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Who was Sandrocottus: Samudragupta or Chandragupta Maurya?
The Chronology of Ancient India, Victim of Concoctions and Distortions
by Vedveer Arya
sanskritmagazine.com
2018

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-- Historical Dates From Puranic Sources, by Prof. Narayan Rao

[N]either the Vedas, the Upanishads, nor the Purans, profess to be historical compositions; and the ascribing this character to the latter, in particular, is a most erroneous opinion, for, with the exception of the genealogies of the princes of the solar and lunar races, the Purans contain nothing which has the slightest semblance of history ... It is true that each Puran contains a description of the division of time according to the Hindu system; but the chronology of no event is fixed more precisely than by referring it generally to such a Kalpa, or Manvantara, or Yug, as the particular year is never mentioned. The attempting, therefore, to extract either chronology or history from such data, must be an operation attended with equal success as the extraction of sunbeams from cucumbers by the sages of Laputa" -- Vans Kennedy 1831: 130.

-- Frederick Eden Pargiter: Excerpt from The Puranas, by Ludo Rocher

The Greek writers relate that the father of Sandrocottus was a man of low origin, being the son of a barber, whom the queen had married after putting her husband the king to death. He is called by Diodorus Siculus (16.93, 94) Xandrames, and by Q. Curtius (9.2) Aggrammes, the latter name being probably only a corruption of the former. This king sent his son Sandrocottus to Alexander the Great, who was then at the Hyphasis, and he is reported to have said that Alexander might easily have conquered the eastern parts of India, since the king was hated on account of his wickedness and the meanness of his birth. Justin likewise relates, that Sandrocottus saw Alexander, and that having offended him, he was ordered to be put to death, and escaped only by flight. Justin says nothing about his being the king's son, but simply relates that he was of obscure origin, and that after he escaped from Alexander he became the leader of a band of robbers, and finally obtained the supreme power...The name of Sandrocottus is written both by Plutarch and Appian Androcottus without the sibilant, and Athenaeus gives us the form Sandrocuptus (Σανδρόκυπτθς), which bears a much greater resemblance to the Hindu name than the common orthography. (Plut. Alex. 62 ; Justin, 15.4 ; Appian, Syr. 55 ; Strab. xv. pp. 702, 709, 724 ; Athen. 1.18e.; Arrian, Arr. Anab. 5.6.2; Plin. H. N. 6.17.)

-- Sandrocottus, by William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

Highlights:

Sir William Jones (1746-1794) deliberately identified 'Sandrocottus" mentioned by the Greeks as #ChandraguptaMaurya and declared that he was the contemporary of Alexander in 327-326 BCE...

Puranas tell us that Chandragupta Maurya ascended the throne by defeating the last Nanda king around 1500 BCE....

Therefore, #Samudragupta was the contemporary of Alexander in 327-326 BCE not Chandragupta Maurya...

The Greek scholars recorded the names of kings of India as Xandrames, and Sandrocottus. Western historians deliberately identified these names with those of Mahapadmananda or Dhanananda and Chandragupta Maurya. Xandrames was said to be the father of Sandrocottus. According to John W. McCrindle, Diodorus distorted the name "Sandrocottus" into Xandrames and this again is distorted by Curtius into Agrammes...

Seleucus Nikator also sent Deimachos on an embassy to Allitrocades or Amitrocades, the son of Sandrocottus. Western historians identified Allitrocades or Amitrocades to be Bindusara, the son of Chandragupta and concocted that Bindusara was also known as "Amitraghata". None of the Indian sources ever referred Bindusara as Amitraghata. Western historians deliberately created the word "Amitraghata" with some sort of resemblance...

Megasthenes described the system of city administration of Pataliputra but there is no similarity between the system described by Megasthenes and the system of city administration given in Kautilya Arthasastra. Megasthenes also stated that there was no slavery in India but Kautilya Arthasastra's Chapter 65 named "Dasakalpa" is solely devoted to the status of slaves among the Aryans and the Mlecchas. Probably, the slavery system that existed during Mauryan era has gradually declined by Gupta era. Thus, Megasthenes cannot be contemporary to Chandragupta Maurya.

Megasthenes not only often visited Palibothra but also stayed in the court of Sandrocottus for a few years. But he did not even mention about Kautilya or Chanakya who was the real kingmaker and also the patron of Chandragupta. No Greek scholar ever mentioned about Kautilya. Therefore, Megasthenes cannot be the contemporary to Chandragupta Maurya.

Greek scholars often mentioned that Sandrocottus was the king of the country called as Prasii (Prachi or Prachya). Pracha or Prachi means eastern country. During the Nanda and Mauryan era, Magadha kings were ruling almost entire India. Mauryan Empire was never referred in Indian sources as only Prachya desa or eastern country. Prachya desa was generally referred to Gupta Empire because Northern Saka Ksatrapas and Western Saka Ksatrapas were well established in North and West India. Megasthenes mentioned that Sandrocottus is the greatest king of the Indians and Poros is still greater than Sandrocottus which means a kingdom in the North-western region is still independent and enjoying at least equal status with the kingdom of Sandrocottus...

The Greek historian Plutarch mentioned that Androkottus (Sandrocottus) marched over the whole of India with an army of 600 thousand men. Chandragupta Maurya defeated Nandas under the leadership of Chanakya. There was no need for him to go on such expedition to conquer the whole of India because he has already inherited the Magadha kingdom of Nandas covering entire India. Actually, it was Samudragupta who overran the whole of India as details given in Allahabad pillar inscription.

According to Greek historians like Justinus, Appianus etc., Seleukos made friendship with Sandrocottus and entered into relations of marriage with him. Allahabad pillar inscription tells us that Samudragupta was offered their daughters in marriage (Kanyopayanadana ... ) by the kings in the North-west region. There is nothing in Indian sources to prove this fact with reference to Chandragupta Maurya...

The Jain work "Harivamsa" written by Jinasena gives the names of dynasties and kings and the duration of their rule after the nirvana of Mahavira. Jinasena mentions nothing about Mauryas but he tells us that Gupta kings ruled for 231 years. Western historians fixed the date of Mahavira-nirvana in 527 BCE which means Mauryas ruled after Mahavira-nirvana but Jaina Puranas and Jaina Pattavalis had no knowledge of Mauryas after Mahavira-nirvana. Thus, Mauryas ruled prior to Mahavira-nirvana. Therefore, Sandrocottus can only be identified with Samudragupta.

If Sandrocottus was indeed Chandragupta Maurya, why do none of the Greek sources mentioned about Asoka, the most illustrious and greatest of Mauryan kings? It is evident that Greek sources had no knowledge of Asoka. Therefore, the ancient Greeks were contemporaries to Gupta kings not Mauryas...

Interestingly, there is no reference of Alexander's invasion in Indian literary sources because it was actually a non-event for Indians...

Strabo once stated:

"Generally speaking, the men who have hitherto written on the affairs of India were a set of liars. Deimachos holds the first place in the list; Megasthenes comes next; while Onesikritos and Nearchos with others of the same class, manage to stammer out a few words of truth."...

If Samudragupta is accepted as Sandrocottus the contemporary Indian king of Alexander and the epoch of Saka coronation era in 583 BCE, there will be no conflict in the traditional Indian records and epigraphic records.

-- Who was Sandrocottus: Samudragupta or Chandragupta Maurya?, The Chronology of Ancient India, Victim of Concoctions and Distortions, by Vedveer Arya]

Alexander, during his invasion on Persian Empire and some parts of western India, has carried some Greek scholars like Baeto, Diognetos, Nearchos, Onesikritos, Aristoboulos, and Kallisthenes with him to chronicle his achievements. Megasthenes and Deimachos, the ambassadors of Seleucus Nikator the successor of Alexander, also wrote about India. Though the works of these scholars are all lost but their substance is found in the works of Plutarch, Strabo, Pliny and Arrian. Plutarch wrote Alexander's biography over 200 years after the death of Alexander based on the oral legends. These Greek scholars repeatedly mentioned about a powerful king of India named "Sandrocottus" who was undoubtedly "Samudragupta" with reference to the epoch of Gupta era in 335 BCE and Puranic account of the history of Magadha.

Sir William Jones (1746-1794) deliberately identified 'Sandrocottus" mentioned by the Greeks as #ChandraguptaMaurya and declared that he was the contemporary of Alexander in 327-326 BCE. This mistaken identity or concocted theory of William Jones has been propagated by western historians as an eternal and irrefutable historical fact for constructing the chronology of Ancient India. Eminent Indian historians under the influence of western historians toed the same line. Unfortunately, they completely ignored the history of ancient India given in Puranas since Mahabharata War.

Considering the epoch of #SakaEra in 583 BCE and the epoch of Gupta era in 335 BCE, the epigraphic evidence supports that Maurya dynasty ruled Magadha much earlier than 4th century BCE. Puranas tell us that Chandragupta Maurya ascended the throne by defeating the last Nanda king around 1500 BCE.

According to Kaliyuga Raja Vrittanta, the Great Bear or Saptarshi Mandai was in Sravana nakshtra during the reign of Mahapadma Nanda.

"Saptarshayo Mahayuktah kale Yaudhishthire satam ǀ
Sravane te bhavishyanti kale Nandasya bhupateh ǀǀ

During the time of Yudhishthira, the *GreatBear was in Magha constellation for 100 years. By the time of Nanda, it will be in Sravana constellation.)

The Great Bear was in Sravana nakshatra around 1676 BCE to 1576 BCE. #NandaDynastyruled Magadha for 100 years between 1616 BCE to 1516 BCE. Chandragupta Maurya founded the rule of #MauryaDynasty around 1516 BCE. Therefore, #Samudragupta was the contemporary of Alexander in 327-326 BCE not Chandragupta Maurya. There are many more evidences to support that Samudragupta was the "Sandrocottus" not Chandragupta Maurya.



1. The Greek scholars recorded the names of kings of India as Xandrames, and Sandrocottus. Western historians deliberately identified these names with those of Mahapadmananda or Dhanananda and Chandragupta Maurya. Xandrames was said to be the father of Sandrocottus. According to John W. McCrindle, Diodorus distorted the name "Sandrocottus" into Xandrames and this again is distorted by Curtius into Agrammes21. It is totally absurd to link Xandrames with Mahapadmananda and Sandrocottus with Chandragupta Maurya. Most probably, Greeks called Chandra (Chandragupta) as Xandrames and Samudragupta as Sandrocottus. Moreover, the description given by the Greek scholars about Sandrocottus his father Xandrames are quite inapplicable to Chandragupta Maurya and could only apply to Samudragupta too. According to Greeks, Xandrames was the king of Gangaridai and Prasii whereas Dhanananda was the ruler of entire Northwest, central and eastern India. It is also said that Sandrocottus (Samudragupta) killed his father Xandrames (Chandragupta). This fact has been wilfully ignored by the biased western historians and their followers.

2. All Greek writers mentioned that Sandrocottus, the king of Prasii, whose capital was Palibothra i.e. Pataliputra. Megasthenes, Deimachos and other Greek ambassadors of Seleucus Nikator were sent in the court of Samudragupta and Chandragupta II at Palibothra. Pataliputra became the capital of Magadha Empire only during the reign of Chandragupta I around 335 BCE. According to Puranas, Girivraja or Rajagriha (Rajgir) was the capital city of Magadha during the reign of Nandas and Mauryas. Thus, Pataliputra was not the capital city of Chandragupta Maurya. From 3rd century BCE onwards, the city of Pataliputra became famous as the capital of Magadha. This is the reason why Vishakhadatta referred Pataliputra as the capital city of Magadha Empire in his work "Mudraraksasa" but this cannot be taken as evidence to reject the Puranic reference. Moreover, Mudraraksasa is a drama based on historical fiction. All the Puranas unanimously tell us that the capital of Magadha Empire was Girivraja or Rajagriha till the fall of Satavahana dynasty.



3. According to Megasthenes, Sakas or Scythians were living in the northern side of India. "India, which is in shape quadrilateral, has its eastern as well as its western side bounded by the great sea, but on the northern side it is divided by Mount Hemodos from that part of Scythia which is inhabited by those Scythians who are called the OEakai, while the fourth or western side is bounded by the river called the Indus, which is perhaps the largest of all rivers in the world after the Nile." Many other Greek scholars also wrote about Scythians. Thus, it seems that Northern Saka Ksatrapas were ruling in the North-western frontier region during the time of Megasthenes. It is well known that Saka Ksatrapas were contemporaries of Guptas not Mauryas. Asoka inscriptions mention about only Yavana kings named Antikina, Alikasundara, Maga, Turamaya and Gongakena (not Greeks but indigenous Yavana kings of Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan) ruling in the western frontier regions. Western historians speculated about these kings to be Antiochus Theos II of Syria, Alexander of Epirus, Magas of Cyrene, Ptolemy II Philadelphos of Egypt and Antigonus Gonatus of Macedonia. These baseless speculations are simply based on the resemblance of names without any direct or indirect evidence. The references of Yavana kings in Asoka inscriptions indicate that Yavanas were the rulers in the western frontier regions not Sakas. There is no reference of Saka Ksatrapas in the entire account of Mauryan history. Therefore, Sandrocottus can only be Samudragupta who was the contemporary of Saka Ksatrapas not Chandragupta Maurya.

4. Seleucus Nikator also sent Deimachos on an embassy to Allitrocades or Amitrocades, the son of Sandrocottus. Western historians identified Allitrocades or Amitrocades to be Bindusara, the son of Chandragupta and concocted that Bindusara was also known as "Amitraghata". None of the Indian sources ever referred Bindusara as Amitraghata. Western historians deliberately created the word "Amitraghata" with some sort of resemblance. According to Puranas, Samudragupta was also known as "Asokaditya" and Chandragupta II was also known as "Vikramaditya". Probably, Allitrocades or Amitrocades referred to "Vikramaditya", the son of Sandrocottus (Samudragupta).

5. Megasthenes described the system of city administration of Pataliputra but there is no similarity between the system described by Megasthenes and the system of city administration given in Kautilya Arthasastra. Megasthenes also stated that there was no slavery in India but Kautilya Arthasastra's Chapter 65 named "Dasakalpa" is solely devoted to the status of slaves among the Aryans and the Mlecchas. Probably, the slavery system that existed during Mauryan era has gradually declined by Gupta era. Thus, Megasthenes cannot be contemporary to Chandragupta Maurya.

Other than their mention of the Brahmanas, the Greek narratives about Alexander's invasion do not directly mention the caste system. Some Brahmanas acted as advisors to local princes: Alexander had groups of Brahmanas hanged in present-day Sindh for instigating the rulers Musicanus and Sambus to revolt against him. The Greek writings attest the existence of slavery in at least two places: Onesicritus describes slavery in the territory ruled by Musicanus, and Aristobulus mentions poor people selling their daughters publicly in Taxila. Aristobulus also observed Sati, the practice of widows immolating themselves on their husbands' pyre, at Taxila. The practice of exposing dead bodies to vultures, similar to the Magian practice of Tower of Silence, was also prevalent in Taxila.

-- Indian campaign of Alexander the Great, by Wikipedia

6. Megasthenes not only often visited Palibothra but also stayed in the court of Sandrocottus for a few years. But he did not even mention about Kautilya or Chanakya who was the real kingmaker and also the patron of Chandragupta. No Greek scholar ever mentioned about Kautilya. Therefore, Megasthenes cannot be the contemporary to Chandragupta Maurya.

In the country of the Praxii [The Prachyas (i.e. Easterns) are called by Strabo, Arrian, and Pliny [x], Prasii; by Plutarch (Alex. 62) [x], a name often used by Aelian also; by Nikolaus Damas. (ap. Stob. Floril. 37, 38) [x]; by Diodorus (xvii. 93) [x]; by Curtius (IX. 2, 3) Pharrasii; by Justin (xii.8,9) Praesides. Megasthenes attempted to approximate more closely to the Sanskrit Prachya, for here he uses [x]. And it appears that [x] should be substituted for [x] in Stephan. Byzant., since it comes between the words [x] and [x]. — Schwanbeck, p. 82, not. 6.] who are an Indian people, Megasthenes says there are apes not inferior in size to the largest dogs. They have tails five cubits long, hair grown on their forehead, and they have luxuriant beards hanging down their breast. Their face is entirely white, and all the rest of the body black. They are tame and attached to man, and not malicious by nature like the apes of other countries.

-- Fragm. XIII., Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian; Being a Translation of the Fragments of the Indika of Megasthenes Collected by Dr. Schwanbeck, and of the First Part of the Indika of Arrian, by J.W. McCrindle

7. Greek scholars often mentioned that Sandrocottus was the king of the country called as Prasii (Prachi or Prachya). Pracha or Prachi means eastern country. During the Nanda and Mauryan era, Magadha kings were ruling almost entire India. Mauryan Empire was never referred in Indian sources as only Prachya desa or eastern country. Prachya desa was generally referred to Gupta Empire because Northern Saka Ksatrapas and Western Saka Ksatrapas were well established in North and West India. Megasthenes mentioned that Sandrocottus is the greatest king of the Indians and Poros is still greater than Sandrocottus which means a kingdom in the North-western region is still independent and enjoying at least equal status with the kingdom of Sandrocottus.



Chandragupta Maurya and his successors were the most powerful kings of India. It was impossible for any other Indian king to enjoy equal status with Mauryan kings because Mauryans inherited a strongest and vast empire from Nandas. Therefore, Sandrocottus, the king of Prasii can only be Samudragupta not Chandragupta Maurya.

8. The Greek historian Plutarch mentioned that Androkottus (Sandrocottus) marched over the whole of India with an army of 600 thousand men. Chandragupta Maurya defeated Nandas under the leadership of Chanakya. There was no need for him to go on such expedition to conquer the whole of India because he has already inherited the Magadha kingdom of Nandas covering entire India. Actually, it was Samudragupta who overran the whole of India as details given in Allahabad pillar inscription.

9. According to Greek historians like Justinus, Appianus etc., Seleukos made friendship with Sandrocottus and entered into relations of marriage with him. Allahabad pillar inscription tells us that Samudragupta was offered their daughters in marriage (Kanyopayanadana ... ) by the kings in the North-west region. There is nothing in Indian sources to prove this fact with reference to Chandragupta Maurya.

