国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

the Ganges. So far there can be no talk of a »greater Tibet» as a physico-
geographical or political unity; at the very most the mere name appears on
some of these early maps. Only with Delisle is a really new type inaugurated,
showing Tibet as a definitely bordered country north of the Himalaya. And with
him we enter upon more solid ground so far as a cartographical classification in types
is concerned. The next type, the most revolutionary of all, is introduced by D'An-
ville, who totally changes the map of Tibet, and whose influence stretches far into
recent times, so much so, that it can still be traced on Reclus' map of 1882. To
d'Anville's type we must reckon Klaproth, and all his followers amongst the great
German cartographers, Ritter, Grimm, Mahlmann, Humboldt, Berghaus; and
even Kiepert. After d'Anville we can hardly speak of any new original type be-
fore the journeys of Montgomerie's Pundits, a type which has culminated in the
actual representation of Tibet, the result of modern European exploration. Hodg-
son, Schlagintweit, Saunders and Richthofen may also be regarded as re-
presentatives of different types, but as their maps are constructed only on hypoth-
eses, they are of no great importance.
While Dr. Dahlgren's system of cartographical types for Japan embraces only
the one century from 1550 (Gastaldi) to 1655 (Martini), for Tibet we may speak
of types falling within two centuries, from about 1700 (Delisle) to about 1900 (the
exploration which is still going on). This difference simply depends upon the fact that
Tibet has made resistance against European exploration much longer than Japan and
any other country in Asia. Before 1700 Tibet can hardly be said to play any carto-
graphical part at all, and our attempts to extract any information from earlier maps
will therefore prove to be rather negative. But our object being also to trace the
localisation of the sources of the great rivers we have to go back to the middle of
the fifteenth century. In a much later time European investigation slowly begins to
conquer the ramparts round Tibet.
In the middle of the 15th century cartographical and cosmographical studies
were in a particularly flourishing state at Venice and Genoa, and from that period
dates the first map we are going to consider, namely the Genoese Map of the
World of 1447, which is preserved at the National Library of Florence (Pl. XII.).
Prof. Theobald Fischer regards it as the most important map of the 15th cent-
ury, and indeed it supersedes the famous map of Fra Mauro, 1459, in the way it
shows both the mountains and rivers of southern Asia.¹ Ptolemy's influence is very
clearly to be seen; the great features of the orography are the same as his, and the
Indus with its five source branches is of a perfectly Ptolemæan type. The eastern-
most of the branches is the Zaradrus of Ptolemy, the Satlej of our days. On the
other hand, Fischer regards the Ganges of this map as drawn from more recent