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| 0129 |
Southern Tibet : vol.1 |
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CHAPTER VI.
CHINESE WORKS ON THE HYDROGRAPHY OF SOUTH-
WESTERN TIBET.
In the preceding chapters I have tried to show how hopeless a task it is to
search in the ancient Indian, Greek, Roman, Arabian and other Mohammedan writers
for any valuable and trustworthy information about Tibet. In later chapters we shall
see how Europe got acquainted with this country only in very recent times. The
only people which has since many centuries possessed really reliable and partly very
detailed and correct information of Tibet is the Chinese. On account of their geo-
graphical position, their great ability for topographical survey, the admirable exactitude
with which they are accustomed to describe what they see, and finally their political
and commercial relations with Tibet, the Chinese have had through centuries in-
numerable opportunities to study Tibet from several points of view, administrative,
commercial, historical and geographical. At an epoch when Tibet was still unknown
to Europe, the Chinese had a rather clear conception of its geography, more especi-
ally of its eastern and southern portions, while central and northern Tibet has re-
mained nearly unknown even to them. But being a practical people the Chinese
did not care very much for those parts of the country, which were uninhabited and
where nothing was to be gained.
Rockhill points to the fact that many Chinese scholars were sent by their
Government to Tibet to hold official positions; they were thrown in daily contact
with the educated and ruling classes and made records of what they saw and heard,
which were afterwards published and contained a vast and trustworthy source of
information.¹
The most important Chinese works on Tibet date from the 18th and 19th
centuries which is owing to the fact that the political supremacy of China in Tibet
was accomplished in 1720.
As a basis for his Sketch quoted above Rockhill has taken the »Topographical
Description of Central Tibet», or, as its Chinese title is, Wei-tsang-t'u-chih,²
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