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

view in my original report: the Tage-tsangpo is the source of the Satlej. In a
problem like this the eastern view may be of extremely great weight. It is built up
on tradition and old historical facts and comes down from times in which Europe
had no contact with the countries in question and no idea of their geography and
hydrography. The religious view of course plays its part, and troubles the sober
explanation of the phenomena. Only the Chinese are untroubled by religion. So long
as our good Japanese priest sticks to what he has seen with his own eyes, he is all
right. But when religion gets hold of him he becomes unreliable. When he tells the
world the alarming news that the Ganges rises from the Manasarovar, he is blind, and
he never says where the sacred river again goes out of the lake. But in searching
the real and original source of the river supposed to go out of the Manasarovar, he
points to the Tage-tsangpo, exactly as the Lama surveyors did 200 years ago, and
as the Tibetans do, so far as the genetic source of the Satlej is concerned.

He refers to some legends of the Mapham Yum-tso or Anavatapta of Sanscrit
and continues:¹ ›It is said that the lake has four outlets for its waters: Mabcha
Khanbab, Langchen² Khanbab, Tamchok Khanbab and Senge Khanbab, which re-
spectively form the sources of the four sacred rivers of India.‹ He says that ›it is
from these notions that the sacredness of the Anavatapta is evolved, the name of
Zenbu derived, and the religious relations between Tibet and India established.‹

He does not mention the Ganges, although he had found that its source, the
Ganga, falls into the Manasarovar, and he is even aware that ›there is not one of
the four rivers that actually flows directly out of the lake.‹ He understands that they
have their sources in the mountains surrounding the lake. Only ›the sources of the
Tamchok Khanbab have hitherto defied investigation.‹

He does not believe in the European travellers who have surveyed the lake,
as they have represented it far smaller than it actually is. In reality, he says, its
circumference is about 200 miles! The shape also, on European maps, is misleading,
as it has, in reality, the shape of — a lotus flower. All western maps he finds
wrong and incorrect. Here he is a little too rash, for the circumference of the lake
is only 45 miles.

The Gurla-mandata he calls Manri. He stayed at a temple called Tse-ko-lo,
obviously Tugu-gompa. Next morning he made his way
›to the range of mountains that stands like a great wall to the north-west of the Lake.
A zigzag climb of ten miles or so brought me within view of Lake Lakgal-tso, . . . Rakas-tal.
It is in shape something like a long calabash, and in area smaller than Manasarovara. An-
other seven and a half miles brought me to a spot whence I could see the whole of its sur-
face, and here I made a further discovery. A mountain, some two and a half miles round at
the base, stands like a wall of partition between the two lakes, and where this mountain slopes
into a ravine it looks for all the world, as though there were a channel of communication for