la and Tang-la are two different systems, running parallel with each other. Hodgson combines them to one and the same system. Even in this mistake Hodgson is not original, for Ritter says of the Nien-chen-tang-la that »it forms a remarkable boundary-pillar between H'lassa and the Tengri Nor. Further towards the North-east this enormous mountain-system is stretching, North-west of the town Tsiamdo ...» I This opinion was expressed 13 years before Huc's journey to Lhasa and 20 years before his Souvenirs were published, 1853, the same year when Hodgson's article appeared. Ritter has, no doubt, been impressed by Klaproth, for instance in the following passage from KANG HI's order of 1721: »Therefore it is obvious that all the great rivers of China rise from the south-eastern slopes of the great chain of Nomkhoûn oubachi, which separates the hydrographical system of the interior from the exterior one.»2 We have seen above that Klaproth identifies the Nomkhou-oubashi with d'Anville's M. Temen. But Temen is no doubt identical with Tang-la, a fact which was unknown both to Klaproth and Ritter. Hodgson had read Huc's Souvenirs and found it easy without any further proof to call the Tang-la a direct continuation of the Nien-chen-tang-la. The western half of his enormous range was supplied by Ritter and the eastern half by Huc. Of both components, which belong to two different systems separated from each other on the meridian of Lhasa by two degrees, he constructed a monstrosity of a range without ever having been in Tibet. It is superfluous to say how little this range has to do with the complicated system which

I have called Transhimalaya. In fact only the real Nien-chen-tang-la, known of old and first, in a very vague manner mentioned in Georgi's book, is in accordance with the truth. But it was Klaproth, Humboldt and Ritter, and not Hodgson, who made

it known to Europe.

We now pass on to the next geographical article by Brian Hodgson, interesting and suggestive as everything he has written.3 It deals with the contents of two papers which in 1843 were given to Hodgson by the Maharaja of Nepal. It comprises official summaries of the routes of two embassies of tribute which Nepal, since the war of 1792, was bound by treaty to send to Peking once every 5

I Ritter, op. cit„ Band II, p. 414.

2 Mémoires relatifs à l'Asie. Par M. J. Klaproth, Paris 1828, Tome III, p. 37o.

3 »Route of two Nepalese Embassies to Pekin with remarks on .the water-shed and plateau of Tibet»: Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. XXV, 1856, p. 473 et seq.