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| 0082 |
Southern Tibet : vol.8 |
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Some 15 years later Sir Henry Rawlinson fixed his view in a most surprising way.
He believed he had found a new key to the problem from NEY ELIAS' journey across the
*Pamir Plateau*, from the vicinity of Yangi-hisar to Shignán. Rawlinson had identified
Trotter's »Central Pamir track« with the famous trade-route of antiquity . . . . »but I had
not then sufficient evidence to prove that Huang-Tsang, the Chinese traveller of the seventh
century, had followed the same track, or that the famous *Dragon Lake*, the central point
of Jambu-dwipa, and the holiest spot in the whole Buddhist cosmogony, which he had
assigned to this region, was really to be identified on the line between Kashgar and
Shignán. Mr. Ney Elias' journey has thrown an unexpected light on this subject. We
now find that the *Rang-Kul*, which occurs at the seventh stage from the eastern border of
the Pámir Plateau, and which, with the exception of the great Kara-Kul Lake, lying far
away to the north-ward, is the largest expanse of water throughout this mountain region
answers very closely to the description of the Buddhist pilgrim.«¹ Rawlinson relates the
parallelism of Hsüan-chuangs and Ney Elias' descriptions, which indeed proves very little.²
»But the most curious proof of identity is to be found in the Dragon myth which attaches
to the lake.« In the cave in the upper part of a little rock near the lake treasures were
said to be stored, and, as Ney Elias says, »guarded by a dragon with a large diamond
set in his forehead . . . .« Rawlinson has forgotten one very important thing: *Rang-köl*
does not in the least answer to Hsüan-chuang's hydrographical description. The twin-lakes
*Rang-köl* and *Shor-köl* are typical of the kind of shallow lakes which use to form in
self-contained basins in Tibet. Lord CURZON says of them:
Rangkul is 4 miles, and Shorkul 6 miles. A remarkable feature of these lakes is that neither
does any river discharge into them, nor is there any river-exit.³
After relating the original texts of Hsüan-chuang and his biographers, Lord Curzon
finds the most serious inaccuracies in just the hydrography, which I have regarded as the
most important means of fixing the itinerary. If *Sor-köl*, WOOD's lake, is supposed to be
meant, it has no easterly outflow, and if Chakmakden-köl is intended, it has no westerly
effluent. His account stands out as an unmistakable picture of the Pamirs, and we are
only left in doubt regarding the particular valley by which Hsüan-chuang travelled. Curzon
mentions Klaproth, Landresse, St. Julien, St. Martin, Paquier and Beal amongst those
who identify the pilgrim's route with Wood's, *i. e.* up the main valley of the *Panja* to
*Sor-köl*.⁴ He mentions RAWLINSON in his earlier writings, and YULE, amongst those who
accept the southern track, through *Little Pamir* and along *Chakmakden-köl*. Lord Curzon
himself entertains »very little doubt of the correctness of the former hypothesis«.⁵ Sor-köl
is more than double the size of Chakmakden-köl, and may once have been much larger
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