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
ANTONIO DE ANDRADE.
27
Tibet.' At the end of the quoted passage, Monserrate tells us that certain priests indeed would have conducted a thorough examination of the whole matter, if the
conclusion of the legation had not hindered their designs. From this it is obvious that no other Jesuits, in 1591, had been at Manasarovar. If such had been the case he would not have expressed the desideratum of examining the mystery of the Christian community. He has, as Tieffenthaler 200 years later, obtained most of his information from natives. Probably the Jesuit missionaries had met some Hindu pilgrims who had been at the Sacred Lake.
Which is this very old town on the shore of the Manasarovar? The inscription about the Christians on Monserrate's map indicates the northern shore, but it is more likely that the Jogis meant the southern, where the surroundings of Tugu-gompa are visited every year by pilgrims from India. This had been the case, not only during the last 34o years, but also many centuries before Monserrate's time, even if the present building of Tugu-gompa may date from a later epoch.
In his Appendix B.2 : »Texts from Monserrate's lost Bk. II quoted by Col. F. Wilford», Rev. Hosten proves that the MS. in Wilford's possession was different from the Calcutta MS. and contained several details about the Sacred Lake not mentioned in the latter. We do not need to enter upon them here, as I have quoted Wilford already in Vol. I, p. 154. Only three of Wilford's paragraphs, rather unimportant by themselves, are still of a certain interest in connection with the short notes which Rev. Hosten had added to them. Wilford says: »The first European who saw it (Lake Manasarovar), was P. Andrade in the year 1624.» To this passage Hosten has the following note: »This is not at all proved. Rather the contrary. Cf. on the lake seen by Fr. Antonio de Andrade, S. J., C. VESSELS, S. J., ANTONIO DE ANDRADE reprinted from De Sludien, Nijmwegen, L. C. G. Malmberg, Jaargang XX (1912), LXXVII, Afl. No. 4, p. 2 2 .» 3
In the place pointed out by Hosten, \Vessels quotes the information he has obtained from Dr. HENR. HAACK of Gotha and Colonel S. G. BURRARD of India regarding the pool Deo Tal on the Mana Pass, the »grande tanque» of Andrade, and he concludes4 that »Andrade's discovery of the Lake Manasarovar, must, therefore, definitely be stricken out, though the importance of his journey cannot therefore be diminished, for this depends on the fact that he was the first European who, straight across the Himalayan Mountains, and along the principal feeder of the Ganges, reached Tibet.»5
I I have dealt with the matter at some length in a chapter called »Lamaism and Catholicism», Transhimalaya, Vol. III, p. 310, 33o. Cp. G. Schulemann : Die Geschichte der Dalailamas. Heidelberg 1911, p. 75 et seq.
2 Op. cit., p. 693.
3 Vide Vol. I, supra p. 163, noten.
4 Ibidem p. 23.
5 Vide Vol. I, supra p. 166 et seq.
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