notes. I have no reason to believe that the two Tibetans gave us false names, as they proved to be perfectly honest in everything else. But another question is in how far the names mentioned to us were commune bonum of all Tibetan hunters, nomads and gold-diggers who used to visit these regions. For one could imagine that a certain tribe or even family of Gertse that every winter perhaps since generations back, visit a special region of this inhospitable plateau-land to hunt, invent their own private significations or denominations for such geographical objects that are familiar only to them. The same objects may be called by other names if visited by other families or tribes. Such cases may happen only with such parts of the northern Chang-tang- which only occasionally are visited by a few families of hunters or gold-diggers, for the professional hunters, as a rule, wander farther north than the pure nomads. However, I feel inclined to believe that the northern-most names one comes across, may be accepted as real general names, not only as ephemeric denominations. From the very origin, perhaps several hundred years ago, they may have been given by hunters who felt the necessity of having a means of fixing the situation of a certain place. If they called a certain valley, where wild yaks used to be numerous, Lungnak or the Black Valley, they had a means of pointing out this very place to their comrades. The woman we met at Lungnak told us that her parents would soon arrive from Gertse. If they did not know where Lungnak was they would, of course, never be able to find her black tent. And certainly they also had to know that it was the Lungnak of Gomo-tsaka, . for we may be sure there are several »Black Valleys» in these parts of Tibet. Once the name thus originally became fixed, it remained through centuries and will nevermore disappear. It is, therefore, likely that these names are very old. By and by they will be heard of and accepted by all those people who at all visit these regions, whether hunters, nomads or gold-diggers.
The distinctions between hunters and nomads are not always great. Thus, for example, our first two Tibetans had i oo sheep and goats together and could very well exist even if they found no game. But they find game and spare their flocks. The gold-diggers on the other hand, are usually more adventurous people without a well arranged livelihood and come from greater distances. But they will always meet hunters and nomads and soon become familiar with the geographical names. It is beyond doubt that the few names given to me from the region around Gomo-tsaka are not the only ones existing there. They are only such as indicate larger and more prominent objects in sight. The Tibetans probably thought it sufficient to give us only the names of objects easy to point out, as the lake, one or two valleys and some high peaks. But if we had followed them in other directions across the district, they would certainly have remembered some other names well-known to them. The farther we proceed to the south, the surer we may feel that
13. IV.
IIIFカラー高解像度
