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0404 Southern Tibet : vol.1
Southern Tibet : vol.1 / Page 404 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000263
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the map himself. ¹ This statement cannot be taken literally. The Mongolian
ruler ² can at the most have ordered the map to be made. By whom? It seems very
unlikely that any Mongolians, East or West, would have been able to draw a map,
the whole appearance of which is perfectly European. The Chinese have always been
very clever surveyors, but the map (Pl. L) has not at all the ordinary Chinese
habitus, it has not even been influenced in the least by Chinese methods. And as
I said before the Mongol original is exactly the same as Pl. L, except the names
which are in Mongol writing, and a few details added on Renat's copy. The Chinese
always use to show the mountains in horizontal perspective, not in vertical projection.
On Delisle's, Strahlenberg's and d'Anville's maps the mountains are still shown in
horizontal projection; but on Renat's they are drawn as seen from a bird's eye view,
which gives the map a much more modern stamp than heaps of European maps of
a much later date.
All we can do is to confess our ignorance about the real origin of this most
valuable map, which had been buried and forgotten 150 years when Strindberg dis-
covered it.³ Anyhow the Russian Geographical Society may feel satisfied that Renat