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

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0089 Southern Tibet : vol.1
Southern Tibet : vol.1 / Page 89 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000263
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

whole Tibetan highland between Kwen-lun and Himalaya has been pressed together,
and forms only one single mountain wall running east and west. This wall sepa-
rates the plains of India from the plains of Central Asia. ยน

Therefore it is not surprising that Ptolemy, at so early a date, made the
same mistake from the unreliable and uncertain information he could gather. India
was comparatively well known. It was bounded on the north by a high range of
mountains. The Tarim basin was, on account of its trade roads, also known to a
certain extent. It was bounded on the south by a high range of mountains. There
were no trade roads through Tibet, and Tibet itself remained completely unknown.
Therefore the northern slopes seen by some informants, and the southern slopes
seen by others, were believed to belong to one and the same range. To Ptolemy,
Tibet did not exist at all and Bautisus could not be the Tsangpo.