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

In 1839 Captain Sir ALEX. BURNES gives us his views of the Indus and he
has even a special chapter (XI) On the sources of the Indus, which shows the
state of knowledge of his time.¹ But he says, as the whole of his information rests
on the authority of others the credence to which it is entitled should be well weighed.
The main Indus he regards as four times as great in volume as the Ganges in the
dry season and nearly equal to the Mississippi.

›The much greater length of course in the Indus and its tributaries, among towering
and snowy mountains near its source, that must always contribute vast quantities of water,
might have prepared us for the result; and it is not extraordinary, when we reflect on the
wide area embraced by some of these minor rivers, and the lofty and elevated position from
which they take their rise: the Sutlege, in particular, flows from the sacred Lake of Mansurour,
in Tibet, 17,000 feet above the sea. The Indus traverses, too, a comparatively barren and
deserted country, thinly peopled and poorly cultivated: while the Ganges expends its waters
in irrigation . . . Moreover, the Ganges and its subsidiary rivers derive their supply from the
southern face of the great Himalaya, while the Indus receives the torrents of either side of
that massy chain, and is further swollen by the showers of Cabool and the rains and snow of
Chinese Tartary. Its waters are augmented long before the rainy season has arrived; and,
when we look at the distant source of the river, to what cause can we attribute this early
inundation but to melting snow and ice?‹²

The difference he makes between the two rivers is only partly correct, as
several of the tributaries to the Ganges rise on the Tibetan side of the Himalayas.
He states that the sources of the great rivers of the world have always excited the
particular attention of mankind; and that of none has our information been more
conflicting and obscure than of the upper course of the Indus. After he had extended
his journey into ›Tartary‹ he made inquiries amongst the natives, which were assisted
by Lieut. Macartney, though there is a great difference between Macartney's map
and Burnes' results. ›Great, however, is the aid which one derives from the records
of a preceding enquirer.‹ And he expects much from Moorcroft's second journey,
the results of which had not yet been published. When Burnes says: ›The following
are our present and received opinions regarding the sources of the Indus,‹³ one
would expect to get some new information about the real source, but he only tells
us that the river of Ladak, joined by the ›Shyook‹, falls into the Indus at Dras, a
view which he materially improved by stating, that the river of Ladak, and the
Shyook, instead of existing as two minor tributaries of the Indus, form of them-
selves the Indus; the one rising near the lake of ›Mansurour‹, and the other in the