Sarat Chandra Dash (
Bengali: শরৎচন্দ্র দাশ) (18 July 1849 – 5 January 1917) was an Indian scholar of
Tibetan language and
culture most noted for his two journeys to Tibet in 1879 and in 1881–1882.
Biography
Born in
Chittagong,
eastern Bengal to a Bengali
Hindu Vaidya-Brahmin family, Sarat Chandra Dash attended
Presidency College, as a student of the
University of Calcutta. In 1874 he was appointed headmaster of the
Bhutia Boarding School at Darjeeling. In 1878, a Tibetan teacher, Lama
Ugyen Gyatso arranged a passport for Sarat Chandra to go the
monastery at
Tashilhunpo. In June 1879, Das and Ugyen-gyatso left
Darjeeling for the first of two journeys to
Tibet. They remained in Tibet for six months, returning to Darjeeling with a large collection of Tibetan and
Sanskrit texts which would become the basis for his later scholarship. Sarat Chandra spent 1880 in Darjeeling poring over the information he had obtained. In November 1881, Sarat Chandra and Ugyen-gyatso returned to Tibet, where they explored the
Yarlung Valley, returning to India in January 1883.[1] Along with
Satish Chandra Vidyabhusan, he prepared Tibetan-English dictionary.[2]
For a time, he worked as a spy for the British, accompanying
Colman Macaulay on his 1884 expedition to
Tibet[3] to gather information on the Tibetans, Russians and Chinese. After he left Tibet, the reasons for his visit were discovered and many of the Tibetans who had befriended him suffered severe reprisals.[4]
An introduction to the grammar of the Tibetan language;: With the texts of Situ sum-tag, Dag-je sal-wai melong, and Situi shal lung. Darjeeling Branch Press, 1915. Reprint: Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1972 and 1983.
Autobiography: Narratives of the incidents of my early life. Reprint: Indian studies: past & present (1969).
References
^Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet, Das, Sarat Chandra, pp xi–xiii, Paljor Publications, New Delhi, 2001
^Laurence Austine Waddell, Lhasa and Its Mysteries: With a Record of the Expedition of 1903-1904, Cosimo, Inc., 2007, 740 pages, p. 79: "The ruin thus brought about by the Babu's visit extended also to the unfortunate Lama's relatives, the governor of Gyantsé (the Phal Dahpön) and his wife (Lha-cham), whom he had persuaded to befriend Sarat C. Das. These two were cast into prison for life, and their estates confiscated, and several of their servants were barbarously mutilated, their hands and feet were cut off and their eyes gouged out, and they were then left to die a lingering death in agony, so bitterly cruel was the resentment of the Lamas against all who assisted the Babu in this attempt to spy into their sacred city."
^The Masters Revealed: Madame Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge, Johnson, Paul K., p 191-192, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1994