CORRESPONDENCE

1. The Spelling of Kangchenjunga.
2. The Bursting of the Shyok Dam, 1929
3. Gerard's " Bgoran " Trees.

 

 

The Spelling of Kangchenjunga.

To

The Editor,

The Himalayan Journal.

DEAR SIR,

On page 131 of Volume II of The Himalayan Journal there is a note which puts forward a new spelling for Kanehenjunga. worked out on the supposition of a Tibetan origin for the name. The note closes by safing that the name of this mountain will be shown on the maps of the Survey of India as Kinchinjunga (Kangchen Dzo-Nga).

The Suiveyor-General has asked me to let you know that he is by no means convinced of the Tibetan origin of this name. As pointed out by Sir Sidney Burrard in a letter to the Times, dated 21st March 1930, it is very unlikely that the Tibetans, who are not in the custom
of naming their own mountains, would invent a special name for a mountain beyond their borders.

Sir Sidney Burrard further points out that nearly all of the prominent Himalayan peaks that are visible from the plains of India have Sanscrit names, and that it is unlikely that the people of India would omit to give such a name to Kanchenjunga, the most prominent of all these peaks.

This view is supported by Br. Hara Prasad Shastri, the greatest Sanscrit scholar now in Bengal, and I attach a copy of his letter, which I hope you will find room to print. He gives the derivation of the name as Kancan (golden) and Jangha (thigh), and this agrees with a letter from Mr. H. Goshal published in the Times of 29th March 1930.

The Surveyor-General has therefore decided not to accept the Tibetan origin of the name, but to retain the spelling Kanchenjunga, which now appears in the Imperial Gazetteer as an alternative form. The old name Kinchinjunga will be dropped.

I am, Sir,
Yours faithfully,
R. H. Phillimore.
(Colonel, Director, Map Publication.)

Calcutta,
14^th August 1930.

 

Extract from letter dated 17^th July 1930 from Mahamahopadhyaya Dr. Hara Prasad Shastri, m.a., c.i.e., to Mr. R. Wolfenden, Assistant Director of Public Instruction, Bengal.

.......I have been four times to Nepal during the last 35 years. On the second occasion on 1st January 1899, Professor Bendall of Cambridge, his wife and myself went to see the peaks from Kokoni, the summer residence of the Resident of Nepal, situated about 15 miles west of Katmandu.

I was in a dandi, so reached the summer-house one hour before the rest of the party, but I could not enter the Residency bungalow. It was surrounded on all sides by a sheet of snow. So I turned my face towards the north and saw the great Himalaya, a mass of white snow from one end to the other of the horizion. There was not a speck of black in it, all white of a general high level. Five peaks rose high above the level, deep into the sky. The westernmost was Dhavalagiri, the next one Muktinath, the third one Gonseithan, the fourth Kancanjangha and the fifth Gourishankar.* All these are Sanscrit names ; Dhavalagiri means ⁴'White Mountain," Muktinath means " Lord of Salvation," Gonseithan, 'The Place of a Saint," Kancan-jangha, 'The Golden Thigh," and Gourishankar means "The Goddess and her Consort."

When all these are Sanscrit names, I do not think that Kancan-jangha alone can be a Tibetan name. The spelling of the word Kancan-jangha according to the Geneva Convention of transliteration, adopted by all Sanscritists throughout the world is Kancana-jangha. " For ordinary purposes one may write Kancan- jangha. There is no necessity of putting any "i" or "e" anywhere in the name.

 

Note by Editor.

Probably nobody is prepared to be burnt at the stake for the sake of the *g' in Kangchenjunga. But since even the female mosquito is entitled to defend her young, it seems advisable to give the points of several letters that have been received from members on this question.

Sir Sidney Burrard is most certainly misinformed when he states that Tibetans do not name mountains. They do so with a vengeance, and most of their mountains have not only a name, but also a string of poetic and descriptive synonyms. To mention a few of the best known only, we have Chumalhari (Chomo Lhari), Kangchenjau, Chumiomo (Chomo Yummo), Kamet (Kangmed), Kang Rimpoche (the Tibetan name for the sacred Hindu mountain, Kailas). There are scores and scores of others.

Sir Sidney speaks of Kangchenjunga as being beyond the borders of Tibet. Until comparatively recent years the mountain was within Tibetan territory, and even now Tibetan is the mother tongue of all the natives of northern Sikkim and of the Lamas of all the monasteries. The name Kangchen Dzo-nga, the Tibetan name of the mountain, is known throughout the whole of Sikkim, and the word occurs in many printed books of the Tibetans who invoke the god inhabiting the mountain in their rituals.

Dr. Hara Prasad Shastri is probably the greatest Sanscritist now living in Bengal, but there are others, perhaps more abreast of modern philology, among his compatriots, who do not agree with him, and who hold that Kangchen Dzo-nga has been imported into Bengali by English geography, and that very recently. For instance, no one has been able to produce any written evidence that this name existed in Bengal a hundred years ago.

Sir Sidney Burrard points out that nearly all the prominent Himalayan peaks that are visible from the plains of India have Sanscrit names, and therefore he concludes that it would be most unlikely that such a prominent mountain as Kangchenjunga would not have one. Is this a fair deduction ? Surely to the west, where pilgrims penetrate, these men, who speak Aryan idioms, may give Sanscritie names to the peaks they hold sacred. No such pilgrims from the plains have sought to attain merit on Kangchenjunga, which is far to the east of their beat.

It is a curious fact that every modern expedition that investigates the question becomes convinced of the Tibetan derivation. Indeed, we do not recall any case where the "g" has been omitted. Kangchenjunga is the spelling used by Freshfield, Kellas, and Smythe. Kangchinjunga is the spelling used by Dr. J. Jacot Guillarmod; Kangchendzonga is the spelling used by the various German expeditions. The press in India followed the Times during the recent International expedition. It is, I believe, a fact that the Times actually dropped the " g " because in the headline the use of a certain type would not fit if a " g " was included!