10. The Jain work "Harivamsa" written by Jinasena gives the names of dynasties and kings and the duration of their rule after the nirvana of Mahavira. Jinasena mentions nothing about Mauryas but he tells us that Gupta kings ruled for 231 years. Western historians fixed the date of Mahavira-nirvana in 527 BCE which means Mauryas ruled after Mahavira-nirvana but Jaina Puranas and Jaina Pattavalis had no knowledge of Mauryas after Mahavira-nirvana. Thus, Mauryas ruled prior to Mahavira-nirvana. Therefore, Sandrocottus can only be identified with Samudragupta.

Mahavira (Sanskrit: महावीर:), also known as Vardhamana is the 24th Tirthankara of Jainism. He was the spiritual successor of the 23rd Tirthankara Parshvanatha. Mahavira was born in the early part of the 6th century BCE into a royal Jain family in Bihar, India. His mother's name was Trishala and his father's name was Siddhartha. They were lay devotees of Parshvanatha. Mahavira abandoned all worldly possessions at the age of about 30 and left home in pursuit of spiritual awakening, becoming an ascetic. Mahavira practiced intense meditation and severe austerities for 12 and a half years, after which he attained Kevala Gyan (omniscience). He preached for 30 years and attained Moksha (salvation) in the 6th century BCE, although the year varies by sect.

Historically, Mahavira, who preached Jainism in ancient India, was an older contemporary of Gautama Buddha. Scholars variously date him from the 6th to 5th century BCE, and his place of birth is also a point of dispute among them.

Mahavira taught that observance of the vows of ahimsa (non-violence), satya (truth), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya (chastity), and aparigraha (non-attachment) are necessary for spiritual liberation. He taught the principles of Anekantavada (many-sided reality): syadvada and nayavada. Mahavira's teachings were compiled by Indrabhuti Gautama (his chief disciple) as the Jain Agamas. The texts, transmitted orally by Jain monks, are believed to have been largely lost by about the 1st century CE (when the remaining were first written down in the Svetambara tradition). The surviving versions of the Agamas taught by Mahavira are some of Svetambara Jainism's foundation texts, but their authenticity is disputed in Digambara Jainism.


Statue of Mahavira meditating in the lotus position at Shri Mahavirji, Rajasthan, India.

Mahavira is usually depicted in a sitting or standing meditative posture, with the symbol of a lion beneath him. His earliest iconography is from archaeological sites in the North Indian city of Mathura, and is dated from between the 1st century BCE and the 2nd century CE. His birth is celebrated as Mahavir Janma Kalyanak and his nirvana (salvation) and also his first shishya (spiritual enlightenment) of Shri Gautama Swami is observed by Jains as Diwali.

-- Mahavira, by Wikipedia

11. If Sandrocottus was indeed Chandragupta Maurya, why do none of the Greek sources mentioned about Asoka, the most illustrious and greatest of Mauryan kings? It is evident that Greek sources had no knowledge of Asoka. Therefore, the ancient Greeks were contemporaries to Gupta kings not Mauryas.

In view of the above, Samudragupta was the contemporary of Alexander not Chandragupta Maurya. Unfortunately, this distorted history is being taught to Indians since last 231 years. Indian historians also blindly followed on the footsteps of Western historians.

Western historians were born and brought up in a religious Christian society. They were faithful to the Biblical conception of the creation of the world in 4004 BCE. They knew the fact that the antiquity of the history of Greece and other European countries cannot be greater than 1000 BCE. When they encountered with the antiquity of ancient Indian history that is greater than 6776 BCE, Western historians could not believe it. Therefore, they started distorting the chronology of ancient India. First of all, Sir William Jones conspired and deliberately cut down 1200 years of Indian history by identifying Sandrocottus as Chandragupta Maurya. To cover up this distortion, Jones declared that Puranic account of Indian history is mythological and unreliable but selectively accepted the genealogy of various dynasties from Puranas. Actually, many Western historians pursued their research with an objective to curtail the antiquity of the chronology of ancient India so that the supremacy of ancient Greek civilization can be established.



Western historians were fascinated with the history of Alexander from their childhood. They started searching the footprints of Alexander's invasion in India. Interestingly, there is no reference of Alexander's invasion in Indian literary sources because it was actually a non-event for Indians. Western scholars concocted the theory that the Yavanas mentioned in Indian sources are Greeks without any evidence. According to various Indian sources, Yavana kingdoms existed in Indian history since Mahabharata war that located in the west and north side across the Indus river. Thus, Indian Yavanas were more ancient than the birth of ancient Greek civilisation.

In fact, it can be confidently stated that the great victory of Alexander and the homesickness of Greek soldiers have been concocted by historians of Alexander who were employed by him to chronicle his achievements. Probably, the army of Alexander was comprehensively defeated by the Indian king Poros and the wounded Alexander and his army have to flee through the channels of Indus River and they landed on the shores of Arabian sea. They were then forced to march along the dry Makran and Persian Gulf coast and somehow finally, made it back to Babylonia where the wounded young Alexander died there in 323 BCE at the age of 33 years. It may be noted that Alexander employed the historians to chronicle his victories not the defeats.

Therefore, the Greek historians concocted the victorious army of Alexander fell homesick and feigned the ignorance of geography for the return journey through the channels of Indus River. It is unbelievable that the victorious army of Alexander fell homesick otherwise they could have amassed unimaginable wealth from India, the most prosperous country of the world of the times. Moreover, Megasthenes, who was sent as ambassador to King Poros by Seleukos, mentioned that Poros was even greater than Sandrocottus. If Poros was defeated and appointed as satrap by Alexander, how could he become greater than Sandrocottus? After the death of Alexander, his generals decided to divide his Empire among themselves but interestingly, no part of India east of Indus River was included as part of Alexander's Empire. Therefore, it seems that the victory of Alexander over the Indian king Poros, the homesickness of his army and the ignorance of geography were just concocted stories by paid Greek historians of Alexander.

Strabo once stated

"Generally speaking, the men who have hitherto written on the affairs of India were a set of liars. Deimachos holds the first place in the list; Megasthenes comes next; while Onesikritos and Nearchos with others of the same class, manage to stammer out a few words of truth."

As quoted by Kota Venkatachalam, Troyer also rejected the identification of Chandragupta Maurya with Sandrocottus and pointed out that one of the Chandraguptas of the Gupta dynasty should be taken as Sandrocottus. If Samudragupta is accepted as Sandrocottus the contemporary Indian king of Alexander and the epoch of Saka coronation era in 583 BCE, there will be no conflict in the traditional Indian records and epigraphic records. Moreover, we need not to declare certain copper plate inscriptions as forgeries. Unfortunately, the Eurocentric and the distortionist approach of Western historians caused extreme damage to the chronology of ancient India. These intellectuals having no integrity pursued their research by distorting and concocting numerous so-called historical facts which can be called nothing less than a "fraud".

[admin]

William Claxton Peppe
Persons of Indian Studies
by Prof. Dr. Klaus Karttunen

Fuhrer was later found to have fraudulently laid claim to the discovery of about twenty relic-caskets at sites close to Lumbini, which allegedly bore Asokan, and even pre-Asokan inscriptions. One of these items supposedly contained a tooth-relic of the Buddha, which Fuhrer illicitly exchanged for gifts with a Burmese monk, U Ma (the correspondence between these two makes for lamentable reading, with Fuhrer exploiting U Ma’s gullibility quite unmercifully). Following an official enquiry into the matter, this tooth-relic was found to be ‘apparently that of a horse’: Fuhrer had explained its large size to an indignant U Ma by pointing out that according to ‘your sacred writings’ the Buddha was nearly thirty feet in height!

According to Fuhrer, this ‘Buddhadanta’ had been found by a villager inside a ruined brick stupa near Tilaurakot, and was ‘enshrined in a bronze casket, bearing the following inscription in Maurya characters: “This sacred tooth-relic of Lord Buddha (is) the gift of Upagupta” (the mentor of Asoka). Having obligingly parted with the relic, the villager had refused to part with the inscribed casket itself ‘which is still in his possession’. Fuhrer reported finding this bogus Asokan inscription during the selfsame visit which saw the discovery of the Asokan inscription at Lumbini. Moreover, according to Fuhrer, the Lumbini inscription included words which were supposedly spoken by Upagupta whilst showing Asoka the Buddha’s birth-spot: ‘It would almost appear as if Asoka had engraved on this pillar the identical words which Upagupta uttered at this place’, he tells us, all wide-eyed. However, what with a bogus Upagupta quote on the casket, an Upagupta quote on the pillar, and Fuhrer’s keen taste for forging Brahmi inscriptions, we may here recall that he had fraudulently incised Brahmi inscriptions on to stone four years earlier (see ‘Fuhrer's Early Years’). And indeed, this pillar inscription ‘appeared almost as if freshly cut’ when Rhys Davids examined it in 1900, a view echoed by Professors N. Dutt and K. D. Bajpai, who noted that ‘it appears as if the inscription has been very recently incised’ when they examined it fifty years later. W. C. Peppe observed that ‘the rain falling on this pillar must have trickled over these letters and it is marvellous how well they are preserved; they stand out boldly as if they had been cut today and show no signs of the effects of climate; not a portion of the inscription is even stained’.

Inscriptions on other Asokan pillars located at sites associated with the Buddha’s life and ministry -- Sarnath and Kosambi, for example -- contain no references to their Buddhist associations, as this pillar so conspicuously -- and twice -- does; and no other inscription makes reference to any erection of a particular pillar by Asoka (as this one does) either. And with the exceptions of Sarnath and Sanchi, where only broken bases of pillars have been found, the surfaces of all other inscribed Asokan pillars are almost covered with inscriptions, whereas this pillar, and the nearby Nigliva pillar, display only single meagre inscriptions of 4 -5 lines each, and as J. F. Fleet has pointed out, they are not really edicts at all....

The Piprahwa Discoveries

In January 1898, W. C. Peppe, manager of the Birdpur Estate in north-eastern Basti District, U. P., announced the discovery of soapstone caskets and jewellery inside a stupa near Piprahwa (see map) a small village on this estate. An inscription on one of these caskets appeared to indicate that bone relics, supposedly found with these items, were those of the Buddha. Since this inscription also referred to the Buddha’s Sakyan kinsmen, these relics were thus generally considered to be those which were accorded to the Sakyas of Kapilavastu, following the Buddha’s cremation. The following year, these bone relics were ceremonially presented by the (British) Government of India to the King of Siam, who in turn accorded portions to the Sanghas of Burma and Ceylon. Concerning this discovery, however, the following points should be noted:

• Peppe had been in contact with Fuhrer just before announcing the Piprahwa discovery (Fuhrer was then excavating nearby, at the Nepalese site of Sagarwa: see map). Immediately following Peppe's announcement, it was discovered that Fuhrer had been conducting a steady trade in bogus relics of the Buddha with a Burmese monk, U Ma. Among these items -– and a year before the alleged Piprahwa finds -- Fuhrer had sent U Ma a soapstone relic-casket containing fraudulent Buddha-relics of the Sakyas of Kapilavastu, together with a bogus Asokan inscription, these deceptions thus duplicating, at an earlier date, Peppe’s supposedly unique finds. Fuhrer was also found to have falsely laid claim to the discovery of seventeen inscribed, pre-Asokan Sakyan caskets at Sagarwa, his report even listing the names of seventeen ‘Sakya heroes’ which were allegedly inscribed upon these caskets. The inscribed Piprahwa casket was also considered to be both Sakyan and pre-Asokan at this time -- though its characters have since been shown to be typically Asokan -- and no other Sakyan caskets have been discovered either before or since this date.

• The bone relics themselves, purportedly 2500 years old, ‘might have been picked up a few days ago’ according to Peppe, whilst a molar tooth found among these items (and retained by Peppe) has recently been found to be that of a pig. The eminent archaeologist, Theodor Bloch, declared of the Piprahwa stupa that ‘one may be permitted to maintain some doubts in regard to the theory that the latter monument contained the relic share of the Buddha received by the Sakyas. The bones found at that place, which have been presented to the King of Siam, and which I saw in Calcutta, according to my opinion were not human bones at all’. Bloch was then Superintendent both of the ASI [Archaeological Survey of India] Bengal Circle and the Archaeological Section of the Indian Museum, and would presumably have drawn not only upon his own expertise in making this assertion, but also that of the zoologists in the Indian Museum itself. This museum -– formerly the Imperial Museum -- was then considered to be the greatest in Asia.

• The caskets appear to be identical to caskets found in Cunningham’s book ‘Bhilsa Topes’ (see Figs. 7-12) a source also used by Fuhrer for his Nigliva deceptions. A photograph of the ‘rear’ of the inscribed Piprahwa casket, taken in situ at Piprahwa in 1898 (and never published thereafter) discloses that a large sherd was missing from the base of the vessel at this time (see Fig. 8). Having closely examined this casket in 1994, I noted that a piece had since been inserted into this broken base, and that this had been ‘nibbled’ in a clumsy attempt to get this piece to fit. The photograph also reveals a curious feature on the upper aspect of the casket; this, I discovered, was a piece of sealing-wax (since transferred to the inside) which had been applied to prevent a large crack from running further. From all this, it is evident that this casket had been badly damaged from the start, a fact not mentioned in any published report. But is it likely, one is prompted to ask, that this damaged casket, supposedly containing the Buddha’s relics, would have been deposited inside the stupa anyway? Or is this the broken casket, ‘similar in shape to those found below’, which was reportedly found near the summit of the stupa, and which had vanished without trace thereafter? This casket -– also damaged -- was the first of the alleged Piprahwa finds; so did Peppe take it to Fuhrer, and did Fuhrer then forge the inscription on it? Is the Piprahwa inscription simply another Fuhrer forgery? As Assistant Editor on the Epigraphia Indica, Fuhrer would certainly have had the necessary expertise to do this, quite apart from his close association with the great epigraphist, Georg Buhler (who may have unwittingly provided Fuhrer with the necessary details, according to the existing accounts).

• On his return to the U.K., Peppe was contacted by the London Buddhist Society, and agreed to answer readers’ questions on his finds. Shortly afterwards however, the Society was notified that Peppe had suddenly been taken seriously ill, and was therefore unable to answer any questions as proposed. The Society declared the matter to be ‘in abeyance’ in consequence; but Peppe died six years later, leaving all such questions still unanswered.

• The declassified ‘Secret’ political files of the period reveal the disquiet felt by the Government of India over French and Russian influence at the Siamese royal court at this time. Hence, no doubt, this bequest!

In 1972 an Indian archaeologist, K. M. Srivastava, made the startling claim to have discovered yet further relics of the Buddha in a ‘primary mud stupa’ below the Peppe one. According to him, the ‘indiscriminate destruction’ caused by Peppe meant that the 1898 bone relics could not be safely determined to be those of the Buddha, and the inscribed casket somehow ‘pointed’ to those relics allegedly found (by him) lower down, which were thus the real relics of the Buddha as mentioned by the casket’s inscription. Since this bizarre proposal thus rests upon the notion that the 1898 inscription is genuine –- hardly likely, as we have seen -– then this claim becomes equally improbable in consequence. I also note that Srivastava makes no mention, in any of his publications on his alleged finds, of the earlier bequest of the Peppe relics to Siam. Naturally, one wonders why.

-- Lumbini On Trial: The Untold Story. Lumbini Is An Astonishing Fraud Begun in 1896, by T. A. Phelps

PEPPE, William Claxton. Birdpur, Gorakhpur dt. 1.2.1852 — Welshpool, Montgomeryshire 1937. British Engineer in India, interested in Archaeology. Son of William P. [Claxton]. Educated in Aberdeen, then studied there engineering. He inherited the indigo estate of Birdwood in Piprahwa (in U.P. close to Nepalese border), where he conducted excavations and in January 1898 found the famous stūpa and the vase with the Peppe inscription.

Retired 1904 and returned to the U.K. In 1911 living in Montgomeryshire, Wales.

Married 1884 Sophia Rosalie Hill (d. 1887), then 1890 Caroline Ella Hill, three sons and one daughter.

Publications: “The Piprahwa Stupa, containing relics of Buddha”, JRAS 1898, 573-588.

Sources: http://honeymooney.com/genealogy/getper ... tkaerheron, http://www.myheritage and other stray notes in Internet

**********************

William Peppe
by The RAI Organization, UK
Accessed: 7/3/21


Peppe, William
Died: 1890
Residence: Grantee, Birdpore Grant, Goruckpore, Bustee, N.W. Province, Birdpore Goruckpore, via Bella Harriya, India [1881]
Society Membership
membership: ASL, AI ordinary fellow
left: 1888.06 last listed
elected_AI: 1869
elected_ASL: 1869.11.02

Notes

Office Notes

House Notes

proposed 1869.10.12

Peppe [last e acute] in List 1879 [so have changed from Pepper which I had originally]

death noted in report of Council for 1890 (may have occurred in 1889)

Notes From Elsewhere

William George or William Claxton??

In 1842, my great-grandfather, William [Claxton] Peppé, and his brother, George (both civil engineers from Aberdeen University), received a commission from a London firm to set up and run a sugar mill. After arriving they duly built the sugar mill and started production. Unfortunately George’s health broke down shortly after arriving and had to return home.

With George gone, William had expected to be made manager, but this failed to happen. It was then that William heard of a local widow who needed a manager to run an estate called Birdpur in Northern India on the border with Nepal. He applied and got the job.

The widow’s estate was on land acquired from the kingdom of Oude by the Honourable East Indian Company who offered grants of land called "Jungle Grants" with a 50 year lease. Part of the land deal for anyone obtaining the grant was that after 50 years the land would be theirs to own. Very few people succeeded.

This land lay between the foothills of the Himalayas and the Ganges plain.

And while it was fertile land with many rivers and was known as the "Gorakpur Tarai" it was covered with jungle and swamps, and was notorious for malaria. Few people could work the land other than the "Tharus" who were native to the jungle and hunter/gatherers. However, my great-grandfather, despite the difficulties of the terrain and threat of malaria was able to put a certain amount of land under cultivation each year.

William set about clearing the land and building reservoirs, dams, and canals to enable him to cultivate it -- which he did successfully. Indeed, he was so successful at experimenting with different strains of rice that he eventually developed a Patna Rice, now known as American Long Grain Rice.

