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

As the magnificent atlas of JEAN BLAEU, of which the eleventh volume ¹ ap-
peared in 1663, was an »encyclopedia cartographica and geographica», we cannot
expect to find any new information about our regions in it, no more than in the
compilations of Sanson, Visscher, Coronelli, and others. The maps are brought
together from different authors and epochs; maps from Jansson's and Sanson's
offices are seen at the side of such from Ortelius, and others. The same is the
case with the text where several paragraphs are more than a hundred years old, and
uncritically accepted as true. India is said to be bordered to the north by branches
from Mount Taurus, or Imae, a part of Caucasus. The most famous rivers of India,
Indus and Ganges, take their origin »from Mount Imae, called by its inhabitants
Dalanguer & Naugracot, & are born, according to the opinion of the natives, from one
and the same source; in spite of the distance between their mouths being 300 lieues.²

All the rivers of »Pang Ab», so far as they were known in 1663, are enu-
merated from different travellers. The part of the Imae where Ganges has its
source, is known as Montagnes Ussontes. Caximir has the kingdom of Rebat to the
east. Then follows, from Jarric, the notion of the source of Chenab as situated in
Kashmir, and from authors quoted above, the comparison between the climate of
Kashmir and Tibet. Blaeu's volume was published the year after Grueber's
return, but the uncertainty about the situation of Tibet is still very great. Having
placed the Kingdom of Rebat east of Kashmir, the compilator of this text says of
the province of Thebeth, the capital of which is also called Thebeth, that it confines,
on one side with the countries of Sindinfu and Caindu, and on the other with Mangi
or China, where Marco Polo is his source. The province is said to be great but
much devastated by the Tartars. A few pages further on we meet a third Tibet,
the Kingdom of Thibethe, bordering upon the dominions of Mogor and specially Kash-
mir, and being separated from it by very high mountains, which, on account of the
snow, cannot be crossed except at certain seasons of the year. »Beyond it is the
Little Kingdom of Thibethe under the power of the Moors of the sect of Sofi. The
residence of the King is called Babgo.»³ One feels quite at a loss when the compilator
tells us that the inhabitants of this last edition of Tibet are all Christians, and have many
churches, and a bishop called Lamhao, — all rumours current amongst the Jesuits at Goa,
and giving an impulse and a reason to the journeys of Goës and Andrade. Already before
Goës' start, these rumours had been proved to be fables by the famous Father M. Ricci.

When Blaeu's compilator gives the boundaries of China he says that it has
»Tibet» to the west. We have therefore in one and the same work a Kingdom
Rebat, a province Thebeth, a Kingdom Thibethe, a Little Kingdom Thibethe, and