 

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The Bursting of the Shyok Dam, 1929,

To

The Editor,

The Himalayan Journal.

DEAR SIR,

I have just received Vol. II of The Himalayan Journal, and have read it from cover to cover. It is a delightful issue. Many congratulations. There is just one point which puzsles me about the bursting of the Shyok Dam. Are you certain that it burst on the morning of the 15th August ? I ask this because, according to my diary, Gunn and I were still together on the morning of the 15th. We were encamped 4 or 5 miles below Daulat-Beg-oldi, near the junction of the Chip-Chap river with Wood's Stream " N." That morning Gunn accompanied me for 2 or 3 miles up the Chip-Chap. We then parted. He went over the Depsang and I made for the Karakoram pass. On the way up I saw the Yissers' camp, looked them up and stayed for lunch. The dam certainly had not broken then, otherwise it would have been the topic of conversation. Did I make a mistake in my diary ? If so, Gunn did the same, for he also says in his article that we were down at the dam on the 12th, and I can easily account for the following two days. On the 13th Gunn and I were still on the shores of the lake, Gunn spending the day computing. On the 14th we rowed the boats round to the Chip-Chap confluence and buried them there, marching on the same evening to our camp just below Daulat-Beg-oldi. It therefore amounts to this. If the dam burst on the morning of the 15th, Gunn and I were certainly not inspecting it on the 12th, but probably on the 11th. If, however, our diaries are correct and we were inspecting it on the 12th, then it certainly did not burst on the morning of the 15th.

Yours faithfully,
F. Ludlow.

Upper Kok-su
Tekkes Valley, Tien Shah.
25^th August 1930.

 

Note by Editor.

Khan Sahib Afraz Gul also reported that the dam burst on the 16th August and not on the 15th ; and he showed me his diary in support of his contention. He also informed me that he felt certain that the diary of the Vissers would agree with his. It is now evident that according to the diaries of Ludlow and of Gunn the dam was not heard bursting on the morning of the 15th but on the 16th. Yet when Gunn reached the Shyok on the 17th he records that this was "more than forty-eight hours after the dam burst " (Him. Journ., Vol. II, 36).

As will be seen from the Chart illustrating the Shyok Flood Waves, the river began to rise at Khalsar 135 miles from the dam, at about 8 A.M. on the 16th, and reached a maximum two hours later. Had the dam burst on that morning at 5 A.M. the first water to arrive would have had to travel at the rate of 45 miles an hour for 3 hours, which is surely impossible. Admittedly the report of the ferry-guard at Saser Brangsa cannot be considered wholly trustworthy, but on his evidence the water reached Saser Brangsa at about 6 A.M. on the 15th, rose 85 feet in 4 hours to about 10 A.M. and remained at this level till about 11 A.M.10 If his times of day are even approximately correct, the date of the burst cannot have been the 16th, when the flood -arrived at Khalsar.

It is, however, impossible that so many as four separate persons should be a day wrong in the dates of their diaries.

The above note was sent to Mr. Ludlow, who comments as follows :

I was misled by your remark on page 40, Him. Jour., Vol. II, that Afraz Gul "heard the first breaking of the ice like the noise of a cannon shot at 5 A.M. on the morning of the 15th AugustI felt pretty certain that if Afraz Gul had heard the noise on the 15th August, Gunn and I would have heard it too, for we were nearer to the dam than he was. It now appears that Afraz Gul heard this noise on the 16th and not on the 15th.

My explanation of what happened is this. I think we have all been labouring under the delusion that when Afraz Gul heard the " noise like a cannon shot," it was synchronous with the first outburst of the waters through the dam. I suggest that this was not actually the case. The waters began to issue through the dam some hours—how many I cannot say—before Afraz Gul heard his « cannon shot," and that the noise he heard was due to the collapse of an unusually large mass of ice some time after the dam had actually broken, and the waters had been released. It is inconceivable that the waters of the lake travelled down to Khalsar at a speed of 45 miles an hour. I think therefore—this is pure surmise on my part—that the lake began to empty itself on the morning or afternoon of the 15th; that at first the escaping waters caused no great fall of ice and made no such noise that could be heard at Daulat-Beg-oldi, a day's march distant; and that the " cannon shots" and booms heard by Afraz Gul were due to the collapse of large masses of ice some hours after the main break. Further note by Editor :

Mr. Ludlow's view appears to be undoubtedly correct. It seems probable now that the dam did not burst with an instantaneous crash, but that the waters found a weak spot, on the morning of the 15th, probably a hundred feet from the top of the dam. Finding this outlet they rapidly tunnelled through the glacier, wearing away and tearing out blocks of ice, and transporting them away on the flood. It seems probable that it was the unsupported surface of the glacier, perhaps a hundred feet thick, which may have collapsed subsequently to the main release of the lake, that caused the ^“noise like a cannon shot" heard by Afraz Gul.

 

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Gerard's " Bgoran " Trees.

To

The Editor,

The Himalayan Journal.

DEAR SIR,

A small point has occurred to me in reading Mr. Buchanan's interesting article " In the Footsteps of the Gerards" in The Himalayan Journal, Vol. II. On page 73 he quotes a paragraph referring to " oak and booran " trees, and says that he has been unable to identify the " booran."

" Booran" is, of course, the very common pahdri word "Burans" (^rhododendron), c./. Burans Khanda (=Rhododendron Spur), a spur on the Mussoorie-Tehri road just beyond Landour.

Yours faithfully,
H. T. Morshead.

Maymyo, Burma.
17th August 1930.,

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