Southern Tibet : vol.2 / 57 ページ（カラー画像）

0057	Southern Tibet : vol.2
南チベット : vol.2

impossible that any river could issue from Rakas-tal; the channel must be quite full
of water, before the Satlej goes out of the western lake. Still it is interesting to
notice that the Lamas of Tirtapuri regarded the river as coming from that lake,
showing that the periodical fluctuations did not interfere with their view.

Two days farther on, at the foot of the mountains to the right, he beheld a
large sheet of remarkable blue water, called Râwanhrad, said to give rise to the
principal branch of the Satúdrá, and to communicate by a river with the lake Mán-
sarówar, named by the natives Mapang. This was written before he had reached
the Manasarovar, where he should see that there was no communication at all between
the two lakes. As to the Râwanhrad and the Satúdrá he was never to get an
opportunity to control that statement.

In his camp at Gangrí or Darchan he observed that »a cascade issues from
the rocks just above Darchan, and falls into the Râwanhrad, which is supplied by
the melting of the snow on the great mountains at the foot of which it is situated.
It is said to surround a considerable extent of mountains, insulating them completely;
but this, being the relation of natives, is to be received with caution.»

On the 5th of August they left Darchan and crossed a stream which in five
or six branches comes down from the Cailâs mountains and disembogues into the
Râwanhrad. Finally the Manasarovar was visible and the party camped near a
house inhabited by Gelums, which cannot be anything else than Langbo-nan-gompal

Moorcroft remarks that this lake is the most sacred of all places of Hindu
worship which he believes depends upon its difficulty of access, its distance from
Hindustan, the dangers of the road, and the heavy expenses of the journey for the
pilgrims.

Moorcroft has not been able to find out why the lake is called Mapang
by the »Unias or Chinese Tatars». As Hindu geographers had derived the Ganges,
the Satrúdrá and the Kâlî or Gogra from this lake, and as Moorcroft believed
no other European had ever visited it before, he was anxious to settle the question
about the two last-mentioned rivers. For, as he says, from his own observation
and from those made by Raper, Webb and Hearsay, it was quite clear, that the
Ganges derives its supplies from the melted snow of the Himâlayas, and that it
does not receive the smallest streamlet from their extreme northern face, nor from
a source to the north of them.

Moorcroft was not the first European at the Manasarovar as he believed.
Desideri and Freyre had been there before, but the detailed narrative of Desideri
was unknown, and in his letters he does not mention the lake; Moorcroft was,
at any rate, the first scientifically trained European who ever reached the place.¹

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

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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