National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

not suppose that such a mistake could be committed more than once. From the
misunderstanding of one European, Barros, Gastaldi enters the lake on his maps.
Nearly a hundred years later another European visits the country, but has no op-
portunity to proceed towards the interior to persuade himself of the existence of the
lake. He had no other choice but to trust the great authority of Gastaldi, and noth-
ing superior had occurred in the meantime to replace him. Now, as le Blanc says,
the lake had even become famous, and if it had been audacious to create the lake,
it would have been still more audacious to deny its existence. And there it was,
surrounded by its impenetrable swamps and forests.
And so it came that Sanson d'Abbeville on his beautiful map of 1654,
Pl. XXIX, had no reason whatever to break against the tradition. He has four rivers
from Lac de Chiamay, the easternmost with two heads, and he has complicated
the hydrography more than his predecessors. The Ava fl. belongs to the Menan fl.,
while the lower course of the Irrawaddi is called R. de Pegu (Caypumo). The city
Gouro is well placed on the Ganges. A new city, Totay, appears on the Caor, and
the city Caor is called Caorforan. West of the lake is a province Vdessa, which
Lévi, obviously incorrectly, identifies with Orissa.¹
In 1655 Martini calls the lake Kia L. (Pl. XXXI), and has it to the S.W.
of Tibet Regnvm. He has as usual four rivers issuing, of which the one is formed
by two very long head-branches. His text to the hydrography is very surprising:
‹Là même (d'où le Gange tire sa source), vers le Couchant, il y a un fort grand
lac qui s'appelle Kia, d'où vient le Gange & les autres Rivieres que j'ai mises dans
la carte.›² Thevenot who has a reprint of Martini's map in his Relations de
divers voyages curieux, 1666, Pl. XLVI, has even added the name Ganges flu.
to the westernmost of the four rivers, the one which hitherto had been called Caor.
It is worth noting that two such able geographers as Martini and Thevenot reckon
the Ganges amongst the four rivers taking their origin from lake Chiamay. They
cannot have ignored the previous maps, — from where else could Martini have got the
lake at all? Still they do not care in the least for the Caor river. Only one river was
known to flow through Bengala and enter the Gulf at the city of Bengala, namely,
the Ganges. Thus the Caor must be a mistake, and it was the Ganges that took
its rise in the westernmost part of the lake.
Whatever Martini's conception may have been, he has compressed the whole
of Asia enormously, and approached the west to the east in such a degree, that his
Samarcandiæ Pars is just outside the great wall and the Hwangho. And still he