Southern Tibet : vol.7 / 325 ページ（カラー画像）

0325	Southern Tibet : vol.7
南チベット : vol.7

0325

Southern Tibet : vol.7

南チベット : vol.7

203

In a little book published in 1851, HENRY T. PRINSEP gives a general view
of the then existing knowledge of Tibet.¹ It is only a compilation from ancient
and modern travellers, especially from HUC'S book. Of some interest is his little
sketch map where Eastern Turkestan is bordered in the west by the Biloot Tag Mts.,
to the S. W. by the Kurakurum Mts. and to the south by the Bain Karatoola (Bayen
Kharat in the text). The Tibetan plateau is bordered to the west by the Gangra
Mts., which start as a nearly meridional range from the Kurakurum Mts.—Bain Kara-
toola range, or, in reality, the Kuen-lun.

DESIDERI'S route is marked a good long way north of the »Sampoo», but
this is chiefly due to the ignorance of the mapmaker regarding the situation of
Gartok. I have inserted a reprint of PRINSEP'S little map (Pl. XLVII) only as a
curiosity, showing what liberties certain draftsmen could allow themselves at a time
when RITTER'S and KLAPROTH'S excellent maps were 18 and 15 years old, and
ought to have been consulted by people writing books about Tibet.

In 1851 RICHARD STRACHEY wrote about the elevated region called Tibet that:
we are familiar with the mountains that abut upon, and indeed form its southern
edge, as the Himalaya; while there seems every reason to suppose that the chain that
appears upon our maps as the Kouenlun in like manner forms its termination to the north.
And he adds that:
it appears to be with few exceptions broken up into a mass of mountain, the average
elevation of whose surface is very great, often exceeding in altitude 15,000 feet . . . . It is
the opinion of my brother Captain Henry Strachey . . . . that neither the Kouenlun, nor
the Himalaya, as marked upon our maps, have any definite special existence as mountain-
chains apart from the general elevated mass of Tibet. That rugged country thus seems to
form the summit of a great protuberance, above the general level of the earth's surface,
of which these two chains form the north and south faces. All my own observations lead
me to concur entirely in this opinion.²

Thereby it should be noticed that Richard Strachey means our real Kara-
korum when he talks of Kwen-lun, a fact that makes his opinion wrong so far as
the northern front is concerned.

HENRY STRACHEY relates that the region lying behind the Indian Himalaya
is a belt of high mountainous table land, »narrow compared with its length, and to
the best of our imperfect knowledge subsiding on its N. E. border, into the plains
and sandy deserts of Turkistan and Khamsok. This part of Tibet is called Bod,
i. e. Tibet proper, or Central Tibet, at its E. end and Nari at its N. W., the former
division being the shorter of the two, but probably the broader, and certainly the
more populous and civilized.»³

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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

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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