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

WICQUEFORT in a new edition of MANDELSLO's narrative. The map comes from
the offices of PIERRE VAN DER AA, and is very much of the same type as Jans-
son's map of 1641, (Pl. XXVIII). ¹ At any rate it is nearly a hundred years too old,
and shows what the publishers allowed themselves, and what the public had to ac-
cept. To the same class belongs the map reproduced as Pl. XLVIII. It dates from
about 1739. ² The Chiamay Lac. has been captured by the Ganges river system,
though the old Chiamay Lake, under the name of Cananor or Cunabete, still plays
its part as being the source of the four Indo-Chinese rivers. On serious maps the
lake does not exist any more, and d'Anville has the sources of the Indo-Chinese
rivers in or on the borders of Tibet.

The name of the lake has undergone very insignificant changes in the course
of time. Barros writes Chiamay and his spelling has been adopted by Mercator,
Herbert, Jansson, Blaeu, Sanson d'Abbeville, Visscher, de Witt, Coronelli, and
certainly by a great many others who have not been discussed in the preceding
chapters. Gastaldi (1561) has Cayamay. Ortelius writes Caÿamai, though his second
copy is called Chÿamai. Hondius and Hoeius have Chiamai. Martini writes Kia,
instead of Kiamay. Cantelli has Chimai, Witsen Chimoi, and Delisle Chaamay:
names which have only augmented the confusion are Coconor, Zim, Cunabetee, Kana-
nor, Cara Nor, and Mohill. Disregarding these later attempts, the prototype is Chia-
may, and such the name has remained from 1550 to 1705, or perhaps somewhat
longer, with some unimportant variations in spelling. This is very natural, for the
lake had been created by a misunderstanding, and Barros has heard the name as
Chiamay. As nobody ever heard of it after his time, the name given by him had
to remain intact. Nobody had any new information to bring, nor any new correc-
tion to add.

How could Barros positively assert the existence of a lake in an unknown
country, where, as has fully been proved by the exploration of a later time, no lake
exists at all? This question is impossible to answer with any degree of certainty.
Natives on the banks of Irrawaddi, Salwen, and Menam would not pretend that their
rivers come from a great inland sea. The information is probably not first hand.
It may have come from Hindus living on the banks of the Brahmaputra, who have
been convinced that their river came from a lake, which gave rise to three other
great rivers. As the Indus and the Ganges ever since Ptolemy's time were supposed
to be known as not coming from a lake, and as the Satlej was almost unknown,