Furthermore, at the time of the Indian mutiny William fought with a band of his own loyal tenants against the mutineers.

For these services to the British government they gave him another estate and not content with this, he then went about buying two other estates adjoining Birdpur. Eventually the estate he managed was nearly fifty square miles.

William subsequently had a son -- William Claxton -– my grandfather, who became an assistant on the estate and when his father died he took over its’ management. He too had a son -– my father, Humphrey Peppé.

After the 1st World War, in which my father fought, he studied civil engineering at Cambridge and then went out to India to become my grandfather’s assistant. Eventually he took over the running of the estate when my grandfather retired.

However, on Indian independence, the estate was nationalised and my father spent another thirteen years in India trying to broker a deal with the government so as not to lose everything he, his father, and my great-grandfather had worked so hard to create.

The story brought forward by Bones of the Buddha is a fascinating one: one of the British Raj in India, when the amateur archaeologist W.C. Peppe plowed a trench through an enormous stupa and found the 4th century BC burial remains.

The Bones of the Buddha is an historical entry in the PBS series Secrets of the Dead, published in 2013.

William Claxton Peppè wasn’t interested in the objects’ religious value. His grandson says: “He was a strict but well-loved man, a Victorian Christian who had married a vicar’s daughter.

Name: William C Peppe Birth: year Death: dd mm 1937 - city, Montgomeryshire, Wales

In January 1898, Mr W. C. Peppe, manager of the Birdpur Estate in north-eastern Basti District, U. P., announced the discovery of soapstone relic-caskets and jewellery inside a stupa near Piprahwa, a small village on this estate. An inscription on one of these caskets appeared to indicate that bone relics, supposedly found with these items, were those of the Buddha. Since this inscription also referred to the Buddha’s Sakyan kinsmen, these relics were thus generally considered to be those which were accorded to the Sakyas of Kapilavastu, following the Buddha’s cremation. The following year (1899) these bone relics were presented by the (British) Government of India to the King of Siam, who in turn accorded portions to the Sanghas of Burma and Ceylon.

William George Peppe, brutal murderer of 1857 in the eye of Hindustan (INDIA).

How William George Peppe became Hero For East India Company?

It was year 1857, The British were amazed and stunned. They could understand it well that the sepoy "Mutiny" has developed into a People's War and they realized it fully that the people's uprising is like a flood which sweeps away everything that comes in its way and spares nothing.

During this same period people of Mahua Dabar had killed Six British Army Officer in bits and pieces this was in revenge that British army had given to their fathers and to their village. In the early 19th century, the East India Company, eager to promote British textiles, had cut off the hands of hundreds of weavers in Bengal. Twenty weavers’ families from Murshidabad and Nadia had then fled to Awadh, whose nawab resettled them in Mahua Dabar and allowed them to carry on with their livelihood. Many of the first-generation weavers had already lost their hands, but they taught the craft to their sons and the small town of 5,000 people soon became a bustling handloom centre. It was around March-April 1857 when Zaffar Ali, a young man whose grandfather had migrated from Bengal, spotted a boat coming down the Manorama (a tributary of the Ghagra) on whose banks the town was located. The historians’ report names the six soldiers beheaded: Lt T.E. Lindsay, Lt W.H. Thomas, Lt G.L. Caulty, Sgt Edwards and privates A.F. English and T.J. Richie.

It was in consequence of this understanding that the Gorakhpur Judge W. Wynard and Collector W. Peterson appointed the Zamindar of Birdepur Willam Peppe as Deputy Magistrate of Basti and gave him half the troops of the 12th Irregular Horse Cavalry for his backing. Peppe was ordered to crush the people's uprising immediately by whatever means it may be possible.

So, on 20 June 1857, Peppe deployed the 12th Irregular Horse cavalry and surrounded Mahua Dabar from all sides and burned the township murdered thousands of people and burned them to ashes. Razed the entire town of Mahua Dabar. After this event he also mentioned on the colonial revenue records, that the area was marked as gair chiragi (non-revenue land). Soon this message reached like fire in every home and town of Hindustan that if any one revolt against British Empire he or they will be crushed to the ground, and very soon British Army gained its power again in India for this great work Willam Peppe was rewarded by East India Company he was granted land is in Basti district, round Birdpur. He was first manager and then owner of a large European estate there, which is still held by his successors, his sons Messrs. W. C. and G. T. Peppe and Mrs. Larpent, his daughter. Annie Jane Peppe married Lieut. Col. L. H. P. [Lionel Henry Planta de] Larpent, H. C. S. (References : Gazetteer; Foster B., M. N page# 822).

Francis Seymour Larpent; Charlotte Rosamund Larpent (née Arnold)
by Unknown artist
oil on canvas, circa 1830
29 1/2 in. x 24 1/2 in. (749 mm x 622 mm)
Sitters: Charlotte Rosamund Larpent (née Arnold) (died 1879), Second wife of Francis Seymour Larpent. Sitter in 1 portrait. Identify
Francis Seymour Larpent (1776-1845), Civil Servant. Sitter in 1 portrait. Identify
Given by Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer, 1951

-- Francis Seymour Larpent; Charlotte Rosamund Larpent (née Arnold), by National Portrait Gallery

PALMER, Francis Beaufort was born on July 7, 1845. Son of Reverend William Palmer (one of the originators of the Oxford Movement) and Sophia, daughter of Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, Knight Commander of the Bath, Fellow of the Royal Society...

Spouse 1898, Georgiana Elizabeth, daughter of 8th Baron [Arthur John] de Hochepied Larpent [Father: John James de Hochepied Larpent [1783-1860]].

-- Francis Beaufort Palmer, by prabook.com

John James De Hochepied Larpent family tree

Children

2. Lionel Henry Planta [L.H.P.] De Hochepied Larpent 1834-1907

-- John James De Hochepied Larpent (1783-1860), by ancestra.ca

William George Peppe died in 1889 Inscription—In memory of William Peppe, son of George Peppe, died 1 9th July 1889. He rendered valuable services during the troubled times of the Indian Mutiny, which Government rewarded by a grant of land in this district. [Deputy Collector during the Mutmy. The Mutiny narrative only mentions him as burning a Muhammadan village (Mahua Dabar) whose inhabitants had murdered six officers, refugees from Fyzabad. He also rescued some other refugees. He was in fact the sole representative of Government, and had great difficulty in preserving his own life. His grant of land is in Basti district, round Birdpur. He was first manager and then owner of a large European estate there, which is still held by his successors, h:s sons Messrs. W. C. and G. T. Peppe and Mrs. Larpent, his daughter. Annie Jane Peppe married Lieut.*Col. L. H. P. Larpent, H. C. S.]

Willam G. Peppe death date is Abstract from book CHRISTIAN TOMBS AND MONUMENTS IN THE UNITED PROVINCES…BY E.A.B BLUNT I.C.S.

**********************

Piprahwa
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/3/21

Piprahava
village

Stupa at Piprahwa

Location in Uttar Pradesh, India
Coordinates: 27.443000°N 83.127800°ECoordinates: 27.443000°N 83.127800°E
Country: India
State: Uttar Pradesh
District: Siddharthnagar
Languages: Official Hindi

Piprahwa (Hindi: पिपरहवा) is a village near Birdpur in Siddharthnagar district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Kalanamak rice, a scented and spicy variety of rice is grown in this area.[1] It lies in the heart of the historical Buddha's homeland and is 12 miles from the world heritage site of Lumbini that is believed to be the place of Gautama Buddha's birth.

Piprahwa is best known for its archaeological site and excavations that suggest that it may have been the burial place of the portion of the Buddha's ashes that were given to his own Shakya clan. A large stupa and the ruins of several monasteries as well as a museum are located within the site. Ancient residential complexes and shrines were uncovered at the adjacent mound of Ganwaria.

Excavation by William Claxton Peppe

A buried stupa was discovered by William Claxton Peppe, a British colonial engineer and landowner of an estate at Piprahwa in January 1898. Following the severe famine that decimated Northern India in 1897, Peppe led a team in excavating a large earthen mound on his land. Having cleared away scrub and jungle, they set to work building a deep trench through the mound. After digging through 18 feet of solid brickwork, they came to a large stone coffer which contained five small vases containing bone fragments, ashes, and jewels.[2] On one of the vases was a Brahmi script which was translated by Georg Bühler, a leading European epigraphist of the time, to mean:


Piprahwa vase with relics of the Buddha. The inscription reads ...salilanidhane Budhasa Bhagavate... "Relics of the Buddha Lord"

Sukiti-bhatinaṃ sabhaginikanam sa-puta-dalanam iyaṃ salila-nidhane Budhasa bhagavate sakiyanam[3]

"This relic-shrine of divine Buddha (is the donation) of the Sakya-Sukiti brothers, associated with their sisters, sons, and wives,[4]

This inscription implied that the bone fragments were part of the remains of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism.[5] Throughout the following decade or so, epigraphists debated the precise meaning of the inscription. Vincent Smith, William Hoey, Thomas Rhys Davids, and Emile Senart all translated the inscription to confirm that these were relics of the Buddha.[6][7]

In 1905, John Fleet, a former epigraphist of the Government of India, published a translation that agreed with this interpretation.[8] However, on assuming the role of Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society from Thomas Rhys Davids, Fleet proposed a different reading:[9][10]

"This is a deposit of relics of the brethen of Sukiti, kinsmen of Buddha the Blessed One, with their sisters, their children and wives."[3]

Handwritten note by discoverer W.C. Péppe to Vincent Arthur Smith about the inscription, 1898

This interpretation was firmly rejected by his contemporaries. Following such criticism Fleet wrote: "I now abandon my opinion".[11] Epigraphists of the time subscribed instead to the translation by Auguste Barth:

"This receptacle of relics of the blessed Buddha of the Śākyas (is the pious gift) of the brothers of Sukīrti, jointly with their sisters, with their sons and their wives."[12]

Over a hundred years later, in the 2013 documentary, Bones of the Buddha, epigraphist Harry Falk of Freie Universität Berlin confirmed the original interpretation that the depositors believed these to be the remains of the Buddha himself. Falk translated the inscription as "these are the relics of the Buddha, the Lord" and concluded that the reliquary found at Piprahwa did contain a portion of the ashes of the Buddha and that the inscription is authentic.[13]

In 1997, epigraphist and archaeologist Ahmad Hasan Dani noted the challenges that isolated finds present to paleographical study and to dating materials. He concluded that "the inscription may be confidently dated to the earlier half of the second century B.C." but noted that "the Piprahwa vase, found in the Basti District, U.P. (Uttar Pradesh), has an inscription scratched on the steatite stone in a careless manner. As the inscription refers to the remains of the Buddha, it was originally dated to the pre-Mauryan period, but it has been brought down to the third century B.C. on a comparison with Asokan Brahmi. The style of writing is very poor, and there is nothing in it that speaks of the hand of the Asokan scribes". [14] Dani's dating of the inscription puts it around 250 years after the generally agreed 480 BCE death of the historical Buddha which suggests that the stupa itself was built after the Buddha's lifetime. The time difference is most likely explained by the Emperor Ashoka’s sudden conversion to Buddhism. After slaughtering tens of thousands to secure his kingdom, Ashoka issued a decree to build stupas and redistribute the Buddha’s remains across his kingdom.[15]

Although there was some initial uncertainty about the translation, there is no record of any challenge to the authenticity of the find at the time.[16] However, in introducing the discovery to the members of the Royal Asiatic Society in April 1900, its secretary, Thomas Rhys Davids, stressed that 'the hypothesis of forgery in this case is simply unthinkable'.[17] Over a century later some have assumed that such doubts must have therefore existed most likely because government archaeologist, A.A. Führer, had been working in the region and had recently been exposed for plagiarism and forgery. The possibility of forgery was explored by writer and historian Charles Allen in his book The Buddha and Dr. Fuhrer and in his documentary Bones of the Buddha. He researches the unfolding of events at Piprahwa based on the letters of W.C. Péppe, Vincent Smith, and A.A. Führer, and concludes that Führer was unable to interfere with the discovery of the inscription made by W.C. Péppe.[18] Harry Falk, professor of Indology at the Freie Universität in Berlin, stated in the documentary that Führer could not have forged the Piprahwa reliquary inscription. Richard Salomon of the University of Washington notes that 'Forgeries tend to be either blatant imitations of genuine inscriptions, or totally aberrant texts, and if the Piprahwa inscription were a forgery - which I am certain is not the case - it would belong to the latter category.' He goes on 'the Piprahwa inscription rings true in all regards'.[19]

The main stupa at Piprahwa, one of the earliest so far discovered in India, was built in three phases. In the 6th-5th century BCE, around the time of the death of the Buddha, it was raised by piling up natural earth from the surrounding area. This was in accordance with a request of the Buddha who had asked that he be buried under the earth "heaped up as rice is heaped in an alms bowl."[20] Phase II occurred during Ashoka’s rule (and was likely completed after his death around 235 BCE) as part of the Emperor’s mission to "distribute the relics of the exalted one."[21] Ashoka opened up the original stupas containing the relics of the Buddha, then restored the stupa and interred a portion of what he had taken. The remaining relics were distributed to other new stupas. At Piprahwa, the restoration consisted of filling thick clay over the structure and of building two tiers to reach a height of 4.55m. In phase III, during the Kushan period, the stupa was extensively enlarged and reached a height of 6.35 metres (20.8 ft). The largest structure after the stupa is the Eastern Monastery that measures 45.11m x 41.14m with a courtyard and more than thirty cells around it. The complex includes an additional Southern Monastery, Western Monastery, and Northern Monastery.[22]

Distribution of the relics


The five reliquaries discovered in Piprahwa.


Portion of the Piprahwa vase inscription. The inscription reads [x] salilanidhane Budhasa Bhagavate... "Relics of the Buddha Lord" (Brahmi script).

Prince Prisdang (aka Jinavaravansa), a former ambassador to Siam and cousin to the King Rama V, had been ordained as a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka and arrived at Piprahwa shortly after the discovery. He soon learned that W.C. Peppe had placed his finds at the disposal of the government.[23][24] His eloquent arguments to persuade British government officials to donate the bone relics to the King of Siam to share with Buddhist communities in other countries received some support from lower level British officials and worked their way up to the Viceroy. It was an obvious solution that might appease Buddhists who were upset that the recently discovered Bodh Gaya, believed to be the place of the Buddha's enlightenment, had remained under Hindu control. It was also a gesture of goodwill to a country that was being courted by the French, Russian, and Dutch superpowers of the time.[25] In 1899, a ceremony was held and the bone relics were handed off to an emissary of King Rama V and traveled to Bangkok. Prisdang’s request to be involved was not realized.[26][27]

The bone relics were immediately distributed across several locations, including Golden Mount Temple in Bangkok, Thailand,[27] Shwedagon pagoda in Rangoon, Myanmar, Arakan pagoda in Mandalay, Myanmar, Dipaduttamarama Temple in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Waskaduwe Vihara in Kalutara, Sri Lanka,[28] and the Marichiwatta stupa in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka.[11]

The majority of the gold and jewelry relic offerings were donated by the Indian government to the Indian Museum, Kolkata. Today, a replica urn is on display.[29] Photographs of the items are on display at the Kapilavastu Museum at Piprahwa that is visited by Buddhist pilgrims.

W. C. Peppe was allowed to retain a number of duplicates which are exhibited in museums today.[30][31] He also gave some pieces to Prince Prisdang and Prisdang's Buddhist master, Sri Subuthi.[32][28] A box of 12 flowers was most likely given to Thomas Rhys Davids and the Royal Archaeological Society and discovered as part of a clean up at the Buddhist Society headquarters in London in 2004.[33]

On 16th December 2554 ( 2011), a portion of these Kapilvatthu Buddha Relics was offered to the Sangha of Ratanawan Monastery. In January, 2012, some of these relics were enshrined in the Buddha Homage Reliquary Hall, Ratanawan Monastery, Thailand.

Many senior monks participated in this auspicious ceremony including Ajahn Sumedho and Ajahn Viradhammo.

Excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India


Southern monastery

From 1971-1973, a team of the Archaeological Survey of India led by K.M. Srivastava resumed excavations at the Piprahwa stupa site. The team discovered a casket containing fragments of charred bone, at a location several feet deeper than the coffer that W.C. Peppe had previously excavated. As the relic containers were found in the deposits from the period of Northern Black Polished Ware, Srivastava dated the find to the fifth-fourth centuries BCE, which would be consistent with the period in which the Buddha is believed to have lived.[34] He also discovered 13 sealings which bore the same legend in Kushan script: 'Of the community of the monks of great Kapilavastu'. Today, the ancient sites of Piprahwa and Ganwaria host the Kapilavastu Museum, controlled by the Archaeological Survey of India.[22]

The bone fragments recovered by Srivastava's team are currently located at the National Museum, New Delhi.[35] In 1978, the Indian government allowed their share of the discovery to be exhibited in Sri Lanka and more than 10 million people paid homage. They were also exhibited in Mongolia in 1993, Singapore in 1994, South Korea in 1995, Thailand in 1996, and again in Sri Lanka in 2012.[36]

Location of ancient Kapilavastu

Srivastava's discovery of the terracotta sealings bearing the name Kapilavastu has led some scholars to believe that modern-day Piprahwa was the site of the ancient city of Kapilavastu, the capital of the Shakya kingdom, where Siddhartha Gautama spent the first 29 years of his life.[2][4][34][37] Others suggest that the original site of Kapilavastu is located 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) to the northwest, at Tilaurakot, in what is currently Kapilvastu District in Nepal.[38][39][40] This question is especially important to scholars of Buddhist history, as Kapilavastu was the capital of the Shakya kingdom. King Śuddhodana and Queen Māyādevī lived at Kapilavastu, as did their son Prince Siddhartha Gautama until he left the palace at 29 years of age.[41]

See also

• Bhattiprolu
• Bimaran casket
• Relics associated with Buddha
• Sanchi

Notes

References

1. Mishra 2005.
2. Peppe 1898, pp. 573–88.
3. Fleet 1907, pp. 129-130.
4. Bühler 1898, p. 388.
5. Peppe 1898, pp. 584–85.
6. Senart, Emile (1906). "Note sur l'inscription de Piprahwa". Journal Asiatique (Jan–Feb): 132–136.
7. Hoey, William (24 February 1898). "Piprahwa inscription". The Pioneer.
8. Fleet, John (October 1905). "Notes on three Buddhist Inscriptions". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 37 (4): 679–691. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00033748.
9. Fleet, John (1906). The inscription on the Priprawa vase. Journal Of The Royal Asiatic Society Of Great Britain And Ireland For-1906. pp. 149-.
10. "Inscribed Relic Casket from Piprahwa". Museums of India. National Portal and Digital Repository. Archived from the original on 22 June 2015.
11. Allen 2008, p. 212.
12. Barth, Auguste (October 1906). "The inscription on the Piprahwa vase". Journal des Savants. 36: 124.
13. Secrets of the Dead: Bones of the Buddha - Transcript, PBS, retrieved 16 April 2015
14. Dani 1997, Chapter 3.
15. Strong, John (1989). The Legend of King Aśoka: A Study and Translation of the Aśokāvadāna. Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
16. Falk, Harry (2018). "The ashes of the Buddha". Bulletin of the Asia Institute: 45.
17. Rhys Davids, Thomas (1901). "Asoka and the Buddha relics". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. XIV: 398.
18. Allen 2008, p. [page needed].
19. Allen 2008, p. 261.
20. Allen 2008, p. 9.
21. Strong, John. Ashokavadana.
22. "The Stupa". Kapilavastu Museum. Archaeological Survey of India. Archived from the original on 15 March 2016.
23. Smith, Vincent (1898). "Government Correspondence" (741).
24. "The relics of Buddha". The Standard. Reuters. 19 December 1898. Retrieved 14 February 2019.
25. Rey, Himanshu Prabha (2014). The Return of the Buddha. Routledge. pp. 106–110.
26. Loos, Tamara (2016). Bones around my neck. Cornell University. p. 120.
27. Jinavaravansa & Jumsai 2003, p. 214.
28. Nanayakkara, Rasika (25 January 2013). "Exposition of Sacred relics". The Island.
29. Falk, Harry (2017). "The Ashes of the Buddha". Bulletin of the Asia Institute. 27: 53.
30. Smith, Vincent (1898). "Government Correspondence". British Library (740 /III-2790-2).
31. "Next stop Nirvana". Rietberg Museum Newsletter. November 2018.
32. Allen 2008, pp. 209–210.
33. Mackenzie, Vicki (21 March 2004). "Buried with the Buddha". The Sunday Times.
34. Srivastava 1980, pp. 103–10.
35. Srivathsan 2012.
36. "Kapilavastu relics arrive in Sri Lanka". Daily Mirror. 19 August 2012.
37. Srivastava 1979, pp. 61-74.
38. Allen 2008, p. 262.
39. Tuladhar 2002, pp. 1-7.
40. Sharda 2015.
41. Trainor, K (2010). "Kapilavastu". In Keown, D; Prebish, CS (eds.). Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Milton Park, UK: Routledge. pp. 436–7. ISBN 978-0-415-55624-8.

Sources

• Allen, Charles (2008). The Buddha and Dr Führer: an archaeological scandal (1st ed.). London: Haus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-905791-93-4.
• Allen, Charles (2012), "What happened at Piprahwa: A chronology of events relating to the excavation in January 1898 of the Piprahwa Stupa in Basti District, North-Western Provinces and Oude (Uttar Pradesh), India, and the associated 'Piprahwa Inscription', based on newly available correspondence", Zeitschrift für Indologie und Südasienstudien, 29: 1–19, OCLC 64218646
• Bühler, Georg (April 1898). "Preliminary note on a recently discovered Sakya inscription". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Correspondence: Note 14): 387–389. JSTOR 25207982.
• Dani, AH (1997), Indian Palaeography (3rd ed.), New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, p. 56, ISBN 978-8121500289
• Fleet, J. F. (1907). "The Inscription on the Piprahwa Vase". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 39: 105–130. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00035541. JSTOR 25210369.
• Jinavaravansa, P. C.; Jumsai, Sumet (2003). "The Ratna Chetiya Dipaduttamarama, Colombo". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka. New. 48: 213–236. JSTOR 23731479.
• Mishra, S (15 September 2005), "Kalanamak: the future of Indian scented rice?", Down To Earth magazine, New Delhi: Society for Environmental Communications, retrieved 29 November 2014
• Peppe, WC (July 1898), "The Piprahwa Stupa, containing relics of Buddha", With a Note by V.A. Smith. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Article XXIII): 573–88, JSTOR 25208010 – via JSTOR (subscription required)
• Sharda, Shailvee (4 May 2015), "UP's Piprahwa is Buddha's Kapilvastu?", Times of India
• Smith, V. A. (Oct., 1898), The Piprāhwā Stūpa, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, p. 868 – via JSTOR (subscription required)
• Srivastava, KM (1979), "Kapilavastu and Its Precise Location", East and West, 29 (1/4): 61–74, JSTOR 29756506 – via JSTOR (subscription required)
• Srivastava, KM (1980), "Archaeological Excavations at Piprāhwā and Ganwaria and the Identification of Kapilavastu", The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 13 (1): 103–10
• Srivastava, KM (1996). Excavations at Piprahwa and Ganwaria (Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India No 94) (PDF). New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India.
• Srivathsan, A (20 August 2012), "Gautama Buddha, four bones and three countries", Colombo Telegraph, Colombo, Sri Lanka, retrieved 29 November 2014
• Tuladhar, Swoyambhu D. (November 2002), "The Ancient City of Kapilvastu - Revisited" (PDF), Ancient Nepal (151): 1–7

External links

• Piprahwa Museum
• ASI

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The Piprahwa Deceptions: Set-ups and Showdown
by T.A. Phelps
April 28, 2013

-- Lumbini On Trial: The Untold Story. Lumbini Is An Astonishing Fraud Begun in 1896, by T. A. Phelps

-- William Claxton Peppe: Persons of Indian Studies, by Prof. Dr. Klaus Karttunen

-- William Peppe, by The RAI Organization, UK

-- Piprahwa, by Wikipedia

-- Asoka and the Buddha-Relics, by T.W. Rhys Davids

(This is a revised and expanded version of a talk given at Harewood House, UK, in 2006, at a conference convened to ‘clear the air’ on the thorny issue of the Piprahwa claims. Whilst challenging the reliability of those claims, it should not be regarded as any kind of endorsement, by default, of the Nepalese claim that Tilaurakot represents the site of Kapilavastu. My views on the ‘Kapilavastu Problem’ and related questions are set out in ‘Lumbini on Trial: The Untold Story’, at http://www.lumkap.org.uk which should be read in conjunction with this article).

The Piprahwa Deceptions: Set-ups and Showdown

‘The careful excavation of Mr Peppe makes it certain that this stupa had never been opened until he opened it…The hypothesis of forgery is in this case simply unthinkable. And we are fairly entitled to ask: “If this stupa and these remains are not what they purport to be, then what are they?”…Though the sceptics -– only sceptics, no doubt, because they think that it is too good to be true…’ (etc.)

-- ‘Asoka and the Buddha-relics’, by T.W. Rhys Davids, JRAS (UK) 1901.

In January 1898, Mr W. C. Peppe, manager of the Birdpur Estate in north-eastern Basti District, U. P., announced the discovery of soapstone relic-caskets and jewellery inside a stupa near Piprahwa, a small village on this estate. An inscription on one of these caskets appeared to indicate that bone relics, supposedly found with these items, were those of the Buddha. Since this inscription also referred to the Buddha’s Sakyan kinsmen, these relics were thus generally considered to be those which were accorded to the Sakyas of Kapilavastu, following the Buddha’s cremation.

The following year (1899) these bone relics were presented by the (British) Government of India to the King of Siam, who in turn accorded portions to the Sanghas of Burma and Ceylon.

DR FUHRER’S LETTERS TO U MA

When Peppe formally announced his finds to the local Collector on 20th January, 1898, his letter disclosed that he had been in contact with the Government archaeologist, Dr Alois Anton Fuhrer, who was then excavating at Sagarwa, just a few miles away across the Indo-Nepalese border. 1. A fortnight later, a letter was despatched from the Government of Burma to Fuhrer’s employer, the Government of the North-Western Provinces. 2. This revealed that Fuhrer had been conducting a secret trade in bogus Buddha-relics with a Burmese monk, U Ma, between September 1896, up to, and during, Peppe’s excavations in 1898. 3. Fuhrer’s letters to U Ma have never seen the public light of day, and a brief summary of their contents reads as follows:

• 22nd September, 1896: Fuhrer mentions sending U Ma some Buddha-relics from Sravasti.

• 19th November 1896: Fuhrer states that ‘The relics of Tathagata, sent off yesterday, were found in the stupa erected by the Sakyas of Kapilavastu over the corporeal relics (saririka-dhatus) of the Lord. These relics were found by me during an excavation of 1886, and are placed in the same relic casket of soapstone in which they were found. The four votive tablets of Buddha surrounded the relic casket. The ancient inscription found on the spot with the relics will follow, as I wish to prepare a transcript and translation of the same for you.’

This letter was sent to U Ma a year before the Piprahwa finds. These spurious relics of the Buddha, purportedly those claimed by the Sakyas of Kapilavastu after the Buddha’s cremation, together with a soapstone relic-casket, and an ‘ancient inscription’, are all, of course, details which are identical to those of the Piprahwa finds of 1898. From this, it will be seen that Fuhrer (with whom Peppe had been in contact) had thus fraudulently staged the Piprahwa finds a year before Peppe’s supposedly unique discoveries.

• 6th March 1897: Fuhrer refers to further ‘sacred relics of Buddha’, which he will keep until U Ma’s proposed visit to India.

• 23rd June 1897: Fuhrer mentions ‘a precious tooth relic of Lord Buddha’ which he will send to U Ma.

• 29th August 1897: Fuhrer says that he will ‘despatch at once a real and authentic tooth relic of the Buddha Bhagavat… along with many other relics of Lord Buddha’.

• 21st September 1897: Fuhrer sends U Ma ‘a molar tooth of Lord Buddha Gaudama Sakyamuni. It was found by me in a stupa at Kapilavatthu, where King Suddhodana lived. That it is genuine there can be no doubt’. Says that ‘the other relics will follow shortly.’

• 30th September 1897: Fuhrer despatches a bogus Asokan inscription allegedly found at Sravasti, and says that he is ‘sending more relics of Sakyamuni after some time’.

• 13th December 1897: Fuhrer mentions that he will return a silver box which U Ma had sent him, together with yet further ‘relics of Gotama Buddha’. Says that he is now ‘at Kapilavastu, in the Nepal Tarai’, where he has ‘so far found three relic caskets with dhatus – nail-parings, hairs, and bones – of the Lord Buddha Sakyamuni. All of these precious relics I will send you at the end of March’.

• 16th February 1898: (i.e. a fortnight after the arrival of the Burmese letter exposing Fuhrer’s deceptions, and three weeks after Peppe’s announcement of his supposed finds). Having received an indignant letter and telegram from U Ma (who finally realised that he had been duped) Fuhrer writes to him from ‘Camp Kapilavastu’, i.e. Sagarwa. Fuhrer states that he can ‘quite understand that the Buddhadanta that I sent you a short while ago is looked upon with suspicion by non-Buddhists, as it is quite different from any ordinary human tooth’ (it was subsequently shown to be ‘apparently that of a horse’). He goes on : ‘But you will know that Bhagavat Buddha was no ordinary being, as he was eighteen cubits in height (about 27 feet) as your sacred writings state. His teeth would therefore not have been shaped like others…Kapilavastu, where the tooth was found in an ancient relic mound, is now a jungle, and overgrown with forest…I shall send you a copy of an ancient inscription which was found by me along with the tooth. It says “This sacred tooth relic of Lord Buddha is the gift of Upagupta”. As you know, Upagupta was the teacher of Asoka, the great Buddhist emperor of India. In Asoka’s time, about 250 BC, this identical tooth was believed to be a relic of Buddha Sakyamuni. My own opinion is that the tooth in question was a genuine relic of Buddha’.

From these letters, we see that Fuhrer had thus been conducting a secret trade in sham relics of the Buddha both before, and during, the similar supposed finds at Piprahwa. We shall note that these bogus items included those relics of the Buddha that were claimed by the Sakyas of Kapilavastu after the Buddha’s cremation – precisely the same stupendous claim which was made for the Piprahwa relics – together with a soapstone casket and ‘ancient inscriptions’ in Asokan Brahmi characters, details also identical to those of the Piprahwa finds. And since Peppe had been in contact with this notorious forger and cheat just before announcing his supposed finds, we shall surely conclude that Fuhrer’s earlier deceptions were thus merely a ‘dry run’, as it were, for the events at Piprahwa itself.

Moreover, in his subsequent Progress Report, Fuhrer claimed that at Sagarwa he had discovered the inscribed relic-casket and stupa of Mahanaman (the successor to the Buddha’s father at Kapilavastu) together with the relic caskets of seventeen ‘Sakya heroes’, their names - all of which he carefully listed - being supposedly inscribed upon these caskets in ‘pre-Asoka characters’. 4. A few months later, however, the full extent of Fuhrer’s U Ma deceptions was finally revealed, and V. A. Smith was appointed to investigate Fuhrer’s office at the Lucknow Museum. 5. Smith denounced all of Fuhrer’s Nepalese Sakyan inscriptions as ‘impudent forgeries’, and Fuhrer himself was summarily dismissed shortly thereafter. 6. The following year (1899) Drs Hoey and Waddell visited the Nepalese Tarai, and discovered that Fuhrer had also ‘lied and lied on a grand scale’ concerning his discoveries at other Nepalese sites, Hoey remarking that ‘one is appalled at the audacity of invention here displayed’. 7

To sum up then: in early 1898, we have two supposed discoveries, those of Sagarwa and Piprahwa respectively. Both of these discoveries were made within the same month, by two parties a few miles from and in contact with each other, and one of these parties was a notorious forger of inscriptions. Both parties purported to have discovered unique, inscribed, pre-Asokan, Sakyan relic-caskets from Kapilavastu, items which have never been found either before or since. Fuhrer’s Sagarwa claims were then exposed as fraudulent, whilst Peppe’s Piprahwa finds had been fraudulently duplicated by Fuhrer a year earlier.

But why then were Fuhrer’s claims unmasked, whilst those of Peppe were not? As we have noted, it was the Government of Burma which had exposed the U Ma forgeries, whilst subsequent events, and the official letters relating to these, supply the answer to the Peppe question also. In his letter to the Government of India on Piprahwa, the local Commissioner, William Hoey, drew attention to the presence in India at this time of a crown prince of Siam, Jinavaravansa, who had then assumed the robe of a Buddhist monk. 8. This gentleman quickly got downwind on this supposed find of Buddha-relics at Piprahwa, and promptly expressed a keen desire for them to be made over to Siam. Having drawn attention to Jinavaravansa’s request, Hoey then recommended that the Government of India should ‘manifest its goodwill’ towards surrounding Buddhist countries by acceding to this request (pointing out that Siam was also ‘a country bordering on Burma’, a recently-acquired British possession) whilst V. A. Smith, now Acting-Secretary to the North-Western Provinces Government, declared that ‘intense interest will be aroused in the Buddhist world, and all Buddhist countries will desire to share in relics of such exceptional sanctity’. 9

JUST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

By the 1890s, Britain and France had successfully taken large slices of territory from Siam, and in a desperate attempt to preserve his country’s independence Siam’s king, Chulalongkorn, was obliged to play off one imperial power against the other. During this period, the king also cultivated a close and personal friendship with the Russian leader Tsar Nicholas, a fact which gave Britain considerable cause for alarm, particularly as both the French and Russians were offering to train up the Siamese armies around this time. In furtherance of his diplomatic aims, the Siamese king set forth on a nine-month Grand European Tour in 1897. He was accorded a full royal welcome by the monarchies, presidents, and heads of state of Italy (where he met the Pope) Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and France. Having arrived for a two-month stay in Britain - his son was then receiving his education at Harrow, a well-known English public school – he was officially welcomed by the Prince of Wales, and was also presented to Queen Victoria, who was by then the Empress of India. Immediately upon his return to Siam, the Buddha’s relics were supposedly discovered at Piprahwa and presented to the king, who was also accorded recognition as the leader of the Buddhist world by the British Empire. This opportunity to ‘manifest its goodwill’ was thus, for the Government of India, an opportunity that was simply too good to be missed, and this cynical piece of imperial realpolitik was allowed to go ahead with consequences that have seriously benighted Buddhist studies ever since. Is it any wonder then, that those unnamed ‘sceptics’ mentioned by Rhys Davids (see my opening quotation) would dismiss this tiresome imperial stunt as ‘just too good to be true’ shortly thereafter? 10.

THE BONE RELICS OF 1898

Writing of the Piprahwa stupa in 1904, Dr Theodor Bloch, Superintendent of the Eastern Circle of the Archaeological Survey of India, declared that ‘one may be permitted to maintain some doubts in regard to the theory that the latter monument contained the relic share of the Buddha received by the Sakyas. The bones found at that place, which have been presented to the King of Siam, and which I saw in Calcutta, according to my opinion were not human bones at all’. 11. Bloch was then Superintendent of the Archaeological Department of the Indian Museum, Calcutta, and would doubtless have relied not only on his own archaeological expertise before making this extraordinary allegation, but also that of his zoological colleagues at the Museum, which was then considered to be the greatest museum in Asia.

Peppe himself retained a tooth from the alleged Piprahwa finds.12. This tooth was taken by the author, Charles Allen, to the Natural History Museum in London, where palaeontologists declared it to be the molar tooth of a pig. In his latest book, ‘The Buddha and Dr Fuhrer’, Allen (who supports the authenticity of the Peppe claims) attempts to explain away the distinctly awkward presence of this tooth by claiming that it came from a broken casket found by Peppe near the summit of the stupa. 13. There is not the slightest evidence for this assertion : Peppe himself states only that this casket was ‘full of clay and embedded in this clay were some beads, crystals, gold ornaments, cut stars etc’. 14. Moreover, we have already noted Bloch’s observation that the bone relics from Piprahwa did not appear to be of human origin. Since portions of these items are now enshrined at the Wat Saket Temple (Thailand) the Shwe Dagon Pagoda (Rangoon) Anuradhapura (Ceylon) and in the Nittaiji Temple in Japan, this raises the appalling spectre that for over a century the Buddhist world may have been venerating the remains of some ancient pig.

