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
RAWLINSON'S CRITICISM.
rigidly to exclude it from geography for the future.» (Yule's Essay in Captain Wood's Journey to the Source of the River Oxus, p. LV). SEVERTSOFF'S opinion is this : »The name of `Bolor' in the sense of an entire mountain system, which I have denominated the Southern Tsun-lin, should, in my opinion, properly be excluded from the geography of Asia, because it is really not the name of a mountain system, and in this sense is therefore an error. Bolor is the name of a river, and of a town situated upon it; and is besides, according to Central Asiatic usage, the term for the one mountain from which the Bolor issues. They perpetuate an error by giving this name to a mountain region which has for several ages borne another appellation, instead of one that is general, and at the same time most appropriate, viz., rI'sun-lin.» — Journ. Roy. Geogr. Society. Vol. XL. 1870, p. 398.
I Baber's Memoirs, p. 85.
2 England and Russia in the East. London, 1875, p. 231.
307
which is given in the German Baron's Memoir, and the citation of actual words from the Kafir language, I can only suppose that the author borrowed from Mollah Nejib's 'Memoir', published in the Appendix to Elphinstone's 'Cabul', Vol. II, p. 373; but in that case the
k Russian MSS. must be later by some years than the date of 18o6 which it bears, as
Elphinstone's first edition was published in 1814.
;t To change the date of 18o6 into something after 1814, simply for getting
I.< it to suit the accusation, seems to be a bad and unjust argument. When, on the
kit; other hand, KHANIKOFF brought forward an argument in favour of the authenticity
of the Baron's travels, showing that his map contained an accurate delineation of
Iskender-kul, which was a recent discovery unknown even to LEHMANN in 1840,
Rawlinson replied that Klaproth might have obtained his knowledge of the lake
from BABER'S Memoires, »where it is accurately described, though the locality has
not hitherto been recognized, owing to Erskine having read the name as Kan in
stead of Fan». This argument is also very weak, for all Baber says is: »Among
the mountains of Kan there is a large lake, which may be about a kos in circum
ference, and is very beautiful.» I How from this description an »accurate delineation»
could be produced is difficult to see.
3' Sir Henry Rawlinson seems to have taken the greatest interest in searching
for evidence against the greatest orientalist of the first third of the century. A few
years later he again returned to the question, and sacrificed in a book of his2 a
h disproportional space to the MSS of Georg Ludwig von —. Here he writes:
Suspicion has probably fallen on Klaproth because he is known at different periods
of his life to have been engaged in the preparation of reports on Central Asia of a secret
! and confidential nature. One of these reports, indeed, 'On the Geographical and Political
Condition of the Countries intervening between Russia and India', is said to have been
purchased by our Government at the time of the Afghan war for the enormous sum of
one thousand guineas, and to be still reposing in the archives of our Foreign Office ... .
This manuscript has been since examined and found to exhibit certain proof of having been forged by Klaproth.
It should have been interesting »not only in the interests of science, but with
I a view to its possible bearing on the vexed question of the authorship of the ano
nymous Russo-German manuscript», to hear something about this »certain proof».
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