Southern Tibet : vol.2 / 80 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0080	Southern Tibet : vol.2
南チベット : vol.2

to prolong conjecture as to the extreme verge of the highest lines of level. All
the waters from the northward deflexure of this mass of mountains from the great
Kylás chain and table land on both sides of it, running into the grand rivers, which
form the Peninsula of India, or intersect the Gangetic plain, or tending towards an
aspect comprehended between the debouchures of the Brahmaputra and Oxus.

He regards the Satlej as the centre of this system of rivers. On its course
downwards from the Manasarovar, the Satlej collects tributaries from the northern
side of the Himalayas as well as from the high table land farther north. He imag-
ines that this table land rises in bluff undulations, terminating in a rival crest,
Kailas, which sends its waters to the Indus. The interior of high Tibet was in his
days so little known, that he believed the whole country inhabited by ›Tibetan
Tartars‹ grazing their sheep the whole way between Yarkand and Lhasa.

He makes the Manasarovar 17,000 feet high, for Moorcroft had snowfall
at midsummer and so had Csoma de Körös in Sanskar on the day of the summer
solstice and in the beginning of September. At the lake itself Moorcroft had
several inches of snow on 10th August. Comparing these facts with analogous ob-
servations in Rupshu he cannot give the lake less than 17,000 feet, although
European theorists estimated the table land of Tibet at 8,000 feet above the sea.

He expresses his views on the evaporation thus: ¹

›To this accelerated vaporization is owing the fluctuation in level of the lakes in Tar-
tary, in defiance of increasing cold. The lake of Mánsarovara celebrated in Hindu mythology
for giving eflux to several rivers in opposite directions, (a metaphorical figure to indicate the
point of their divergence) was not admitted, upon Moorcroft's assertion, to be land-locked,
from ideas of the feebleness of evaporation at that great height then unknown and unsuspected;
and though the lake does appear to have an outlet in the Satlej, this does not alter the question
in regard to basins (inferior it is true to Mánsarovara, but under similar circumstances) having
been found wholly inclosed; and Moorcroft was right as to the fact, though his reviewers could
not reconcile it with their preconceived opinions.‹

As a matter of fact it would be much simpler to say that if the evaporation
alone balanced the level of the lake, the water would have become salt. But in
certain years the precipitation is so considerable that the evaporation is not sufficient
to keep down the level, and the surplus of the water goes out to Rakas-tal.

As to the supposition of any other river, except the Satlej, issuing from the
Manasarovar, he is right in saying that this is a physical impossibility. ²

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

引用情報

OCR読み取り結果

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

引用情報

OCR読み取り結果

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