As for the precise location of the bone relics when they were allegedly found within the Piprahwa stupa itself, the existing accounts present startling contradictions. The first published reference to these items appeared in the ‘Pioneer’ newspaper a few days after Peppe’s official announcement, and apparently came from Peppe himself. 15. This stated that all of the caskets contained jewellery and ‘quantities of bones in good preservation’ (so good, in fact, that Peppe later declared that they ‘might have been picked up a few days ago’, a curious observation to make upon bones which had supposedly survived a blazing funeral pyre 2500 years earlier). 16. Smith and Fuhrer however (both of whom had visited Peppe to examine the finds) stated that these ‘sacred fragments’ had been ‘enshrined’ in a decayed wooden vessel which was also found within the coffer. 17. Since the bones were finally handed to the Siamese together with these decayed wooden fragments, this would presumably confirm this wooden casket as their original location, though this then raises further awkward questions about their real identity in consequence.

THE PEPPE CASKETS AND THEIR INSCRIPTION

The four steatite caskets of 1898 from Piprahwa (Fig. 1) are virtually identical in appearance to caskets which were interred in the 2nd century BCE at stupas in the Sanchi area. These caskets are shown in Alexander Cunningham’s ‘Bhilsa Topes’, a book which was utilised by Fuhrer for other deceptions. 18. The steatite of which the Piprahwa caskets are made is still being worked in India today, I shall add ; I recently bought a couple of incense-holders made of exactly the same material, which were made in Varanasi.

During a visit to the Indian Museum, Calcutta, in 1994, I carefully examined the inscribed Piprahwa casket, and noted features not mentioned in any report. A photograph taken in situ at Piprahwa in 1898 shows a curious feature on the centre of the lid, and also reveals that a large piece was then unaccountably missing from the base (Fig. 2). My examination revealed that the former was a piece of sealing-wax (since transferred to the inside) which had originally been stuck on to prevent a large crack from running further, while a subsequent ‘repair’ to the base – an inset piece – looked to be a pretty botched affair also. All of which reveals that this casket had been badly damaged from the start – that it had originally been broken in fact – again, a fact not noted in any report. But is it likely, one is prompted to ask, that the Buddha’s relics would have been enshrined in this damaged casket, as claimed? Or is this the ‘broken’ casket which was reportedly found by Peppe near the top of the stupa, and which was ‘similar in shape to those found below’? 19. This casket - the first of the alleged finds - apparently vanished into thin air thereafter : it is not found in the Indian Museum collection, or on their Accessions List (which I also examined), it was not mentioned in Smith’s detailed JRAS list of the finds, and no drawing or photograph was ever made of it either. So whatever happened to this casket? Did it become the inscribed casket – which was also broken, as we have noted - and did Fuhrer himself forge the inscription upon it? Is the Piprahwa inscription simply another Fuhrer forgery? Fuhrer certainly had the palaeographical knowledge to perform this, particularly as he was then in touch with Buhler (who may also have unwittingly provided him with emendations to the inscription, according to the published accounts). 20

Charles Allen’s book contains a photograph of the earliest-known copy of the Piprahwa inscription, which was sent by Peppe to Smith. This inscription was, in fact, very carelessly engraved upon the casket, and shows startling irregularities in some of its characters. Since Peppe wouldn’t have had the slightest knowledge of this ancient and forgotten script, he should, of course, have faithfully reproduced these ‘mistakes’ when he made his copy of it, but he didn’t : his copy shows perfectly-drawn Asokan Brahmi characters (Figs. 3 and 4). Moreover, Smith’s transliteration of Peppe’s copy completely omits the two final characters – ‘yanam’ - of the all-important word ‘sakiyanam’, showing the alleged Sakyan association with these relics. Allen attempts to explain this astonishing omission by saying that Smith had evidently regarded these two characters as ‘random scratches’, but they are quite clearly depicted in Peppe’s copy, and were presumably added to it later on (which also accounts for their being placed above the line of the others). 21. This explains why none of the January 1898 letters between Peppe, Smith and Fuhrer (which are cited by Allen) make any reference at all to this all-important Sakyan connection, and shows that the inscription was, in fact, engraved upon the casket in various stages around this time – doubtless by Fuhrer - Buhler’s later emendations included.

THE SAGARWA JEWELLERY

We have already noted that Peppe was in contact with Fuhrer while the latter was excavating at Sagarwa, across the nearby Nepalese border. The difficulties surrounding precisely what was discovered by Fuhrer at Sagarwa, and the subsequent fate of those items, would now appear to be quite insurmountable. All of the jewellery, caskets, and other items found at Sagarwa promptly disappeared, and the Nepalese authorities have assured me that they have no idea of their present whereabouts either. Smith and Peppe, curiously, ‘rode up unannounced’ on January 28th, whilst Fuhrer was excavating Mound Number Five, and Smith noted seeing ‘a few gold stars, similar to those subsequently found at Piprahwa’ (though Smith’s use of the word ‘subsequently’ is inexplicable here, since Peppe’ had announced his finds a week before this visit). Mound Number Four at Sagarwa (which was excavated just before this visit) was later declared by P.C. Mukherji to have been ‘very rich in yielding relics’ (i.e. jewellery) but only ‘a naga and six relics of sorts’ were shown in Mukherji’s report, hardly ‘a very rich yield’. So was all this missing Sagarwa jewellery utilized for the supposed finds at Piprahwa, one wonders? We have already noted Smith’s comment on the ‘similarity’ of the Sagarwa items to those of Piprahwa, and having spoken to the Curator at Fuhrer’s former museum at Lucknow, I was informed that the curiously-marked bricks from Sagarwa would appear to lie uncatalogued at this location. The Peppe collection includes specimens of eight-petalled lotuses in gold leaf, and lotus seed-pods with tiny holes drilled in them to represent seeds. One of the drawings of the Sagarwa items made by Fuhrer’s draughtsman shows an eight-petalled lotus in gold leaf, with tiny holes drilled into its centre to represent seeds, whilst the Sagarwa bricks showed 21 eight-petalled lotuses carved into their surfaces also.

THE LEGALITY OF THE PEPPE COLLECTION

The question also arises as to whether Peppe’s collection of jewellery from Piprahwa was legally retained by him thereafter. V. A. Smith assured the Government of India that ‘Mr Peppe has generously placed all the items discovered at the disposal of Government, subject to the retention by him, on behalf of the proprietors of the estate, of a reasonable number of duplicates of the smaller objects’ (Smith also referring to ‘a few duplicates’ in his JRAS article, ‘The Piprahwa Stupa’). 22. Since Peppe, however, retained not merely ‘a few duplicates’ of the jewellery, but around one-third of the actual jewellery itself – about 360 pieces - it is evident that Smith’s assurance that Peppe would ‘place all the objects at the disposal of Government’ (a legal obligation anyway, according to Smith) was not met, and the question thus arises as to whether Peppe legitimately retained these items thereafter, particularly as they were then removed from India after Independence. 23. One also wonders why Smith, then Acting Secretary to the North-Western Provinces Government, found it necessary to lie about those ‘duplicates’ to the Government of India.

LATER FINDS AT PIPRAHWA

In 1962, Debala Mitra, then Superintendent of the Eastern Circle of the Archaeological Survey of India, was invited by the Nepalese authorities to conduct a survey of the sites in the Nepalese Tarai, with a view to their development for pilgrimage purposes. Her subsequent report (1969) was highly critical of these sites however, and when the Nepalese refused to publish her findings, Mitra summarised them as an appendix – entitled ‘Kapilavastu’ - to her ‘Buddhist Monuments’ book, published in India (1971). In this, she declared that the 1898 inscription provided a ‘strong presumption’ for Piprahwa being the site of Kapilavastu, and added that ‘intensive excavation in the monasteries at Piprahwa is likely to reveal some monastic seals or sealings’, which if found ‘will prove the identity of Kapilavastu with Piprahwa or otherwise’. 24

An Indian archaeologist, K. M. Srivastava (also from the Eastern circle of the ASI) promptly commenced further excavations at Piprahwa, and claimed to have discovered a ‘primary mud stupa’ below the one excavated by Peppe. This supposedly yielded yet more soapstone vessels (none of which bore inscriptions) containing bones. According to Srivastava, the ‘indiscriminate destruction’ caused by Peppe’s excavation meant that the bone relics found in 1898 could not reliably be shown to be those of the Buddha, and the inscription on the 1898 casket somehow ‘pointed’ to the bones supposedly found lower down, which were thus the real relics of the Buddha in consequence. He also claimed to have discovered - precisely as Debala Mitra had predicted – various clay sealings and the lid of a pot, all bearing the word ‘Kapilavastu’, in monastic remains at the Piprahwa site (though neither Peppe nor P. C. Mukherji had found a single specimen of such sealings when they excavated at these selfsame remains in 1898). 25. Having delivered a sharply critical review of Srivastava’s claims however, the eminent archaeologist and historian, Herbert Härtel, then added that ‘To declare that the bones in one of the reliquaries in the lower chambers are those of the Buddha is not provable, and therefore not tenable. In our opinion, it is high time to set a token of scientific correctness in this extremely important matter’. 26 Needless to say, however, Härtel’s strictures on ‘this extremely important matter’ have since been met with a thunderous silence from the academic fraternity at large.

During my 1994 visit to the Indian Museum, I found an elaborate wooden model of a stupa displayed, in appearance similar to the great stupas at Sanchi and Amaravati (Fig. 5). This purported to be a model of the Piprahwa stupa itself, and inside it was a wooden copy of the inscribed casket, displaying two pieces of bone. The accompanying caption declared that these were ‘relics of the Lord…which were found in 1972 at Piprahwa, Basti District, U.P., supposed to be ancient Kapilavastu, the capital of the Sakyas, the clan of Sakyamuni Buddha’, and stated that the Piprahwa stupa was ‘encircled by railings, having gateways at four cardinal points, embellished with beautiful sculptures of the Buddha and contemporary life’. When I enquired who was responsible for this item, I was informed that it was Mr Srivastava. However, as I was able to verify by a visit to the Piprahwa stupa, none of these ‘railings’, ‘gateways’, or ‘beautiful sculptures of the Buddha and contemporary life’ exist at the actual site itself (Fig. 6). I then visited the National Museum in Delhi, where I discovered two of Mr Srivastava’s soapstone caskets containing yet further ‘relics of the Lord’ (and ostentatiously displaying lumps of clay on the caskets themselves, thus ‘proving’, presumably, that they had been properly unearthed as claimed). Having examined these items as closely as I was permitted – the Museum guard levelled a loaded rifle at me when I got too close – I then paid a visit to the Curator of Buddhist Antiquities, J. E. Dawson, and mentioned the 1898 bequest to Siam, when supposed relics of the Buddha were also found. He had no knowledge of this however, and promptly began telephoning around the Museum, urging staff to report to his office. Pretty soon the room was full, and he asked me to repeat this information, of which no-one else present appeared to have any knowledge. During the ensuing discussion I mentioned that Krishna Rijal, then Nepal’s leading archaeologist, had also told me of a commission which had been set up, under Rajiv Gandhi, to investigate the authenticity of Mr Srivastava’s Buddha-relics, but which had never published its conclusions thereafter. This immediately prompted one of the staff to call out ‘They are false!’ an outburst which shocked everyone into silence. I asked him to repeat this assertion, which he did. I then asked him how he knew this, and he replied that an Indian professor had told him. ‘And how does he know?’ I enquired. ‘Because he was on the commission!’ came the prompt reply.

© T. A. Phelps, 2008. Comments on this article would be most welcome. Please address them to Terry Phelps at [email protected]

_______________

REFERENCES

1. Government of India Proceedings, Part B, Department of Revenue and Agriculture, Archaeology and Epigraphy, August 1898, Proceeding no. 15, File no. 30 0f 1898, Page 2 (National Archives of India, New Delhi). Researchers should note that all of the official (i. e. Government) correspondence on the Piprahwa events (i. e. both Part A and Part B) can be found in the Department of India Proceedings (Home : Public) for 1898 and 1899, at the Oriental and India Office Collections, London, which is thus an absolutely indispensable source of information on these events. In particular, the following should be examined : July 1898, proceedings 225-31, pp. 1311-28 ; December 1898, proceedings nos. 258-62, pp. 2573-77; April 1899, proceedings 3-20, pp. 627-34; and June 1899, proceedings nos. 160-67, pp. 1341-55.
2. Government of India Proceedings, Part B, Department of Revenue and Agriculture, Archaeology and Epigraphy, August 1898, File no. 24 of 1898, Proceedings 7-10. (National Archives of India, New Delhi).
3. Ibid. See also V. A. Smith’s ‘Prefatory Note’ to P.C. Mukherji’s ‘A Report on a Tour of Exploration of the Antiquities of the Tarai, Nepal’, footnote, p. 4 (Report no. 26, Archaeological Survey of India, New Imperial Series, 1901).
4. A. Fuhrer, Annual Progress Report, Archaeological Survey, North-Western Provinces and Oudh Circle, Epigraphical Section, year ended 1898.
5. Government of India Proceedings, Part B, Department of Revenue and Agriculture, Archaeology and Epigraphy, October 1898, Proceedings nos. 22-33, File no. 13 of 1898, Serial no. 18 in file. (National Archives of India, New Delhi).
6. V. A. Smith, Annual Progress Report, Archaeological Survey, North-Western Provinces and Oudh Circle, y/e 1899, p. 2. See also ref. 3 (Smith) p. 4.
7. Government of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh Proceedings, Public Works Department, B & R Branch, ‘Miscellaneous’, August 1899, Proceeding no. 90-91, pp. 29-33. (Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London). The same details are also disclosed in the Government of India Proceedings, Part B, Department of Revenue and Agriculture, Archaeology and Epigraphy, April 1899, File no. 6 (see ‘Enclosure 1’ (Report) of letter no. 53A, and also letter no. 41A in this file). (National Archives of India, New Delhi).
8. See ref. 1. According to Charles Allen (see ref. 13) Jinavaravansa visited Piprahwa – and thus, presumably, saw the inscribed casket – a week after Peppe announced his supposed finds in January 1898, but there is not the slightest support for this assertion. Jinavaravansa arrived at Piprahwa in April of that year, by which time the casket had been inscribed (see ref. 21)
9. See ref. 1.
10. See website entitled ‘King Chulalongkorn Rama V : His Travels and His Voyages’ for details of this episode in the King’s career. For details of the British concern regarding the Russian/French proposals to train up the Siamese armies, see ‘Political and Secret’, Home Correspondence, 1898 (Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London).
11. ‘Notes on the Exploration of Vaisali’, by Theodor Bloch, Annual Report, Bengal Circle, Archaeological Survey of India, year ended April 1904, p. 15.
12. ‘Buried With the Buddha’, by Vicki Mackenzie, ‘The Sunday Times Magazine’ (UK), 21st March, 2004, pp. 36-42.
13. ‘The Buddha and Dr Fuhrer’, by Charles Allen, Haus Publishing (UK) 2008, p. 260. See also ref. 12, p. 38 (photograph). I note, incidentally, that Allen writes (pp. 60-1) of a pillar at ‘Khango’ which was mentioned by Buchanan. According to Allen, ‘the site of this pillar has never been identified’, and ‘the pillar itself was almost certainly broken up within a few years of Buchanan’s visit to this area’. This is the well-known pillar at Kahaon, full details of which are given in the ASI reports (Old Series) Vols. 1 and 16. It is still there I shall add, and its details – including a photograph - are available on the Internet.
14. W. C. Peppe, ‘The Piprahwa Stupa, containing relics of Buddha’, p. 574, JRAS (UK) 1898). It hardly needs pointing out that if Allen’s proposed ‘solution’ to the problems raised by this tooth was correct (and as I have shown, there is not a shred of evidence to support it) it would still fail to explain why a pig’s tooth was placed in a reliquary and then interred in a stupa which supposedly contained the Buddha’s relics. Moreover, since this casket was allegedly ‘similar in shape to the vases found lower down’ it should presumably be ascribed to the same period as these anyway, and Allen’s proposal becomes yet more untenable in consequence.
15. See item ‘Birdpur Ruins’, in ‘News and Notes’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (UK) 1898, pp. 457-8. Curiously, there is no reference to either bones or inscription in Peppe’s letter to the local Collector, officially announcing his finds.
16. See ref. 14 (Peppe) p. 576.
17. ‘The relics consisted of some fragments of bone. These sacred fragments had been deposited in a wooden vessel, which stood on the bottom of a massive coffer’ (Smith) : see ‘The Pioneer’ (Lucknow/Allahabad newspaper) 1st March, 1898, or the Journal of the Maha Bodhi Society, Calcutta, 1st April 1898, which carries a reprint of this ‘Pioneer’ article by Smith on pp. 94-6. For Fuhrer’s observations on the matter, see ref. 4, p. 3 (‘Another casket of fragrant red sandalwood, in which had been enshrined portions of the bone relics of Gautama Buddha, collected from his funeral pile, was found almost decayed.’). Smith visited Piprahwa a few days after Peppe’s announcement of his alleged finds, but astonishingly, omits any mention of what he saw there.
18. See ref. 3 (Smith) and also ref. 6 (Smith).
19. See ref. 14, in which Peppe states that ‘At a distance of ten feet from the summit a small broken soapstone (steatite) vase, similar in shape to the vases found lower down, was discovered. This vase was full of clay, and embedded in this clay were some beads, crystals, gold ornaments, cut stars etc.’ Since this merely ‘broken’ casket was thus sufficiently intact to be ‘full’ of clay and other items, it could hardly have been either ‘badly smashed’ or ‘completely shattered’, as Allen and Srivastava have claimed.
20. In his ‘Preliminary Note on a Recently Discovered Sakya Inscription’ (JRAS, 1898, 387-9) Buhler wrote that having received an ‘eye-copy’ of the inscription from Fuhrer, he wrote back and ‘begged Mr Peppe to look if any traces of the required I in the first word, of the medial i in the second, and of a vowel-mark in the last syllable of bhagavata are visible.’ Three weeks later Fuhrer’s deceptions with U Ma had been exposed and Buhler was dead, having drowned in mysterious circumstances. Had Buhler heard of Fuhrer’s deceptions and realised that he had also been duped? Had he perhaps even collaborated with Fuhrer on earlier deceptions (he had certainly been Fuhrer’s champion) and thus feared exposure and disgrace himself?
21. See ref. 13 (Allen). pp. 50-55, and 77-8 (Peppe’s copy of the inscription is shown on p. 54). Allen’s book draws very extensively on my own sixteen-year researches into the Piprahwa events it should be added, though no acknowledgment is made of this ‘borrowing’. Some of the Peppe private papers which are cited by Allen have now been deposited with the Royal Asiatic Society in London, and reveal a very different version of these events from that given by the official reports. Smith, for example, referred in three of his reports to an ‘unannounced visit’ which he and Peppe had made to Fuhrer’s Nepalese camp on the 28th January 1898, but these (unpublished) Peppe papers show that this visit had been secretly arranged between these three parties well beforehand. So why did Smith and Peppe pay a laborious (and unofficial) visit to Fuhrer at this time, if not to set up the entire Piprahwa scam? Most revealing of all, however, is item no. 32 in these papers, which happily succeeds in giving the entire show away. This shows a handwritten paragraph by Peppe, in which he shows a copy of the final version of the inscription. Underneath this copy is the statement ‘Translation from Hoey and Buhler’. This statement reveals the two sources from which the final inscription was created, viz, those of Hoey’s ‘Pioneer’ translation (Feb. 1898) together with that proposed by Buhler (see ref. 20) the latter received by Peppe in mid-March (and also coinciding with Fuhrer’s visit to Peppe, after leaving Nepal). A careful comparison reveals that the inscription was indeed a ‘translation from Hoey and Buhler’, being a judicious blending of these two versions, which was inscribed on the casket in mid-March, 1898. Thus the two sources from which the inscription was created are here unwittingly named by Peppe himself, and this effectively confirms that it was simply a modern forgery.
22. Government of India Proceeedings, Part B, Department of Revenue and Agriculture, Archaeology and Epigraphy, August 1898, Proceeding no. 15, File no. 30 of 1898 (National Archives of India, New Delhi, though see ref. 1). See also ‘The Piprahwa Stupa’, by V. A. Smith, JRAS (UK) 1898, p. 868.
23. ‘The Annihilation of Lord Buddha’s Family’, article by Paripurnanand Verma, in ‘The Pioneer’, dated 18th August 1956, which shows that the jewellery was then still at Birdpur. Interestingly, Verma was a Member of the Legislative Assembly, and proposed that Peppe ‘hand them over to our Lucknow Museum’. A copy of this article is kept among the Peppe Papers in the library of the Department of South Asian Studies at Cambridge University, together with a privately-printed copy of Peppe’s original JRAS article. This varies considerably from the JRAS version, and makes for interesting reading in consequence.
24. Debala Mitra, ‘Buddhist Monuments’ (Calcutta, Dec. 1971) p. 253.
25. ‘Discovery of Kapilavastu’ (1986) ‘Buddha’s Relics from Kapilavastu’ (1986) and ‘Excavations at Piprahwa and Ganwaria’ (1996) all by K. M. Srivastava. Conflicting accounts exist as to whether Srivastava commenced his excavations at Piprahwa in ignorance of Debala Mitra’s conclusions, but as a member of the same Archaeological Circle he would surely have been aware of these. I also note that no mention is made, in any of Srivastava’s writings on Piprahwa, of the bequest of the 1898 relics to Siam.
26. ‘On the Dating of the Piprahwa Vases’, by Herbert Härtel, in ‘South Asian Archaeology 1997’, pp. 1011-24 (Rome 2000). An eminent Nepalese writer, Dhooswan Sayami, has dismissed Srivastava’s claims as nothing but ‘a well-hatched plan and archaeological stratagem’ (‘Ancient Kapilavastu : Recent Politics’, Vasudha, Vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 3-4, May-Jun 1977 : quoted on p. 31 of ‘Archaeological Remains of Kapilavastu, Lumbini, Devadaha’, by Krishna Rijal, Kathmandhu, 1979).

