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『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

graphy, is situated around Gangri, where the elevation of the plateau is 15 250 feet. From this region the fall of the plateau to the points where the rivers (Indus and Brahmaputra, or Singkha-bab and E'ru) quit the plateau, is great, as we sufficiently know from the productions of Balti and of Khåm at and around those points. - Tsang

'4s      province is said to be bounded on the south by the Ghüngra ridge; on the west
by Mount Ghûndala; on the north and east by the Kambalå range; the province of U` to be bounded east by Sangwa gyamda, west by the river Tamchokhamba, south

II      by the Kåmbalå range, and north by the Nyénchhén thangla. Beyond the last
named great snowy range is situated the immense lake of Nam tsô which is said to bear the same relation to Northern Tibet that the Yamdo tsô lake does to Southern. The former is the Terkiri and Téngri niir of our maps ...» To which he adds a note: »Nt r is Turkic for lake as tsô is Tibetan. Tengri niir, or celestial lake of the former tongue, is an exact translation of Nam tsô of the latter. The general prevalence of Turkic words in the geography of Northern Tibet more especially sufficiently evinces the presence of that wide spread tribe in Tibet.»

Hodgson knew only one geographical name north of Nien-chen-tangla, namely, Tengri-nor. This he calls »the general prevalence of Turkic words», and concludes on the same ground that »Northern Tibet» is populated by Turki tribes. But lengri and nur are Mongolian words and cannot prove that the Turkis are present in Northern Tibet. The name Tengri-nor is unknown in Tibet and used only by Mongolian pilgrims. Even such names as Arka-tagh, Piaslik, and Achik-köl, which belong to the Kwen-lun, do not, though really Turki, prove the settled presence of Turki tribes, for they are given by gold-diggers and hunters who occasionally come

I Die Erdkunde von Asien, II, Berlin 1833, p. 636. Compare also Humboldt, L'Asie Centrale

German Edition, Berlin 1844, Vol. I, p. too. 2 Op. cit. p. 483.

THE TURKI TRIBES IN NORTHERN TIBET.   109

stand on the water-parting of the great Kuenlun System, between the Tibetan Plateau-lands in the south and the Turkestan ones north of it.»

In 1853 Hodgson calls the Nien-chen-tang-la a worthy rival of Kwen-lun and Himalaya. Three years later he accepts Humboldt's great Asiatic systems, Altai, Tian-shan, Kwen-lun and Himalaya, without adding Nien-chen-tang-la. In 1853,

having read Huc's book, which in orography is very meagre, he combines Nien-chen-

ki      with Tang-la and three years later in the same easy way with Kara-korum.
In the following passage 2 we recognize d'Anville, Turner, Moorcroft, Klaproth,

41,   Ritter, Humboldt and the Stracheys, for there is nothing that they have not told us

a

before, in a more detailed way. »U on the whole, y   p   e, conceive, there can be no doubt

that Tibet proper, that is Tibet south of the Nyénchhen thanglå range, is, as com-

~, t$   pared with the Himalaya, a level country. It may be very well defined by saying

it comprises the basins of the Indus (cum Satlej) and Brahmaputra. In this limited

froht

sense of Tibet Gangri is the water-shed of Tibet. - The region of the lakes,

Mapham and Lanag, equal to the Manasarfivar and Ravanhrad of Sanskrit geo-