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On the night of my departure from Darjiling, the moon was shining brightly, though some dark clouds presaged a slight fall of rain. Our eyes often turned with anxiety towards the mountain-tops on the eastern outskirts of Nepal, to see if snow was falling on them; and the fear of death in the snows and the hope of overcoming the obstacles of nature alternated within me as I left my home in Darjiling, soon to bid a long farewell to my native land, with but faint hope that I would ever see it again.
In 1874, the brilliant civil engineer Sarat Chandra Das was recruited by the British as a spy in Darjeeling. The Empire wanted to train local agents to gather in-depth intelligence about Tibet--a mysterious kingdom closed off to all outsiders for years--in order to consolidate their position in South Asia and outplay Russia in the Great Game. Equipped with hidden compasses, hundred-bead rosaries (to discreetly measure distances), and an excellent knowledge of Buddhism and the local language, Das set out into the harsh early winter of 1881, through the snow-filled passes of Sikkim and Nepal on his second foray into Tibet. Though an agent of its enemy, Das fell in love with the land of his mission. He stayed at the Tashilhunpo monastery for five months transcribing ancient Buddhist texts, studying the language and teaching English to the Panchen Lama. In his diary, he noted the various customs of dress, cuisine, architecture and the local politics throughout his journey. He also wrote about ordinary village life as he saw it--the extortion of the common people by the Chinese, and the ravages of smallpox in places with little or no medical help. When he finally reached Lhasa, he was struck by the grandeur of the city's ancient shrines and the monasteries dotting its mountains. He even managed an audience with the thirteenth Dalai Lama, then an eight-year-old boy with 'rosy cheeks'. Journey to Lhasa is the account of a treacherous yet illuminating adventure, which paints an intimate portrait of a people and a place that today exist only in memory.
The following book was written by Gombojab Tsybikov, about a subject that he is best-known for: travels to Lhasa and Central Tibet. Tsybikov specialized in ethnography, Buddhist Studies, and after 1917 was an important educator and statesman in Siberia and Mongolia.
Diana Lange's patient investigations have, in this wonderful piece of detective work, solved the mysteries of six extraordinary panoramic maps of routes across Tibet and the Himalayas, clearly hand-drawn in the late 1850s by a local artist, known as the British Library's Wise Collection. Diana Lange now reveals not only the previously unknown identity of the Scottish colonial official who commissioned the maps from a Tibetan Buddhist lama, but also the story of how the Wise Collection came to be in the British Library. The result is both a spectacular illustrated ethnographic atlas and a unique compendium of knowledge concerning the mid-19th century Tibetan world, as well as a remarkable account of an academic journey of discovery. It will entertain and inform anyone with an interest in this fascinating region. This large format book is lavishly illustrated in colour and includes four separate large foldout maps.
Excerpt from A Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet Sarat Chandra Das was born in the town of Chittagong, in Eastern Bengal, in 1849, in a Hindu family of the vaidya, or medical caste. He received his education in the Presidency College at Calcutta, where he became favourably known to Sir Alfred Croft, the present Director of Public Instruction of Bengal, who ever since has been his friend and guide in his geographical and literary work, and by whose representations to the Indian Government it became possible for him to perform his important journeys into Tibet. While still in the engineering department of the college he was appointed in 1874 head master of the Bhutia Boarding School, just opened at Darjiling by order of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Sir George Campbell. Sarat Chandra at once applied himself with characteristic energy to the study of the Tibetan language, and established friendly relations with the Raja of Sikkim and many of the leading lamas in that country, to which he made several short trips in the succeeding years. In 1878, lama Ugyen-gyatso, who was attached to his school as Tibetan teacher, was sent to Tashilhunpo and Lhasa with tribute from his monastery, and advantage was taken of this opportunity to ascertain whether permission could not be obtained from the Tibetan authorities for Sarat Chandra to visit Tibet. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
In 1959 the Dalai Lama emerged in India, where he set up his government in exile. Soon after he left Lhasa the Chinese People's Liberation Army pummeled the city in the "Battle of Lhasa." The Tibetans were forced to capitulate, putting Mao in a position to impose Communist rule over Tibet