ILLUSTRATIONS


Fig. 1. The Peppe caskets, photographed in 1898.


Fig. 2. The inscribed casket (‘rear’ view) photographed at Piprahwa in 1898.


Fig. 3. The two characters for ‘ki’ and ‘ti’ (which are part of the word ‘sukiti’) as shown on the inscribed Piprahwa casket. Note the marked discrepancies between these items and their correctly-drawn equivalents in Fig. 8


Fig. 4. This shows the correct depiction of the characters shown in fig. 7. Having no knowledge of this obscure script, Peppe should have repeated the irregularities shown in the Fig. 7 characters when making his copy, but he didn’t. He depicted them correctly, as above.


Fig. 5. Srivastava’s model of the Piprahwa stupa, photographed in 1994.


Fig. 6. The Piprahwa stupa itself.
(Source - http://www.piprahwa.org.uk/The%20Piprah ... ptions.htm)

[admin]

Part 1 of 2

Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer
from Various Sources

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When Tibet finally lost her freedom in 1959 and the Dalai Lama was forced into exile, Rumbold, and old India hands like Sir Olaf Caroe (a former Foreign Secretary to the Indian Government and Governor of the North-West Frontier Province) and Hugh Richardson (Head of British Mission, Lhasa), joined with Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer to found the Tibet Society of the UK, an organisation that for many years stood alone in advocating Tibet's independence. Members of the society persistently challenged Chinese propaganda, principally by letters to the broadsheet papers, until the British media came to understand that there was a more reliable source for news about Tibet than the Anglo-China Association and the Chinese Ambassador.

For 11 years, from 1977 to 1988, Rumbold served the Tibet Society as its president. In 1991, with Hugh Richardson, he produced for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Tibet a pamphlet, Tibet, the Truth about Independence, which remains the most succinct and authoritative account of Tibet's status and the British government's relations with Tibet.

-- Obituary: Sir Algernon Rumbold, by John Billington

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The Founding of Tibet Relief Fund
by Tibet Relief Fund
Accessed: 3/7/20



We've been having a bit of re-organise here in the office and, with kind help from volunteers Carole and Neil, we have unearthed some fascinating documents and photos dating all the way back to Tibet Relief Fund's beginnings in 1959. One such photo was of Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer, the founder and first chairman of Tibet Relief Fund.

Mr. Beaufort-Palmer was a remarkable man with a strong sense of social justice and was particularly motivated by helping people in small countries who suffered at the hand of foreign powers. Following news of the Dalai Lama's escape from Tibet, in April 1959 he wrote a letter to The Times suggesting that a society be set up to support Tibet. In July, a further letter was sent to The Times informing readers that the newly formed Tibet Society had opened a "Tibet Relief Fund" to bring practical relief to Tibetan refugees; from this Tibet Relief Fund was established. Now, over 50 years later, our work covers a broader brief including projects inside Tibet.

Francis Beaufort-Palmer was Chairman of Tibet Relief Fund for 15 years and remained a trustee until he died ten years later in 1984.

TIBETAN REFUGEES

Sir. – Recent devastating events in Tibet caused over 15,000 Tibetans to cross the perilous Himalayas into India. It may be a long time before these unfortunate people can safely return to their overrun country. Our own consciences should allow us neither to neglect nor forget them.

The Indian Government has manfully coped with this addition to its own problems at home. In this country we are bound in honour to help relieve needs of the Tibetan refugees, because from 1905 to 1947 there was a special relationship between Tibet and the United Kingdom – a relationship handed on to the new India.

On balance we think it wisest to concentrate chiefly on collecting money which can be used for the benefit of the refugees, not least in the purchase of necessary antibiotics and other medicaments. The Tibet Society has opened a Tibet Relief Fund for which we now appeal in the hope of a generous response. Donations should be sent to the address below or direct to the National Bank Ltd. (Belgravia Branch), 21 Grosvenor Gardens, S.W.I.

Yours faithfully,

Thubten Jigme Norbu; F.M. Bailey; Birdwood; J.D. Boyle; [Indian Foreign Secretary Sir] Olaf Caroe; Clement Davies; A.D. Dodds-Parker; Peter Fleming [Master of Deception: The Wartime Adventures of Peter Fleming, by Alan Ogden]; Thomas Moore; [Esmond Harmsworth, 2nd Viscount Rothermere] Harmsworth; Marco Pallis; Hugh E. Richardson; Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer, Chairman; Major J.C.W. Napier-Munn [Tac HQ Calcutta (Advanced HQ ALFSEA)], Hon. Secretary; D.C. Nicole, Hon. Treasurer, The Tibet Society.
The Tibet Relief Fund, 58 Eccleston Square, S.W. I., Letter to the Times, July 31, 1959, p.7./quote]

-- The Founding of Tibet Relief Fund, Tibet Matters, Issue 17, Autumn 2013, by Tibet Relief Fund

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ADMINISTRATIVE AND SPECIAL DUTIES BRANCH
The London Gazette
January 21, 1941
P. 417-418

The undermentioned are granted commissions for the duration of hostilities: --
As Pilot Officers on probation....

19th Dec. 1940.
Francis Napier BEAUFORT-PALMER (89510).

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OFFICERS SERVING ON THE ACTIVE LIST OF THE R.A.F.
by National Library of Scotland
Accessed: 7/4/21

Administrative and Special Duties Branch
Pilot Officers
1940

(R.A.F.V.R.) P.
Beaufort - Palmer, Francis Napier

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The Sphere
An Illustrated Newspaper for the Home
May 16, 1925

Content:

20. In the Public Eye - Small pictures of: Sir William Ramsey, Madame Edvina, Dr George A Reisner, Mr Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer, Sir Frank Dicksee, Miss Lula Vollmer, Miss Nadine March, Miss Barbara Cartland.

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Department of Manuscripts: Acquisitions, January 1973 to December 1974
The British Library Journal
Vol. 1, No. 2 , pp. 191-196 (6 pages)
AUTUMN 1975

RECENT ACQUISITIONS

Department of Manuscripts

Acquisitions, January 1973 to December 1974

The following list includes manuscripts incorporated into the collections between January 1973 and December 1974. The inclusion of a manuscript in this list does not necessarily imply that it is available for study....

Correspondence and papers of the Napier family, supplementing Add.MSS. 49086-49172, 54510-54564; 1790-1865. Add.MS. 58209; Add.Ch.75767, 75769-75790. Presented by the executors of Mrs. Violet Bunbury Napier.

Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield: correspondence, memoranda, etc.; 1867-73, n.d. Add. MSS 58079V presented by F.N. Beaufort-Palmer, Esq.; 58210

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-- The life and letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, 1745-1826, daughter of Charles, 2nd duke of Richmond, and successively the wife of Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, and of the Hon. George Napier; also a short political sketch of the years 1760 to 1763, by Henry Fox, 1st lord Holland; by Napier, Lady Sarah Lennox Bunbury, 1745-1826; Holland, Henry Fox, Baron, 1705-1774; Ilchester, Mary Eleanor Anne Dawson, countess of; Ilchester, Giles Stephen Holland Fox-Strangways, Earl of, b. 1874; Napier, Henry Edward, 1789-1853

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George Napier
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/4/21


Colonel The Honourable
George Napier
Col. George Napier
Born: 11 March 1751
Died: 12 October 1804 (aged 53)
Allegiance: Great Britain
Service/branch: British Army
Years of service: 1767–1804
Rank: Colonel
Battles/wars: American War of Independence
Spouse(s): Elizabeth Pollock ​(m. 1775; died 1778)​; Lady Sarah Lennox ​(m. 1781)​
Children: Henry Napier; Louisa Mary Napier; Sir Charles James Napier; Emily Bunbury, Lady Bunbury; Sir George Thomas Napier; Sir William Francis Patrick Napier; Richard Napier; Henry Edward Napier; Caroline Napier; Cecilia Napier

Colonel George Napier (11 March 1751 – 13 October 1804), styled "The Honourable", was a British Army officer, most notable for his marriage to Lady Sarah Lennox, and for his sons Charles James Napier, William Francis Patrick Napier and George Thomas Napier, all of whom were noted military officers, collectively referred to as "Wellington’s Colonels". He also served as Comptroller of Army Accounts in Ireland from 1799 until his death in 1804.

Birth

George Napier was the younger son of Francis Napier, 6th Lord Napier and his wife Henrietta Maria Johnston.

Military service

Napier was commissioned into the 25th Foot in 1767 and was promoted Lieutenant in 1771. He became the regiment's Quartermaster in 1776. In 1778 he transferred to the 80th Regiment of Foot (Royal Edinburgh Volunteers) as a Captain. He served in the American War of Independence on the staff of Sir Henry Clinton.[1] He sold his commission in 1781, but was commissioned into the 1st Foot Guards in 1782. In 1783 he transferred to the 100th Regiment of Foot (Loyal Lincolnshire Regiment) as a Captain. In 1794 he was promoted Major, transferred to the 87th Foot, and then transferred again to the newly raised Londonderry Regiment as Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1800 he was promoted Colonel.

Marriages

On 22 January 1775 he married Elizabeth Pollock (died 1778), and together they had one daughter, Louisa Mary Napier (died 1856) and one son, Henry Napier, born 1778.

On 27 August 1781 he married Lady Sarah Lennox, daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond. He was described at the time as being “impoverished”. Her previous marriage had ended in scandal and divorce; George was Sarah's second husband, Sarah was George's second wife. Together they raised eight children, including three who were to become famed military officers:

• General Sir Charles James Napier GCB (10 August 1782 – 1853)
• Emily Louisa Augusta Napier (1783 – 1863), married Sir Henry Bunbury, 7th Baronet
• Lieutenant-General Sir George Thomas Napier KCB (1784 – 1855)
• Lieutenant-General Sir William Francis Patrick Napier KCB (17 December 1785 – 12 February 1860)
• Richard Napier (1787 – 1868) married Anna Louisa Stewart, daughter of Sir J. Stewart.
• Captain Henry Edward Napier RN (5 March 1789 – 13 October 1853)
• Caroline Napier (1790 - 1810)
• Cecilia Napier (1791 - 1808)

In 1785 he moved his family to Celbridge in County Kildare, Ireland, where George eventually earned a post as Comptroller of Army Accounts. Lady Sarah was the sister of the very wealthy Lady Louisa Conolly and Emily FitzGerald, Duchess of Leinster who lived nearby.[2] During the Irish Rebellion of 1798, in which one of the rebel leaders was his nephew Lord Edward FitzGerald, he is said to have armed his five sons, put his house in a state of defence, and offered an asylum to all who were willing to resist the insurgents.[3][4]

Trivia

In 1999, a 6-part miniseries called Aristocrats, based on the lives of Sarah Lennox and her sisters, aired in the U.K. George Napier appears at various ages in the series, played by Martin Glyn Murray and Jeremy Bulloch.[5]

It is incorrectly stated that George Napier's grandson, Colonel Napier, brought the first pair of skis to Davos in 1888, starting the popular sport of Alpine skiing that had formerly been the activity of a few experts. The actual "Colonel Napier" who was responsible for the growth of Alpine skiing was the son of Robert Napier, 1st Baron Napier of Magdala[6]

References and notes

1. Hibbert, Christopher, "Wellington: A Personal History", Addison-Wesley, 1997, Chapter 1. From NY Times "Books" on-line, accessed 2008-11-21.
2. Stella Tillyard “Aristocrats" (1998)
3. Bloy, Marjorie, "Sir William Francis Patrick Napier (1785-1860)", British Foreign Policy 1815-65, historyhome.co.uk, accessed 2008-11-21.
4. Lee, Sidney, ed. (1894). "Napier, Charles James" . Dictionary of National Biography. 40. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
5. "Aristocrats" (1999), IMDb.com, accessed 2008-11-21.
6. "Skiing Heritage Journal". September 1993.

External links

• "Introduction Bunbury Papers" (PDF). - letters written to Sarah Lennox/Bunbury
• Lt.-Gen. Sir George Thomas Napier, thePeerage.com, accessed 2008-11-21.

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Lady Sarah Lennox
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/4/21


Lady Sarah Lennox
Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1765
Born: 14 February 1745
Died: August 1826 (aged 81)
Spouse(s): Sir Charles Bunbury, 6th Baronet ​(m. 1762; div. 1776)​; Hon. George Napier ​(m. 1781; died 1804)​
Children: Louisa Bunbury; Sir Charles James Napier; Emily Napier; Sir George Thomas Napier; Sir William Francis Patrick Napier; Richard Napier; Henry Edward Napier; Caroline Napier; Cecilia Napier
Parent(s): Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond; Sarah Cadogan

Lady Sarah Lennox (14 February 1745 – August 1826) was the most notorious of the famous Lennox sisters, daughters of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond.

Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, 2nd Duke of Lennox, 2nd Duke of Aubigny, KG, KB, PC, FRS (18 May 1701 – 8 August 1750) of Goodwood House near Chichester in Sussex, was a British nobleman and politician. He was the son of Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, 1st Duke of Lennox, the youngest of the seven illegitimate sons of King Charles II. He was the most important of the early patrons of the game of cricket and did much to help its evolution from village cricket to first-class cricket.

Lennox was styled Earl of March from his birth in 1701 as heir to his father's dukedom. He also inherited his father's love of sports, particularly cricket. He had a serious accident at the age of 12 when he was thrown from a horse during a hunt, but he recovered and it did not deter him from horsemanship.

March entered into an arranged marriage in December 1719 when he was still only 18 and his bride, Hon. Sarah Cadogan, was just 13, in order to use Sarah's large dowry to pay his considerable debts. They were married at The Hague.

In 1722, March became Member of Parliament for Chichester as first member with Sir Thomas Miller as his second. He gave up his seat after his father died in May 1723 and he succeeded to the title of 2nd Duke of Richmond. A feature of Richmond's career was the support he received from his wife, Sarah [Cadogan], her interest being evident in surviving letters. Their marriage was a great success, especially by Georgian standards.

Their grandson who became the 4th Duke is known to cricket history as the Hon. Col. Charles Lennox, a noted amateur batsman of the late 18th century who was one of Thomas Lord's main guarantors when he established his new ground in Marylebone.

-- Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond

Early life

After the deaths of both her parents when she was only five years old, Lady Sarah was brought up by her elder sister Emily in Ireland. Lady Sarah returned to London and the home of her sister Lady Caroline Fox when she was thirteen. Having been a favourite of King George II since her childhood, she was invited to appear at court and there caught the eye of George, Prince of Wales (the future King George III), whom she had met as a child.[1]

When she was presented at court again at the age of fifteen, George III was taken with her. Lady Sarah's family encouraged a relationship between her and George III.[2] Lady Sarah had also developed feelings for Lord Newbattle, grandson of William Kerr, 3rd Marquess of Lothian. Although her family were able to persuade her to break with Newbattle, the royal match was scotched by the King's advisors, particularly John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. It was not normal at the time for monarchs to have non-Royal spouses. Lady Sarah was asked by King George III to be one of the ten bridesmaids at his wedding to Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.[3]

Family and marriages

Lady Sarah refused a proposal of marriage from James Hay, 15th Earl of Erroll, before marrying Charles Bunbury, eldest son of Reverend Sir William Bunbury, 5th Baronet, on 2 June 1762 at Holland House Chapel, Kensington, London. He succeeded his father as sixth Baronet in 1764.

Lady Sarah had an affair with Lord William Gordon, the second son of the Duke of Gordon, and gave birth to his illegitimate daughter in 1768. The child was not immediately disclaimed by Sir Charles, and received the name Louisa Bunbury. Nevertheless, Lady Sarah and Lord William eloped shortly afterwards, in February 1769, taking the infant with them. Lord William soon abandoned her. Sir Charles refused to take her back, and Lady Sarah returned to her brother's house with her child, while her husband introduced into Parliament a motion for a divorce on grounds of adultery, citing her elopement. Lady Sarah resisted the motion, and it was not until 14 May 1776 that the decree of divorce was issued.

Lady Sarah married an army officer, Hon. George Napier, on 27 August 1781 and had eight children:

• General Sir Charles James Napier (10 August 1782 – 29 August 1853); married Elizabeth Oakeley in April 1827. He remarried Frances Philipp in 1835.
• Emily Louisa Augusta Napier (11 July 1783 – 18 March 1863); married Lt.-Gen. Sir Henry Bunbury, 7th Baronet (nephew of her mother's first husband) on 22 September 1830
• Lieutenant-General Sir George Thomas Napier (30 June 1784 – 8 September 1855); married Margaret Craig on 22 October 1812. They had five children. He married Frances Blencowe in 1839.
• Lieutenant-General Sir William Francis Patrick Napier KCB (17 December 1785 – 12 February 1860); married Caroline Fox (granddaughter of his aunt Lady Caroline Fox) on 14 March 1812. They had five children.
• Richard Napier (1787 – 13 January 1868); married Anna Louisa Stewart, daughter of Sir J. Stewart, in 1817.
• Captain Henry Edward Napier RN (5 March 1789 – 13 October 1853); married Caroline Bennett. They had three children.
• Caroline Napier (1790–1810); died at the age of twenty.
• Cecilia Napier (1791–1808); died at the age of seventeen.

In popular culture

In 1999, a six-part mini-series based on the lives of Sarah Lennox and her sisters aired in the UK. It was called Aristocrats, and Sarah was played by actress Jodhi May.[4]

References

1. "Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces". Art Institute of Chicago. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
2. Napier, Priscilla (1971). The Sword Dance: Lady Sarah Lennox and the Napiers. New York: McGraw-Hill.
3. "Holland House and its history Pages 161-177 Old and New London: Volume 5. Originally published by Cassell, Petter & Galpin, London, 1878". British History Online.
4. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0204082/maindetails[bare URL]
• Ilchester, ed., Countess (1901). The Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, 1745–1826. London: John Murray.
o "Review of The Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, 1745–1826 edited by the Countess of Ilchester and Lord Stavordale". The Quarterly Review. 195: 274–294. January 1902.
• Curtis, Edith R. (1946). Lady Sarah Lennox: An Irrepressible Stuart, 1745–1826. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
• Hall, Thornton (2004). Love Romances of the Aristocracy.
• Napier, Priscilla (1971). The Sword Dance: Lady Sarah Lennox and the Napiers. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Tillyard, Stella (1994). Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa, and Sarah Lennox, 1740–1826. London: Chatto & Windus.

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Francis Beaufort
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/4/21


Sir Francis Beaufort, KCB [Order of the Bath] FRS [Fellow of the Royal Society] FRGS [Royal Geographical Society] FRAS [Royal Astronomical Society] MRIA [Royal Irish Academy]
Beaufort c. 1851
Hydrographer of the Navy
In office: 19 May 1829 – 25 January 1855
Preceded by: Sir Edward Parry
Succeeded by: John Washington
Personal details
Born: 27 May 1774, Navan, County Meath, Ireland
Died: 17 December 1857 (aged 83), Hove, Sussex, England
Resting place: St John's Church Gardens
Spouse(s): Alicia Wilson (1815–1834); Honora Edgeworth (1838–1857)
Children: Francis Lestock Beaufort; Emily Anne Beaufort
Father: Daniel Augustus Beaufort
Relatives: Frances Beaufort (sister); Henrietta Beaufort (sister); Daniel de Beaufort (grandfather)
Occupation: Hydrographer, mariner
Known for: Beaufort cipher, Beaufort scale
Awards: Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (1848)
Military service
Branch: Royal Navy
Service years: 1790–1855
Rank: Rear admiral
Wars: French Revolutionary Wars; Napoleonic Wars

Sir Francis Beaufort KCB FRS FRGS FRAS MRIA (/ˈboʊfət/; 27 May 1774 – 17 December 1857) was an Irish hydrographer, rear admiral of the Royal Navy, and creator of the Beaufort cipher and the Beaufort scale.

Early life

Francis Beaufort was descended from French Protestant Huguenots, who fled the French Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century. His parents moved to Ireland from London. His father, Daniel Augustus Beaufort, was a Protestant clergyman from Navan, County Meath, Ireland, and a member of the learned Royal Irish Academy. His mother Mary was the daughter and co-heiress of William Waller, of Allenstown House. Francis was born in Navan on 27 May 1774.[1] He had an older brother, William Louis Beaufort and three sisters, Frances, Harriet, and Louisa. His father created and published a new map of Ireland in 1792.[2] Francis grew up in Wales and Ireland until age fourteen.[3][4] He left school and went to sea, but never stopped his education. By later in life, he had become sufficiently self-educated to associate with some of the greatest scientists and applied mathematicians of his time, including Mary Somerville, John Herschel, George Biddell Airy, and Charles Babbage.

Francis Beaufort had a lifelong keen awareness of the value of accurate charts for those risking the seas, as he was shipwrecked at the age of fifteen due to a faulty chart. His most significant accomplishments were in nautical charting.

Career

Early naval career

Beginning on a merchant ship of the British East India Company, Beaufort rose to midshipman during the Napoleonic Wars, to lieutenant on 10 May 1796, and commander on 13 November 1800. He served on the fifth rate frigate HMS Aquilon during the Battle of the Glorious First of June off Ushant in Brittany in 1794, when Aquilon rescued the dismasted HMS Defence and exchanged broadsides with the French ship-of-the line, Impétueux.

When serving on HMS Phaeton, Beaufort was badly wounded leading a cutting-out operation off Málaga in 1800; the action resulted in the capture of the 14-gun polacca Calpe. While recovering, during which he received a "paltry" pension of £45 per annum, he helped his brother-in-law, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, to construct a semaphore line [An optical telegraph is a semaphore system using a line of stations, typically towers, for the purpose of conveying textual information by means of visual signals] from Dublin to Galway. He spent two years at this activity, for which he would accept no remuneration.[5]

Command

Beaufort returned to active service and was appointed a captain in the Royal Navy on 30 May 1810. Whereas other wartime officers sought leisurely pursuits, Beaufort spent his leisure time taking depth soundings and bearings, making astronomical observations to determine longitude and latitude, and measuring shorelines. His results were compiled in new charts.

The Admiralty gave Beaufort his first ship command, HMS Woolwich. He sailed her to the East Indies and escorted a convoy of East Indiamen back to Britain. The Admiralty then tasked him with conducting a hydrographic survey of the Rio de la Plata estuary in South America. Experts were very impressed by the survey Beaufort brought back. Notably, Alexander Dalrymple remarked in a note to the Admiralty in March 1808, that "we have few officers (indeed I do not know one) in our Service who have half his professional knowledge and ability, and in zeal and perseverance he cannot be excelled."[6]

Anatolia

After the Woolwich, Beaufort received his first post-captain commission, commanding Frederickstein.[7]

Throughout 1811–1812, Beaufort charted and explored southern Anatolia, a region he referred to as Karamania, locating many classical ruins, including Hadrian's Gate [Hadrian's Gate is a triumphal arch located in Antalya, Turkey, which was built in the name of the Roman emperor Hadrian, who visited the city in the year 130]. An attack on the crew of his boat (at Ayas, near Adana), by Turks interrupted his work and he received a serious bullet wound in the hip. He returned to England and drew up his charts.

In 1817, he published his book Karamania; or a brief description of the South Coast of Asia Minor, and of the Remains of Antiquity.[8]

Hydrographer of the Navy

In 1829, Beaufort was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society,[9] and in the same year, at the age of 55 (retirement age for most administrative contemporaries), Beaufort was appointed as the British Admiralty Hydrographer of the Navy. He served in that post for 26 years, longer than any other Hydrographer. G.S. Ritchie, himself Hydrographer (1966–1971) described this period as the "High Noon" of Admiralty surveying.[10]:189–199 The geographical scope of surveying was greatly increased, both in home waters and overseas. The production of new charts increased from 19 in 1830 to 1230 in 1855.[10]:196

In 1831 a Scientific Branch of the Admiralty was formed, which as well as the Hydrographic Department included the great astronomical observatories at Greenwich, England, and the Cape of Good Hope, Africa, and the Nautical Almanac and Chronometer Offices, and Beaufort was responsible for the administration.[10]:195 Beaufort directed some of the major maritime explorations and experiments of that period. He played a leading role in the search for the explorer, Sir John Franklin, who was lost during his last polar voyage to search for the legendary Northwest Passage.[11]

Beaufort was interested in scientific affairs beyond the confines of navigation. As a council member of the Royal Society, the Royal Observatory, and the Royal Geographical Society (which he helped found), Beaufort used his position and prestige as a top administrator to act as a "middleman" for many scientists of his time. Beaufort represented the geographers, astronomers, oceanographers, geodesists, and meteorologists to that government agency, the Hydrographic Office, which could support their research. In 1849 he assisted in the publication of the Admiralty Manual of Scientific Enquiry, to assist both Navy personnel and general travellers in scientific investigations, ranging from astronomy to ethnography.[12][10]:198

Beaufort trained Robert FitzRoy, who was put in temporary command of the survey ship HMS Beagle after her previous captain committed suicide. When FitzRoy was reappointed as commander for what became the famous second voyage of the Beagle, he requested of Beaufort "that a well-educated and scientific gentleman be sought" as a companion on the voyage.[10]:203 Beaufort's enquiries led to an invitation to Charles Darwin, who later drew on his discoveries in formulating the theory of evolution he presented in his book The Origin of Species. Later, when Beaufort persuaded the Board of Trade to set up a Meterorological Department, Fitzroy became its first Director[10]:192

Using his many connections, including the Royal Society, Beaufort helped to obtain funding for the Antarctic voyage of 1839–1843 by James Clark Ross for extensive measurements of terrestrial magnetism, coordinated with similar measurements in Europe and Asia.[3]:303 (This is comparable to the International Geophysical Year of our time.)

Beaufort promoted the development of reliable tide tables around British shores, publishing the first edition of the Admiralty Tide Tables in 1833.[13][14] This inspired similar research for Europe and North America. Aiding his friend William Whewell, Beaufort gained the support of the Prime Minister, Duke of Wellington, in expanding record-keeping at 200 British Coastguard stations. Beaufort gave enthusiastic support to his friend, Sir George Airy, the Astronomer Royal and noted mathematician, in achieving a historic period of measurements by the Greenwich and Good Hope observatories.

By the time Beaufort retired the Admiralty Chart series was a truly world wide resource with 2,000 charts covering every sea.[15]

Retirement

Beaufort retired from the Royal Navy with the rank of rear admiral on 1 October 1846, at the age of 72. He became "Sir Francis Beaufort" on being appointed KCB (Knight Commander of the Bath) on 29 April 1848, a relatively belated honorific considering the eminence of his position from 1829 onward. In 1840, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.[16]

Personal life

Beaufort's extant correspondence of 200+ letters and journals contained portions written in personal cipher. Beaufort altered the Vigenère cipher, by reversing the cipher alphabet, and the resulting variant is called the Beaufort cipher. The deciphered writings have revealed family and personal problems, including some of a sexual nature. It appears that between 1835 and his marriage to Honora Edgeworth in November 1838, he had incestuous relations with his sister Harriet. His diary entries, in cypher, show that he was tortured by guilt over this.[3]


The Beaufort family tomb in St John's Church Gardens, London

He died on 17 December 1857, at age 83 in Hove, Sussex, England. He is buried in the church gardens of St John at Hackney, London, where his tomb may still be seen. His home in London, No. 51 Manchester Street, Westminster, is marked by an historic blue plaque noting his residency and achievements.[17]

Family

Beaufort married, firstly, Alicia Magdalena Wilson, daughter of Lestock Wilson R.N. under whom he had first served; she died in 1834.[18] Of their children, three daughters and three sons were living in 1859.[19] They included:

• Daniel Augustus Beaufort (1813/4–1898), cleric, married in 1851 Emily Nowell Davis, daughter of Sir John Francis Davis, 1st Baronet.[20][21]

Sir John Francis Davis, 1st Baronet KCB (16 July 1795 – 13 November 1890) was a British diplomat and sinologist who served as second Governor of Hong Kong from 1844 to 1848. Davis was the first President of Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong.

Davis was the eldest son of East India Company director and amateur artist Samuel Davis while his mother was Henrietta Boileau, member of a refugee French noble family who had come to England in the early eighteenth century from Languedoc in the south of France.

Samuel Davis (1760–1819) was an English soldier turned diplomat who later became a director of the East India Company (EIC). He was the father of John Francis Davis, one time Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China and second governor of Hong Kong.

Samuel was born in the West Indies the younger son of soldier John Davis, whose appointment as Commissary general there had been signed by King George II in 1759 and countersigned by William Pitt. After his father died, Davis returned to England with his mother (who was of Welsh descent, née Phillips) and his two sisters. He became a cadet of the EIC under the aegis of director Laurence Sulivan in 1788, and sailed for India aboard the Earl of Oxford, which also brought the artist William Hodges to India, arriving in Madras in early 1780.

In 1783, Warren Hastings, the Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal) assigned Davis "Draftsman and Surveyor" on Samuel Turner's forthcoming mission to Bhutan and Tibet. Unfortunately, the Tibetans (or more probably the Chinese ambans, the de facto authority in Tibet) viewed his "scientific" profession with suspicion and he was forced to remain in Bhutan until Turner and the others returned. Whilst in Bhutan he turned his attention to recording the buildings and landscape of the country in a series of drawings. These were published some 200 years later as Views of Medieval Bhutan: the diary and drawings of Samuel Davis, 1783.

On his return from Bhutan, in around 1784 he became Assistant to the Collector of Bhagalpur and Registrar of its Adalat Court. In Bhagalpur he met lawyer and orientalist William Jones who had recently founded The Asiatic Society of which Davis subsequently became a member. The two became firm friends based on their shared love of mathematics while along with another member of The Asiatic Society, Reuben Burrow, Davis studied astronomical tables obtained by the French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil, French Resident at the Faizabad court of Shuja-ud-Daula who in turn had obtained them from Tiruvallur Brahmins on the Coromandel Coast. The tables showed accurate Indian scientific knowledge of astronomy dating back to the third century BCE. As part of his research, Davis also learned Sanskrit and Hindi. For the next ten years, Jones and Davis carried on a running correspondence on the topic of jyotisha or Hindu astronomy. While in Bhagalpur, Davis also met landscape artist Thomas Daniell and his nephew William whom he encouraged to visit the Himalayas. In 1792 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Davis' next appointment was as Collector of Burdwan, a town in the Bengal Presidency. He then spent 1795–1800 in Benares (now Varanasi), this time as Magistrate of the district and city court. Benares was also home to former ruler of Oudh State, Wazir Ali Khan, who had been forcibly deposed by the British in 1797. In 1799, the British authorities decided to remove Ali Khan further from his former realm and as a result rioting broke out. Davis singlehandly defended his family by shepherding them to the roof of his residence and defending the single access point with a pike. The incident was the subject of a book by his son, John F. Davis, entitled Vizier Ali Khan or The Massacre of Benares, A Chapter in British Indian History published in London in 1871.

During the remainder of his stay in India, Davis held a succession of more senior positions including Superintendent-General of Police and Justice of the Peace at Calcutta, member of the Board of Revenue and Accountant-General of India. He resigned from the civil service in February 1806 and after a stop at St. Helena to engage in his love for painting, arrived back in England in July the same year.

He was elected a director of the EIC in October at the instigation of President of the Board of Control, Henry Dundas and to the latter's disgust, acted independently thereafter until his death in 1819.

"At the time of the renewal of the [company's] Charter in 1814, the Committee of the House of Commons entrusted him [Davis] with the task of drawing up, in their name, the memorable "Fifth Report on the Revenues of Bengal", which remains a monument of his intimate acquaintance with the internal administration of India"

While in Burdwan, Davis married Henrietta Boileau, who was from a refugee French noble family who had come to England in the early eighteenth century from Languedoc in the South of France. She was the first cousin of John Boileau, 1st Baronet of Tacolnestone Hall in Norfolk. The couple went on to have four sons and seven daughters. Their eldest son John Francis Davis, became second Governor of Hong Kong followed by Lestock-Francis and Sullivan, both of whom died in India in 1820 and 1821 respectively. Their daughters were as follows:

• Henrietta-Anne, who married Henry Baynes Ward in 1821.
• Anne, who married Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Dundas Campbell in 1827
• Maria–Jane, who married Lieutenant Colonel John Rivett-Carnac, RN in 1826.[10]
• Elizabeth, who married Sir Henry Willock, KLS.
• Frances, who died in 1828.
• Alicia, who married the Reverend John Lockwood, rector of Kingham in 1832.
• Julia, who in 1839 married John Edwardes Lyall, Advocate-General of Bengal, who died in 1845 of cholera.[/b][/size]

-- Samuel Davis (orientalist), by Wikipedia

In 1813, Davis was appointed writer at the East India Company's factory in Canton (now Guangzhou), China, at the time the centre of trade with China. Having demonstrated the depth of his learning in the Chinese language in his translation of The Three Dedicated Rooms ("San-Yu-Low") in 1815, he was chosen to accompany Lord Amherst on his embassy to Peking in 1816.

