IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Southern Tibet : vol.7 |
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Citation Information
DIFFERENT VIEWS REGARDING KARA-KORUMM IN THE YEARS 1871-1880.
314
In an article On the Tribes of Northern Tibet, first printed in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society, Vol. XXII, 1853, p. I 2 I , B. H. HODGSON uses the great orographical features of Tibet as ethnological frontiers. He says : »Hôrsôk is a compound Tibetan word, by which the people of Tibet designate the nomades who occupy the whole northern part of their country, or that lying beyond the Nyénchhin-thånglå range of mountains, and between it and the Kwanleun or Kuenhin chain.» Without entering upon the ethnological side of the question, I will only quote the following note by Hodgson, already alluded to in my Vol. III, p. 102. Regarding the Nyénchhén-thanglå he says: »This important feature of the geography of Tibet is indicated by the Nian-tsin-tangla of Ritter's Hoch Asien and by the Tanla of Huc. I have, following native authority, used in a wide sense a name which those writers use in a contracted sense; and reasonably, because the extension, continuity, and height of the chain are indubitable. Nevertheless, Ritter and Guyon have no warrant for cutting off from Tibet the country beyond it up to the Kuenhin, nor are Katché and Kilda-, the names they give to the country beyond, admissible or recognized geographic terms. Khôr, equal Kor, is purely ethnic, and Katché is a corruption of Khåchhén or Mahomedan, literally Big-mouth.»'
What Hodgson says about the names Khor and Katchi is quite correct, and it is easy to understand that he could not treat the country between the Nien-chentang-la and the Kwen-lun as anything but an uninterrupted plateau-land. For he had no reason to suspect that the northern Kara-korum continued through the whole of Tibet, nor that this country was quite filled up with nearly parallel ranges the whole way up to the Kwen-lun. The harm done by such names as Katchi and Khor was, however, not very great, especially not if they were used as signifying a range which may be regarded as a forerunner to the prolonged Kara-korum. Speaking of the Kara-korum, »afterwards called Kuen-lun», WILFRED L. HEELY in a review on works by GEORGI, TURNER, HUC, KOPPEN, SCHLAGINTWEIT, a. o., mentions the plateau that lies »between the Kuen-luen and that other parallel range which bears on the maps the name of Chor-Kachi».2
The brilliant scholar, Sir HENRY RAWLINSON, with whose views we have been dealing at several previous occasions in these volumes, cannot be said to have been fortunate in his orographical deductions. In 1875 he returns to the mountains of Western Tibet saying:3
Whether the Kara-Koram and Kuen-Luen are the southern and northern crests of
the great range which bounds the high table-land of Thibet, according to the mountain system of Humboldt, or whether the names do not rather apply to two culminating ridges
1 Essays on the Languages, Literature, and Religion of Nepal and Tibet. London 1874. Part II, p. 65.
2 The Calcutta Review. Vol. LIX. Calcutta, i874, P. 144.
3 England and Russia in the East. London 1875, p. 213.
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