National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

The following passage gives an idea of his views regarding the orographical
situation of the Transhimalaya. »The result is very different if the summit of a
mountain be taken as the line of separation between one orographic system and
another. A mountain is not a line like a river, which can be separated from the
rest of the ground without disturbing its form. The mountains on the north of the
Sanpu are the contreforts, buttresses, slopes, or escarpments of the table-land which
they support; and they cannot be cut off from it. If a drawing or model be made
of that table-land, you cannot terminate it on the south at the top of its own slope,
and say that the table-land is Tibetan, and the slope is Himalayan.»

This view is not at all in accordance with his map. He regards the Trans-
himalaya as simple slopes or escarpments of the Tibetan plateau-land, from which it
cannot be separated. Such a view could only be maintained at a time when the
Central Transhimalaya was still unknown. Nowadays nobody would ever think of
such an absurd thing as calling »the mountains north of the Sanpu» the »slope» of
the Tibetan table-land. From Ryder's map one could, perhaps, feel tempted to ex-
plain it as such. In reality it is an extremely well defined system of mountains,
which, on a drawing or map could easily be cut off. And only when all the Trans-
himalayan ranges have been cut off, can one talk of a table-land at all. But Saun-
ders says: »The whole mass, with all its slopes, forms the Tibetan Plateau, just as
the whole mass, with all its slopes, from base to base, between the Upper Indus
and the plains of India, forms the Himalaya.» Here clearly he distinguishes between
the Himalaya south of the Tsangpo and the Tibetan Plateau, — not the Gangri
Mountains, north of the river. And he continues: »It might fairly be discussed,
whether the term 'Himalaya' should extend beyond my Southern Chain; and whether
the Tibetan Plateau should not be limited by the rivers that form the northern base
of that chain. Such a definition would be more consistent with the political limits
of Tibet, and the extension of the natural features that distinguish the whole table-
land from the outer slopes of the Southern Chain.»

He, however, prefers to regard the great rivers as the northern limit of the
Himalaya. The next range, north of his North Himalayan Range, »rising from the
beds of the Upper Indus, Sutlej, and Sanpu rivers, belongs to another system, which
we call the Tibetan». Here, again he regards the Transhimalaya as a chain, for,
after having defined the Tibetan Plateau between the Upper Indus and Tsangpo on
the south and the plains of Gobi on the north, he says: »like the Himalayan Plateau,
it is bounded by two chains of mountains, which, descending are divided by the
greatest breadth of the plateau . . .»

It is of course quite wrong to make such a comparison between a Hima-
layan and a Tibetan plateau. For the Transhimalaya has the same rank as the
Arka-tagh and Kara-korum and other systems, and rises, like them, from the Tibetan
plateau-land, which is bounded only by the Kwen-lun and the Himalaya, and with
such a fact the political limits have nothing whatever to do.