Southern Tibet : vol.3 / 156 ページ（カラー画像）

0156	Southern Tibet : vol.3
南チベット : vol.3

The source Ritter has used is, as he says in a note, Klaproth: *Carte de la route
de Tching-tou-fou à H'lassa*, 1830, and *Description du Tubet, trad. Père Hya-
cinth etc. Paris 1831*. The original source is Chinese.

Hodgson himself quotes Ritter as his source. He says that his important
range »is indicated by the Nien-tsin-tangla of Ritter's Hoch-Asien and by the Tanla
of Huc». According to him those writers use a name in a contracted sense, which
he, »following native authority», uses in a wide sense. But which native authority
we are not told. Ritter and Huc were not so wrong after all, as Nien-chen-tang-la
and Tang-la are two different systems, running parallel with each other. Hodgson
combines them to one and the same system. Even in this mistake Hodgson is not
original, for Ritter says of the Nien-chen-tang-la that »it forms a remarkable boundary-
pillar between H'lassa and the Tengri Nor. Further towards the North-east this
enormous mountain-system is stretching, North-west of the town Tsiamdo . . .»¹ This
opinion was expressed 13 years before Huc's journey to Lhasa and 20 years before
his *Souvenirs* were published, 1853, the same year when Hodgson's article appeared.
Ritter has, no doubt, been impressed by Klaproth, for instance in the following pas-
sage from KANG HI's order of 1721: »Therefore it is obvious that all the great
rivers of China rise from the south-eastern slopes of the great chain of Nomkhoun
oubachi, which separates the hydrographical system of the interior from the exterior
one.»² We have seen above that Klaproth identifies the Nomkhou-oubashi with
d'Anville's M. Temen. But Temen is no doubt identical with Tang-la, a fact which
was unknown both to Klaproth and Ritter. Hodgson had read Huc's *Souvenirs*
and found it easy without any further proof to call the Tang-la a direct continuation
of the Nien-chen-tang-la. The western half of his enormous range was supplied by
Ritter and the eastern half by Huc. Of both components, which belong to two diff-
erent systems separated from each other on the meridian of Lhasa by two degrees,
he constructed a monstrosity of a range without ever having been in Tibet. It is
superfluous to say how little this range has to do with the complicated system which
I have called Transhimalaya. In fact only the real Nien-chen-tang-la, known of old
and first, in a very vague manner mentioned in Georgi's book, is in accordance with
the truth. But it was Klaproth, Humboldt and Ritter, and not Hodgson, who made
it known to Europe.

We now pass on to the next geographical article by Brian Hodgson, in-
teresting and suggestive as everything he has written.³ It deals with the contents
of two papers which in 1843 were given to Hodgson by the Maharaja of Nepal. It
comprises official summaries of the routes of two embassies of tribute which Nepal,
since the war of 1792, was bound by treaty to send to Peking once every 5

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