Southern Tibet : vol.8 / Page 55 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

0055	Southern Tibet : vol.8

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| | Kashgar Cels. | Yarkand Cels. | | Kashgar Cels. | Yarkand Cels. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January . . . . . . . . | —5,8 | —6,0 | July . . . . . . . . . . | 27,5 | 27,6 |
| February . . . . . . . | —0,1 | —0,2 | August . . . . . . . . | 25,7 | 23,7 |
| March . . . . . . . . . | 8,4 | 6,9 | September. . . . . . . | 19,2 | 19,2 |
| April . . . . . . . . . | 17,1 | 17,8 | October. . . . . . . . | 12,3 | 13,4 |
| May . . . . . . . . . . | 19,2 | 21,0 | November. . . . . . . | 3,5 | 3,8 |
| June . . . . . . . . . | 24,2 | 24,5 | December. . . . . . . | —2,7 | —4,3 |

Kashgar has thus an average temperature for the whole year of 12,4°, and Yarkand 12,3°.
If only June, July and August are taken in consideration, Kashgar has 25,8°, and
Yarkand 25,2°. The observations are not quite comparable, as those in Kashgar have a
period of 3¹/₃ years, those in Yarkand only one year. Observations including twenty to
thirty years would perhaps give another result.¹ Khotan on the other hand is probably
warmer than Kashgar. In January 1896, I observed, from the 5th to the 14th, an average
temperature of —1,2°.

There remains a second dark point which does not agree with Chieh-ch'a's identification
with Kashgar. Fa-hien says that he travelled 25 days among the hills in getting to
Chieh-ch'a, and he adds that Chieh-ch'a was among the hills and cold. Any one travelling
from Tash-kurgan to Kashgar, whatever route he may choose, will say that at a certain
point he leaves the mountains behind and comes out in the plains, and vice versa that he
after so and so many days' journey, enters the mountains, just as Fa-hien himself does when he
talks of his four days from Tzŭ-ho to the entrance of the Ts'ung-ling mountains. In the
case of Chieh-ch'a he goes much farther, for he says: »The country is in the midst of the
Onion range«. It is very difficult to reconcile this location with Fa-hien's definition of
the Ts'ung-ling or »Onion range«. He tells us that Ts'ung-ling is situated south of Tzŭ-ho
or Kök-yar. Later on he tells us that he on his road to North India crossed the range
of the Onion mountains. How, then, is it possible to say that Kashgar is situated in the
midst of the Ts'ung-ling! We know from other Chinese sources that the Sarikol and
Kashgar mountains are the Ts'ung-ling par préférence. But here Fa-hien speaks only of
the hills. Even if he reckoned, as did other Chinese, the whole of the Pamirs and the
Western Tien-shan to the Ts'ung-ling, he could never have pretended that Kashgar was
in the midst of these mountains. In the contrary, it was in the highest degree outside
of the Ts'ung-ling.

Herrmann interprets this problem in another way:

Entscheidend ist, daß das gesamte Bild, welches wir schon aus den bisherigen Be-
trachtungen über Fa-hien's Route gewonnen haben, eine Station Kashgar gänzlich aus-
schließt. Wenn wir vorhin sahen, daß für Tzŭ-ho nicht Karghalik, sondern Kök-yar, für
Yü-mo nicht Sarikol, sondern Bazar-dara im Raskem-Tal eintritt, so kann das folgende
Chieh-ch'a als Zwischenstation nach Nordindien tatsächlich nur »inmitten des Ts'ung-ling«,
in diesem Fall am chesten in Sarikol gesucht werden. Es entspricht durchaus dem Wortlaut
bei Fa-hien, wenn wir seine Route von Bazar-dara weiter durchs Raskem-Tal und dann

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

Citation Information

OCR Text

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