National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

and, above all, that they were familiar with the regions around Kailas and Mana-
sarovar. They were indeed descendants of the Aryans and had possibly at one time
come down into India by this road. Perhaps in their minds there remained a dor-
mant recollection at the wanderings of their ancestors across the mountain fastnesses
of the western Himalayas.

India was known to Herodotus, but, contrary to Megasthenes, he does not
mention the mountains to its North, much less Tibet. And yet we hold from his
times the curious story of the golddigging ants. Alexander and his generals carried
the knowledge of the wonderful world of the East a giant step forward, and they
called the Himalaya Emodus. Eratosthenes speaks of Paropamisus and Imaus, yet
Strabo is the one, among the ancient geographers, who creates out of the material
which he has succeeded in collecting, the grandest description of the countries of
Southern Asia. Far better than his predecessors, he knew the mountains to the
North, and a long time had to pass before Europe got as clear an idea of India
and its rivers as Strabo possessed. The geography of Arrian is founded on that of
Megasthenes and Eratosthenes. The mountains among which lie the sources of the
Ganges, he calls Paropamisus or Caucasus, and with a sure hand he draws up the
orographical and hydrographical system of the great continent. But as little as any
other classic author, he had any idea of the existence of Tibet. They knew only
the southern parts of the Himalayas. Ptolemy surpasses the old Greeks and Romans.
Much of his knowledge he drew from Marinus of Tyrus. His picture of India and
its hydrography is masterly. Quite correctly he makes Satlej out to be the largest
river of the Panjab, and even shows on the map were its sources are situated. But
no trace of Tibet, or the rivers of Tibet, is to be found in his picture of the country
North of India. On the contrary, he presses Kwen-lun and the Himalayas together
into one single mountain-range, so that Tibet is effaced into nothingness between
them. Even 1,500 years after his time, the Europeans committed quite the same
mistake in their representations of Southern Asia. But also the fundamental lines
of the Asiatic world, drawn up by Ptolemy, put their stamp indelibly on 15 cen-
turies. Therein consists his enormous significance for the historical development of
geography. He gave to his own time a fund of collected and solid knowledge, but
he acted as a check on later epochs who, in blind belief in his authority, held fast
to his image of Southern Asia as to an unshakable dogma. In a time when Galilei
made his revolutionary discoveries in the heavens, Ptolomy still ruled almost absolu-
tely on the earth.

During the age of the Caliphs, geographical learning flourished among the