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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

existence of this lake, erroneously attributed to Andrade the merit of having dis-
covered the lake forming the source of the Ganges and the rest of the great rivers
of India. Even in our days there exist geographers who, without any shade of
foundation, suppose Andrade to have discovered Manasarovar and to have penetrated
through Tibet to China. In his own writings there is not a single line to such
effect. By others he has, again with as great injustice, been called a swindler.

In 1661 and 1662, a memorable journey was effected by Grueber and Dor-
ville from China through Tibet to India. I have related this voyage in Vol. IV of
this work, to where it chiefly belongs. If we pause for a moment at the last men-
tioned epoch looking back over the past, we must admit that Europeans' know-
ledge concerning Tibet was still insignificant, although Odoric, Grueber, Dorville and
Andrade had completed their journeys as well in the interior of that country as
through the whole of its extent.

The next part of the first volume of my work embraces the cartographical
history of Tibet. Considering the nature of the subject, it is obvious that we
must here pass on from general views to details. On the oldest maps of which
mention can be made in this connection, it is as much as the name of Tibet has
been barely put down. Later on it is roaming about here and there through the
regions North of India, and it is first in times far advanced that this realm, so
narrowly engirded, begins to take shape also on the map. In order to be enabled
to follow the course of this development, and to see how Tibet slowly appears as
if growing forth on the map until it finally forms a sharply defined geographical
conception, we must go back as far as to the middle of the 15th century. But it
is first from the year 1700 that, by application of the method of the State
Librarian Dr E. W. Dahlgren, we can try to disengage certain types. For prior to this
period, Tibet merely existed as an accessory detail, a name on the maps, playing
no active part. From the year 1700, the image on the map is more and more
consolidated, developed and refined, until it gains the appearance which is represented
on the million-scale map belonging to this work. Within the range of this period
of more than 200 years, we can leave the ordinary i. e. the general maps of the
whole of Asia, and pass to the detailed maps of Tibet and its special parts. There
we can follow the course of development of the cartographical representations of
the lakes Manasarovar and Rakas-tal, of the sources of the Indus, the Satlej and
the Brahmaputra, and of the mighty mountain-masses to the North of the valley of
the Tsangpo.

I commence with the world map of the year 1447 and Fra Mauro's of the