CHAPTER III.
ANTONIO DE MONSERRATE.
In Chapter XVII of Vol. I of this work, p. 154-156, I have related the facts I was able to find out regarding the Portuguese Jesuit, Father ANTONIO DE MON-SERRATE, in relation to the Sacred Lake of Manasarovar. I showed how, according to several geographical authors, Monserrate is supposed to have been the first European who had ever heard of and mentioned the name of Manasarovar. The statement obviously originated from Captain F. WILFORD in I 8o8.' Wilford's own words regarding the lake of Man-saraur run as follows : »It is noticed by P. Monserrat, who accompanied the Emperor Acbar in his expedition to Cabul, in the year 1581. He calls it Månsaruor, and from the report of pilgrims, places it in thirty-two degrees of latitude North ; and about three hundred and fifthy miles to the North-East of Serhind.»
With the assistance of some of the most learned librarians in Sweden I made desperate efforts to find out some more detailed sources regarding the life and works of Father Antonio, but without success. I could only bring the most important dates of his life together with the statements given by Wilford. But as I was unable to find any confirmations of the latter's statements, I feared that he had made a mistake, and confused Monserrate with Tieffenthaler, as the latter, though nearly 200 years later, also calls the lake Mansaroar. On the other hand I say : The statement about Monserrate is so positive and so detailed that it cannot simply be dismissed as constructed by Wilford's imagination.
The manuscript to my Vol. I was written in 1912 13, and the greater part of it printed in 1914, though not published before 1917. In 1914, Rev. H. HOSTEN published, in the Memoirs of Me Asiatic Society of Bengal, a most important and able article on Monserrate together with the first half of the Jesuit Father's own MS., which eight years before had been discovered in Calcutta. From this MS. it
I An Essay on the Sacred Isles in the West, with other Essays connected with that work. Asiatic Researches. VIII, 18o8, p. 327 et seq.
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