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0440 Southern Tibet : vol.1
Southern Tibet : vol.1 / Page 440 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000263
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OCR Text

Tieffenthaler's pilgrim, who knew that this river was the uppermost part
of the Satlej of Panjab, had no idea of its going through the Rakas-tal or Lanka
Dhé which he had so near to the west. But he never even went so far as to ascertain
where the river went to, and thus on the map the neck of land between the two
lakes is not pierced by any channel.¹

But so much was gathered by the pilgrim that a river issued from the Lanka
Dhé. It is a pity that just here a Persian legend is missing. There is only a legend
of Tieffenthaler, who says that it is really the Gagra that goes out from the
lake, and as to the lake, he informs us that it is through the reports of »travellers»
the source of the river is known. But he must have felt the unreliability of the
statement as he adds the really charming words: »certiora alias exploranda».

Disregarding the Brahmaputra, the most curious feature of Tieffenthaler's
hydrography is that the eastern lake is regarded as belonging to the Indus-system
and the western lake to the Ganges-system and that the two lakes are perfectly
independent of each other. The Lama map made both lakes belong to the Ganges-
system, but in this case we have seen that the hydrography was perfectly correct and
the only thing unknown was where the river went to. Even if Tieffenthaler believed
in the tale of the Brahmaputra going out of the lake to the east, and the Satlej to
the west, it is surprising that Anquetil du Perron could ever accept such an extra-
ordinary bifurcation, a case that, at least to such an extent, would be perfectly unique.

And still it is easy to explain the mistake of Tieffenthaler's pilgrim. We
only need to remember that there is one river leaving the Manasarovar to the west,
and one river leaving the Rakas-tal to the west. He did not know that the effluents,
which he represents as two different rivers, were one and the same, or, in other
words, that his Sardjou was in reality the continuation of the Satlej. When he saw
the upper Map-chu above Taklakot, he found it probable that that river came out
from the Rakas-tal.

Thus we are able to trace the outlines of truth even in this confusion.

In the Recueil published by P. SOUCIET,² P. GAUBIL gives some information
of the sources of the Ganges. The title of Gaubil's article runs: »Situation de