The Darjeeling superintendent's stage-by-stage itinerary of the road from the Tibetan frontier to Lhasa, compiled from informants, with notes by B. H. Hodgson.
Full title Itinerary from Phari in Thibet to Lassa
Archibald Campbell, Superintendent of Darjeeling, published this itinerary in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in April 1848. He did not make the journey: he built it, through interpreters, from the recollections of travellers and traders, and he calls it a contribution to 'conjectural Geography'. It lists about forty stages from Phari to Lhasa with notes on monasteries, lakes, hide boats, stone rest houses and bridges, crops and Qing garrisons, and the orientalist B. H. Hodgson added footnotes. It is about Tibet, not Tartary; 'Tartars' appear only as Manchu soldiers in the Qing garrison at Gyantse.
How they knew
From informants
Who “Tartar” means here
'Mantchoo Tartars': Manchu bannermen of the Qing army stationed in Tibet. In a footnote Hodgson also notes that Tibetan nomad robbers were wrongly called 'Kalmaks' (Kalmyks).
Why read it
A reminder of how widely 'Tartar' was used in the 1840s: here it simply means the Manchu soldiers of the Qing empire, posted as far away as southern Tibet.
Watch out
Informant testimony gathered through interpreters, which Campbell himself calls laborious and uncertain. Almost nothing here concerns Tartars.
Editorial contextAt Gyantse, a small town on the road to Lhasa, Campbell's informants reported a Chinese officer with three or four hundred soldiers, a few of them 'Mantchoo Tartars of the Chinese army' and the rest local Tibetans. Here 'Tartar' is simply the standard English word for the Manchus who ruled Qing China.
There is a Chinese officer stationed here with 3 or 400 soldiers, a few of whom are Mantchoo Tartars of the Chinese army. The rest are native Tibetans.
Editorial contextOn a stage called 'the place of thieves', where robbers hid in underground burrows, Hodgson adds a footnote: the Catholic missionary Huc wrote much about Tibetan robbers, who were black-tent Tibetan nomads, 'erroneously styled Kalmaks'. It shows 'Kalmak' being stretched to cover any nomad raiders of Inner Asia.
M. Huc in his narrative speaks much of the robbers of Tibet, who, he says, are Kalos or black-tent nomadic Tibetans, erroneously styled Kalmaks. They are mounted gang robbers.
Footnote by B. H. Hodgson, summarising Évariste Huc