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
MONSERRATE'S MAP.
31
had no knowledge of the great extent of Tibet, though, of course, »Indvstan» also covers only a very small part of Akbar's India.
Of the greatest interest is perhaps the way in which Monserrate has drawn the relations between the Sacred Lake and the sources of the four great rivers; a problem which has been discussed and disputed for centuries afterwards. Though he very much exaggerates the size of the lake making it 170 km. instead of 2 2 from west
to east, and 85 km. instead of 27 from north to south, he does not believe it capable of giving birth to a single river. He calls it Mäsarvor Lacus, and has, just north of it, written in red ink: Hic dicûtur christiani habitare — in accordance with the rumours he had heard about the temples on the shores.
The source of the Indus f. is placed in the higher regions of Imays west of the
lake. S. W. of the lake the Satanulge (Satlej), Zaradrus f., has its origin. S. E. of the lake, and at greater distance, is the source of the Ganges, Fontes gågis. There is no sign of a Tsangpo-Brahmaputra. Rev. Hosten says:' »To the right of the lake appears twice the letter f., which should mean : fluvius. These two rivers are neither the Satlej, nor the Indus, nor the Ganges, according to Monserrate. They are nowhere mentioned in the text. I thought I could read near the lower f. the name Adris (= the Raoy or Ravi, otherwise not named in the map); but, this supposition is negatived by the longitude i i 6° 71', assigned to the source of the Raoy: hence, I propose to read (Mansar) auris f. It is impossible to guess what the other river might be.»
I do not pretend to approach the solution of this question any nearer than
Rev. Hosten, but I cannot accept his second reading. Monserrate calls the lake Mansarvor, both on the map and in the text, not Mansaraur; and it is quite impossible that he could call the great lake a fluvius, especially as he has Ma-sarvor Lacus on the map.
It could, perhaps, be possible to think that a Mansarauris fluvius were meant
as a river entering the lake or issuing from it, and thus simply called the River of Manasarovar, which could perhaps be the Brahmaputra. But this is not at all likely. The first reading, Adris, or adris as it is on the map, must be the right one. Now, this adris seems, so far as one may judge from the reproduction of the map, to be the latter half of a name, the first half of which has been covered by the colour or ink representing the lake itself. If the first part of the name has been Zar, we get the name Zaradris f. or the River Satlej, where an i has been miswritten instead of a u. If this interpretation is correct, one has to imagine that Monserrate has first heard that the Satlej came from the lake, but that he, in consequence of some later information which seemed to be more likely, rejected the first representation,
I P. 703.
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