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238   THE NAME OF THE MOUNTAINS NORTH OF THE TSANGPO.

that such names would be generally approved: both these men were famous explorers, and both were Mongolians (with Hindu names). Nain Singh was the first explorer to see the long line of snow mountains in Central Tibet. He saw • them from the north. If the northern range of the Hedin mountains were called the Nain Singh range, the name would be accepted and would be regarded as a generous recognition of an Asiatic.»

The wishes and principles of the Survey of India regarding new names have to be respected by everybody, even by foreign travellers and geographers. Therefore the proposals of Herr HABENICHT and myself lose all their force and have no more to be considered. In the part of this work where I describe my own discoveries north of the Tsangpo I use some names for distinguishing different ranges from each other. But I point out that these names must be regarded only as provisional, and may, in future, be substituted by others, when these, now hardly accessible regions, are put under the dominion and observation of surveyors from India.

The Survey of India made objections to my proposed name Transhimalaya. Their reasons were not sufficient nor persuading, as Lord Curzon says, and I quite agree with him. I regarded the name not only as a very correct and descriptive one from geographical point of view, but also as a monument over the historical development of exploration in the Trans-Himalayan regions, as they have been called since many decennia. And Transhimalaya is meant to be the title of the mountain system ftar ,Wférence which is situated in the Transhimalayan regions.'

Colonel Burrard has proposed the names of Nain Sing and Krishna for Tibet mountains. I hope this proposal will be gladly accepted by all geographers. I am not in the position to say to which range Krishna's name should be given, for he has explored regions far east of mine. As to Nain Sing's name there is no doubt. It should, as Burrard proposes, be given to the mountain-system in Central Tibet, which is situated north of Transhimalaya.2

I As was brought to my knowledge by the Private Secretary to H. Exc. the Viceroy, Sir James Dunlop Smith, in a semi-official letter, the Survey of India and the Geological Survey of India proposed to give the mountain system my name, and I was asked by the Viceroy, Lord Minto, to accept this proposal. As I understood the name Transhimalaya would never be accepted in India, I could not refuse, although I thought the honor was much too great for me personally. But everybody will excuse me that, in this work, as in the popular one, I have used the name Transhimalaya and not my own name.

2 In a most interesting article, »Transhimalaya and Tibet», Dr. Felix Oswald says: »Exception has been taken by some geographers to Dr. Sven Hedin's use of the name Trans-Himalaya to designate the lofty system of ranges which he recently explored on the north side of the head-waters of the Brahmaputra and the Indus. The chief objection seems to lie in -the transference of the term from its somewhat vague reference by Sir Alexander Cunningham or by Colonel Godwin-Austen to the mountains north of the Upper Indus and Brahmaputra to a more restricted usage for a system or rather zone of mountains lying between the Brahmaputra (or Tsangpo) and the actual plateau of Tibet.» Dr. Oswald has no objection against the name I have proposed. — Science Progress, No. 17, July 191o, p. 38 et seq.

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