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
304
documents into their office was r 4 th August , i 8o6. That date is really the date of the
letter of the pretended traveller, which is attached to the series; r . e., it is an organic part of the fiction.
Taking up the extracts or abstracts of this German or this Chinese traveller, we find nothing that fits in with this consistent and gradual growth of knowledge. Yule finds it »lamentable to think that so estimable and zealous a geographer as M. Veniukoff's papers indicate him to be, should have been led to waste so much labour and ingenuity as have been expended by him on utter fictions like these». His papers published in the 7ournal of the Royal Geographical Society are with scanty deduction utterly baseless and futile, shadows of smoke.
Colonel Yule is, of course, right in everything he states in the matter. But where are the absolute proofs that KLAPROTH and nobody else has made himself guilty of such a fraud ? It does not appear very likely that the most learned and celebrated Asiatic linguist of his time should find it worth while to waste time upon such a childish and stupid occupation.
The whole problem regarding the apocryphic itineraries has been admirably set forth by Sir HENRY RAWLINSON in his article Monograph on the Oxus.'
As the fictitious travels affect the geography of all Central Asia, Sir Henry Rawlinson finds it necessary to eliminate from future maps of the Oxus the gross inaccuracies introduced by Russian Geographers. In 1861 Veniukoff first drew
attention to two documents from the • archives of the General Staff at St. Petersburg, which, in his opinion, were of great importance. The »discovery» was first made known to the British public in Michell's book, Russians in Central Asia, 1865, p. 50. One of the MSS was the journal of an English expedition, which, in quest of horses, towards the close of the 18th century, had proceeded from Cashmere to the Kirgis Steppe. The other was Kiaproth's translation of a Chinese itinerary from nearly the same regions as the first. M. Khanikoff furnished the English journal to Sir Roderick Murchison, and Rawlinson, perusing an abstract of it, called it »an elaborate hoax».
The reasons for his arriving at this conclusion Rawlinson published in the 7ournal Vol. X. Khanikoff's defence of the Russian MS. and Lord Strangford's rejoinder were printed in the Proceedings, Vol. X. In the meantime Rawlinson discovered in the archives of the Foreign Office a third paper, a MS. report of Klaproth, »which bore a most suspicious resemblance, both in form and in subject-matter, to the Russian document; purporting, in fact, to be the journal of a Russian expedition sent towards India». Rawlinson, therefore, suggested that the double mystification of the Russian and English governments would probably be found to proceed from the same individual. Veniukoff's original papers were printed in the 7ournal (Vol. Xi:XVI,
A MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER.
I Journal R. Geogr. Soc. Vol. XLII, i872, p. 482 et seq.
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