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0024 Southern Tibet : vol.7
南チベット : vol.7
Southern Tibet : vol.7 / 24 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000263
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4

Thus I have also inserted in these first chapters some information that has come to
my knowledge since the first volumes were printed, and such information as has
been published in the last four or five years. Approaching our own time my
attention will be concentrated more and more upon the Kara-korum Proper, and
having dealt with the recent exploration in the glacier region of the western-most
part of the system, I will finally make an attempt to show in how far the Kara-korum
and Transhimalayan Systems may be said to belong to one and the same gigantic
system of folds in the earth's crust.

In the first chapter of Vol. I of this work, I have made an attempt to show,
by a few examples, how very scanty and uncertain the real geographical features
are which may be drawn out of the epical songs and other works of Sanskrit
literature regarding the mountains to the north of India. As the result proved to
be very poor when dealing with the whole world of mountains to the north, we
could indeed not expect to find the slightest hint of the existence of the Kara-korum
System which is only a part of the whole. Mount Kailāsa, which from a general point
of view may be said to belong to this system, was the single part of it that we
found mentioned in many of the poetical works of the ancient Hindus. But, on the
other hand, when, according to Hindu conception, Mount Meru or Sumeru is regarded
as the centre around which the four continents, amongst which is Jambudvipa or
India, are situated, it may also, from a very generalizing point of view, be said
that Mount Meru includes the Kara-korum as well as all other mountain systems
belonging to the Tibetan highlands.¹ But it is superfluous to add that the Kara-
korum in reality was a perfect stranger to the geographical conception of the Hindus,
and that even the Himalaya and the Kailāsa, and in a still higher degree the Meru,
to the mind of the Hindus first of all, were poetical conceptions with, it is true,
a background of real knowledge. The real knowledge of the geography of High Asia
may be said to cease with the Kailas, north of which the terra incognita began.²