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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

so much uncertainty could prevail in Europe regarding the Ganges, which had been
drawn far more exactly by the Alexandrine cartographer 1500 years before.

As a consequence of the exaggerated length of the Ganges, the chain of moun-
tains, running west to east, which had been accepted by nearly all geographers and
maps, has disappeared almost entirely. Only the meridional Imaus is left in the
middle of a net of irregular and fantastic ranges.

One clearly sees how Ptolemy's authority begins to shake. But this was no
gain for geography. Where Ptolemy has been respected, as for instance in the
case of the Indus, the Oxus and the Jaxartes, the map is tolerable, but to the east
and N.E. of that region nothing corresponds to reality.

We now have to consider two maps that are of the same type as that on
Pl. XXVI. So far as rivers, lakes and mountains are concerned it may be called
Janssonius' type. The first, Pl. XXVII, has the title: India quæ Orientalis dicitur,
et Insulæ adiacentes. It is first known to us in Guiljelmus Blaeu's ›Le Theatre
du monde, ou Nouvel Atlas‹, 1640.¹ The second, Pl. XXVIII, is from Iohannes
Ianssonius' Newer Atlas, oder Weltbeschreibung, Amsterdam 1641, and has the
title: Asia recens summa cura delineata Auct: Iud: Hondio. It was prepared in
Jansson's offices in 1632.

Comparing these three maps, Pl. XXV, XXVII and XXVIII, we at once see
that they are founded on one and the same original drawing. The Indus is of Ptole-
mæan type. On the map bearing Hoeius' name, Pl. XXVI, the river flows S.S-W; on
the two others S.W. As can be seen on Ianssonius' map of Asia, of which Pl. XXVIII
is a part, the source of the Ganges is much farther from the Indian Ocean than
from the Glacial, and should on a modern map have to be placed in Dsungaria,
48° N. lat. instead of 31°. If the draughtsman had really felt confidence in the situa-
tion he has given to Marco Polo's Cotan, Poin, Ciarci, and Lop, he would have
been alarmed at the thought that the Venetian traveller on his way eastwards from
the last mentioned place to Sachiu in the province of Tangut, should have been
obliged to cross the upper course of the sacred Ganges. But he has not been sure at
all, and following the example of Mercator he has entered the same places once more,
namely, on the great river, which we remember from Pl. XXVI, and which obviously
is a forerunner to Hwangho.

On Pl. XXVI the lower Ganges had a S.S-E. course, on Pl. XXVII and XXVIII
it runs to the S.S-W. No rest is given the sacred river. In the course of a few years
it has been swinging like a pendulum between Canton and Bengal. And when at
last the mouth gets settled in the Gulf of Bengal, the whole course of the river be-
gins to swing the other way, while the Indus, the river of Alexander the Great, was
too firmly fixed by historical events.

Of the three rivers we shall have to work out through the following chapters,
the Indus, Satlej and Brahmaputra, until I have the honour of leading the reader