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| 0112 |
Southern Tibet : vol.1 |
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OCR Text
Phison entered at the side of Ganges.¹ The Vishnu Punana tells us how the
Ganges, after encircling the capital of Brahma, divides into four mighty rivers, flow-
ing in opposite directions, Sita, Alaknanda, Chakshu and Bhadra.
The names and the distances of Edrisi do not, of course, play any part what-
ever in an account where so much is in confusion. The same is the case with the
direction of these rivers. Edrisi makes them enter the lake instead of issuing from
it. In the following pages we shall often have to deal with the four rivers issuing
from the Manasarovar. DELISLE and TIEFFENTHALER believe, at least partly, in
their existence and have them on their maps; Delisle, however, has only two. Even
in our own days one hears, from time to time Tibetans asserting that four rivers
flow underground to the mouths of the Lion, the Elephant, the Peacock and the
Horse, these rivers being the Indus, Satlej, Map-chu, and Tsangpo-Brahmaputra.
The first of Edrisi's four rivers may be the sacred Ganges, »heard of, bathed
in, sanctifying all beings», for he says the inhabitants of Adhkach take their children
to bathe them and purify them in its water. The natives regard the ablutions in
the Téhama as incontestable. Drinking the water heals every sickness, and wash-
ing the head with it ensures against headache for a year. The eternal wonders of
the Ganges-water believed in by the Hindus have been digested in a more practical
way by the Mohammedan writer.
North of the lake are some famous mountains, one of which, Cocaïa, is de-
scribed as very abrupt and covered with eternal snow. This may be the Kaïlasa.²
To this discussion it might be objected that Edrisi should have described the
Manasarovar as if it were two different lakes, the Berwan and the Téhama, the one
in Tibet, and the other in the country of the Adhkach. But this is not at all sur-
prising, for Edrisi is, as a rule, very confused and having taken his information
from two different sources about one and the same lake, he very likely believed that
he had to do with two quite different lakes in different countries. And we should
not forget that both these countries were practically unknown in his time. The same
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