On the mission's return Davis returned to his duties at the Canton factory, and was promoted to president in 1832. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society the same year.

Davis was appointed Second Superintendent of British Trade in China alongside Lord Napier in December 1833, superseding William Henry Chicheley Plowden in the latter's absence. After Napier's death in 1834, Davis became Chief Superintendent then resigned his position in January 1835, to be replaced by Sir George Robinson. Davis left Canton aboard the Asia on 12 January.

In 1839, Davis purchased the Regency mansion Holly House, near Henbury, Bristol, where he built an observatory tower built housing a clock installed by Edward John Dent, who would later be responsible for building Big Ben. It remained the Davis family home for seven decades thereafter.

Governor of Hong Kong

Having arrived from Bombay on HMS Spiteful on 7 May 1844, he was appointed governor and commander-in-chief of Hong Kong the next day.:47 During his tenure, Davis was unpopular with Hong Kong residents and British merchants due to the imposition of various taxes, which increased the burden of all citizens, and his abrasive treatment of his subordinates. Davis organised the first Hong Kong Census in 1844, which recorded that there were 23,988 people living in Hong Kong.

In the same year, Davis exhorted China to abandon the prohibition on opium trade, on the basis of its counter productiveness, relating that, in England,

... the system of prohibitions and high duties ... only increased the extent of smuggling, together with crimes of violence, while they diminished the revenue; until it was a length found that the fruitless expense of a large preventive force absorbed much of the amount of duty that could be collected, while prohibited articles were consumed more than ever.

Weekend horse racing began during his tenure, which gradually evolved into a Hong Kong institution. Davis founded the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1847 and he was its first president.

Davis left office on 21 March 1848, ending unrelenting tensions with local British merchants who saw him as a stingy, arrogant and obstinate snob. His early decision to exclude all but government officials from the Executive and Legislative Councils on the basis that "almost every person possessed of Capital, who is not connected with Government Employment, is employed in the Opium trade" could not have made co-operation any easier. He departed the colony on 30 March via the P&O steamer Pekin. He returned to England, where he rejoined Emily, who had stayed there throughout his governorship.

Personal life

Davis married Emily, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Humfrays of the Bengal Engineers in 1822. They had one son and six daughters:[2]

• Sulivan (13 January 1827 – 1862); died in Bengal.
• Henrietta Anne
• Emily Nowell; married Reverend D. A. Beaufort in 1851, eldest son of Francis Beaufort, the inventor of the eponymous wind scale.
• Julia Sullivan; married Robert Cann Lippincott in 1854
• Helen Marian (died 31 January 1859)
• Florence
• Eliza (died 20 October 1855)

In 1867, a year after the death of his wife Emily, Davis married Lucy Ellen, eldest daughter of Reverend T. J. Locke, vicar of Exmouth, in 1867. A son, Francis Boileau, was born in 1871.

He was a created a baronet on 9 July 1845 and appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) on 12 June 1854. Having retired from government, Davis engaged in literary pursuits. In 1876, he became a Doctor of Civil Law of the University of Oxford after a donation of £1,666 in three percent consol bonds to endow a scholarship in his name for the encouragement of the study of Chinese.

-- John Francis Davis, by Wikipedia

• Francis Lestock Beaufort (1815–1879), served in the Bengal civil service, from 1837 to 1876.[22]

Francis Lestock Beaufort (1815–1879), was a son of Sir Francis Beaufort and the author of the Digest of I Criminal Law Procedure in Bengal (1850).

-- Francis Lestock Beaufort, by Wikipedia

• Sophia Mary Bonne married the Rev. William Palmer in 1838.[23]

PALMER, Francis Beaufort was born on July 7, 1845. Son of Reverend William Palmer (one of the originators of the Oxford Movement) and Sophia, daughter of Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, Knight Commander of the Bath, Fellow of the Royal Society.

-- Francis Beaufort Palmer, by prabook.com

Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer, youngest son

Ancestors

1. Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer (Mason)
2. Sir Francis V. Beaufort Palmer 1845 - ante 1941
3. Rev. William Palmer (Beaufort) 1803 - post 1881

-- Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer, youngest son, by genealogy.org

• Emily Anne Smythe (1826–1887) was a hero of Bulgaria, a writer, illustrator and advocate of change in the training of nurses.[24]

Lady Strangford, Emily Ann Smythe or Emily Anne Beaufort (1826 – 24 March 1887) was a British illustrator, writer and nurse. There are streets named after her and permanent museum exhibits about her in Bulgaria. She established hospitals and mills to assist the Bulgarians following the April Uprising in 1876 that preceded the re-establishment of Bulgaria. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross medal by Queen Victoria for establishing another hospital in Cairo....

In 1858 she set out on a journey with her elder sister to Egypt. The book that she wrote, Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines was dedicated to her sister, and describes the places she visited in Syria, Lebanon, Asia Minor and Egypt with beautiful illustrations based on her sketches from her journey. The volume was so popular that it was re-issued several times.

Of the ancient oasis city, Palmyra she writes:

"I was once asked whether Palmyra was "not a broken-down old thing in a style of slovenly decadence?" It is true its style is neither pure nor severe: nothing over which the lavish hand of hasty and Imperial Rome has passed is ever so: but, Tadmor [Palmyra] is free from all the vulgarity of real decadence; it is so entirely irregular as to be sometimes fantastic; the designs are overflowing with richness and fancy, but it is never heavy: it is free, independent, bizarre, but never ungraceful; grand indeed, though hardly sublime, it is almost always bewitchingly beautiful." (pp. 239–40)


Color lithograph panorama of Palmyra, Syria by Nicholas Hanhart after Emily Anne Beaufort Smythe, 1862.


Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines by Beaufort

Strangford received a critical review of her 1861 book Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines by Percy Smythe, later Viscount Strangford. Unusually, this led to them meeting and their marriage.

Percy Ellen Algernon Frederick William Sydney Smythe, 8th Viscount Strangford (26 November 1825 – 9 January 1869) was a British nobleman and man of letters.

He was born in St Petersburg, Russia, the son of the 6th Viscount Strangford, the British Ambassador, Ottoman Turkey, Sweden, and Portugal. During all his earlier years Percy Smythe was nearly blind, in consequence, it was believed, of his mother having suffered very great hardships on a journey up the Baltic Sea in wintry weather shortly before his birth.

His education began at Harrow School, whence he went to Merton College, Oxford. He excelled as a linguist, and was nominated by the vice-chancellor of Oxford in 1845 a student-attache at Constantinople.

While at Constantinople, where he served under Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, Smythe gained a mastery not only of Turkish and its dialects, but of almost every form of modern Greek, from the language of the literati of Athens to the least Hellenized Romaic. He had already a large knowledge both of Persian and Arabic before going east, but until his duties led him to study the past, present and future of the sultan's empire he had given no attention to the tongues which he well described as those of the international rabble in and around the Balkan peninsula.

On succeeding his brother as Viscount Strangford in 1857 he continued to live in Constantinople, immersed in cultural studies. At length, however, he returned to England and wrote a good deal, sometimes in the Saturday Review, sometimes in the Quarterly Review, and much in the Pall Mall Gazette. A rather severe review in the first of these organs of the Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines of Emily Anne Beaufort (1826–1887) led to a result not very usual, the marriage of the reviewer and the author.

One of the most interesting papers Lord Strangford ever wrote was the last chapter in his wife's book on the Eastern Shores of the Adriatic. That chapter was entitled "Chaos," and was the first of his writings which made him widely known amongst careful students of foreign politics. From that time forward everything that he wrote was watched with intense interest, and even when it was anonymous there was not the slightest difficulty in recognising his style, for it was unlike any other.

Percy Smythe was president of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1861–64 and 1867–69.

-- Percy Smythe, 8th Viscount Strangford, by Wikipedia

In 1859 and 1860 she was travelling in Smyrna, Rhodes, Mersin, Tripoli, Beirut, Baalbek, Athens, Attica, the Pentelicus mountains, Constantinople and Belgrade. During the whole journey she kept a journal recording all that she experienced.

When Strangford published her second book Eastern Shores of the Adriatic in 1864 it had a final anonymous chapter title "Chaos," which is attributed to her husband, Percy Smythe, 8th Viscount Strangford. This work is considered important in his writing career. Her husband was twice president of the Royal Asiatic Society in the 1860s. He died in 1869 and as they had no children his titles became extinct.

Following her husband's death Strangford volunteered to serve as a nurse in (probably) University College Hospital in London. In 1874 her studies led her to advocate a change in the way that nurses were trained. She published Hospital Training for Ladies: an Appeal to the Hospital Boards in England. She advocated that nurses should be allowed to train and work part-time. She believed that the training to be a nurse would benefit many women in their role within a family. This idea did not gain official backing as the major objective at the time was to establish nursing as a profession and not as a part-time activity for amateurs.

The war crimes that were taking place in Bulgaria in 1876 gained her attention. Christians had suffered massacres by the Ottomans and Strangford initially joined one committee and then she set up her own. Thousands of pounds were raised by the Bulgarian Peasants Relief Fund and she went to Bulgaria in 1876 with Robert Jasper More, eight doctors and eight nurses. Both she and More wrote letters to The Times to report and gather more funds. Strangford believed that the Bulgarians and not the Serbs would be important as the Ottoman Empire shrank. These were views that she had shared with her husband. Strangford found the Bulgarians to just need the tools for their own self-improvement and she was impressed that their first priority was a school. She built a hospital at Batak and eventually other hospitals were built at Radilovo, Panagiurishte, Perushtitsa, Petrich and at Karlovo. She also provided subsidies to a flour mill and a number of saw mills.

In 1883 Queen Victoria awarded her the Royal Red Cross for creating, with Dr Herbert Sieveking the Victoria Hospital, Cairo. The hospital continued in operation thanks to a grant of £2,000 per year from the Egyptian government taking in local students for training and offering first class accommodation on a private basis.

Strangford edited A Selection from the Writings of Viscount Strangford on Political, Geographical and Social Subjects which she published in 1869 and Original Letters and Papers upon Philology and Kindred Subjects in 1878. She also published her brother-in-law's novel Angela Pisani after his death and she helped found the Women's Emigration Society with Caroline Blanchard which arranged for British women to find jobs abroad.

In her later years, Lady Strangford had a London home at 3 Upper Brook Street, Mayfair. She died on board SS Lusitania of a stroke in 1887. She was travelling through the Mediterranean en route for Port Said where she was to create a hospital for seamen. Her body was returned to London and buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.[2]

-- Lady Strangford, by Wikipedia

Beaufort married again in 1838, to Honora Edgeworth, the daughter of his brother-in-law Richard Lovell Edgeworth and his second wife. (Francis' sister Frances Beaufort had married Edgeworth as his fourth wife years earlier in the 1810s.)

Legacy

Wind force scale

Main article: Beaufort scale

During these early years of command, Beaufort developed the first versions of his Wind Force Scale and Weather Notation coding, which he was to use in his journals for the remainder of his life. From the circle representing a weather station, a staff (rather like the stem of a note in musical notation) extends, with one or more half or whole barbs. For example, a stave with 3½ barbs represents Beaufort seven on the scale, decoded as 32–38 mph, or a "moderate Gale".

Geographical legacy

Beaufort, like other patrons of exploration, has had his name given to many geographical places. Among these:

• Beaufort Sea (arm of Arctic Ocean)
• Beaufort Island, Antarctic

Cryptographic legacy

Beaufort created the Beaufort cipher. It is a substitution cipher similar to the Vigenère cipher.

References

1. Mollan, R Charles (2002). Irish Innovators. Royal Irish Academy. p. 49. ISBN 978-1-874045-88-5.
2. "A new map of Ireland : civil and ecclesiastical". Library of Congress. Retrieved 7 July 2017.
3. Alfred Friendly, Beaufort of the Admiralty, Hutchinson, 1977
4. Image:BeaufortTomb.JPG
5. Marshall, John (1828). Royal naval biography; or, Memoirs of the services of all the flag-officers, superannuated Rear-Admirals, Retired Captains, Post Captains and Commanders whose names appeared on the Admiralty list of Sea-Officers of the year 1823, or who have since been promoted. Supplement Part II. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Geen. pp. 82–94.
6. John de Courcy Ireland. "Francis Beaufort (Wind Scale)". On-line Journal of Research on Irish Maritime History. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
7. Courtenay, Nicholas (2002). "8". Gale Force 10 – The life and legacy of Admiral Beaufort. Review.
8. Beaufort, Francis (1817). Karamania, Or A Brief Description Of The South Coast Of Asia Minor. London: R. Hunter.
9. Hume, Robert (17 March 2014). "Why wind guru Beaufort had to hide a stormy personal life". Irish Examiner. Retrieved 16 March 2016.
10. Ritchie, G.S. (1967). The Admiralty Chart. London: Hollis & Carter.
11. Ross, W.Gillies (2004). "The Admiralty and the Franklin search". The Polar Record. 40 (4): 289–301. doi:10.1017/S003224740400378X.
12. John Frederick William Herschel (1849). A Manual of Scientific Enquiry: Prepared for the Use of Her Majesty's Navy : and Adapted for Travellers in General. J. Murray.
13. Doodson, Arthur Thomas; Warburg, Harold Dreyer (1941). Admiralty Manual of Tides. H.M. Stationery Office. pp. 137–138. ISBN 978-0-7077-2124-8.
14. Warburg, H.D. (1919). "The Admiralty Tide Tables and North Sea Tidal Predictions". The Geographical Journal. 63 (5): 308–326. JSTOR 1779472.
15. Morris, Roger (November 1996). "Two hundred years of Admiralty charts and surveys". The Mariner's Mirror. 82 (4): 426. doi:10.1080/00253359.1996.10656616.
16. "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
17. "Francis Beaufort Blue Plaque". openplaques.org. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
18. Rodger, N. A. M. "Beaufort, Sir Francis". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1857. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
19. Royal Society (1857). Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Taylor & Francis. p. 526.
20. "Beaufort, Daniel Augustus (BFRT831DA)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
21. Lodge's Peerage and Baronetage (knightage & Companionage) of the British Empire. Hurst & Blackett. 1861. p. 685.
22. "Beaufort, Francis Lestock (BFRT831FL)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
23. Walford, Edward (1869). The County Families of the United Kingdom Or, Royal Manual of the Titled and Untitled Aristocracy of Great Britain and Ireland. R. Hardwicke. p. 752.
24. Baigent, Elizabeth. "Smythe, Emily Anne, Viscountess Strangford (bap. 1826, d. 1887)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/25963. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)

Further reading

• Webb, Alfred (1878). "Beaufort, Sir Francis" . A Compendium of Irish Biography. Dublin: M. H. Gill & son.
• Alfred Friendly. Beaufort of the Admiralty. Random House, New York, 1973.
• Nicholas Courtney. "Gale Force 10, the life and legacy of Admiral Beaufort". London: Review. 2002.
• Huler, Scott (2004). Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry. Crown. ISBN 1-4000-4884-2.
• Laughton, John Knox (1885). "Beaufort, Francis" . In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. 04. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Laughton, John Knox; Rodger, Nicholas (2008) [2004]. "Beaufort, Francis". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1857. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

External links

• Works by Francis Beaufort at Open Library
• Works by or about Francis Beaufort at Internet Archive
• Works by or about Francis Beaufort in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

[admin]

Part 2 of 2

William Napier, 9th Lord Napier
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/4/21


The Lord Napier
Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China
In office: 31 December 1833 – 11 October 1834
Preceded by: Position created
Succeeded by: John Francis Davis
Personal details
Born: 13 October 1786, Kinsale, Ireland
Died: 11 October 1834, Macau
Spouse(s): Elizabeth Cochrane-Johnstone
Profession: Naval officer, trade envoy

William John Napier, 9th Lord Napier, Baron Napier (Chinese: 律勞卑) FRSE (13 October 1786 – 11 October 1834) was a British Royal Navy officer and trade envoy in China.

Early life

Napier was born in Kinsale, Ireland, on 13 October 1786. He was the son of Francis Napier, 8th Lord Napier (1758–1823) and the father of Francis Napier, 10th Lord Napier and 1st Baron Ettrick (1819–1898).

He enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1803 and served -- with distinction -- as a midshipman on HMS Defiance at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805). He later served as lieutenant under Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald.

In 1818 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Sir David Brewster, Sir George Steuart Mackenzie, and John Playfair.[2]

A peer of Scotland, Lord Napier was an elected Scottish representative in the House of Lords from 1824 to 1832. In December 1833, upon the ending of British East India Company's monopoly on trade in the Far East, he was appointed by Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston, a family friend of Napier, as the first Chief Superintendent of Trade at Canton (now Guangzhou), in China. The Second and Third Superintendents were John Francis Davis and Sir George Best Robinson, respectively. He arrived at Macau on 15 July 1834 on board the East India Company frigate Andromanche, and reached Canton ten days later, with the mission of expanding British trade into inner China. Lacking the necessary diplomatic and commercial experience, he was not successful in achieving the objective.

Having failed to secure a meeting with Lu Kun, the Governor-general of the Liangguang, Napier's frustration in failing to break an intractable trade deadlock and secure the rights of British traders led to his favoring a military solution. He sent the frigates Andromache and Imogene to Whampoa on 11 September, defying an edict issued by Lu Kun, in a 'casualty-less' skirmish of cannon fire as the British warships breached defences at the Bocca Tigris. After a prolonged stalemate, Lord Napier, sapped by typhus, was forced to retire to Macau in September 1834, where he died of the fever on 11 October. Originally buried in Macau, he was later exhumed for reburial at Ettrick in Scotland.

Napier was the first British representative to suggest seizing Hong Kong. In a dispatch to Lord Palmerston on 14 August 1834, he suggested a commercial treaty, backed by an armed force, be done to secure the rights and interests of European merchants in China. He recommended that a small British force "should take possession of the Island of Hongkong, in the eastern entrance of the Canton River, which is admirably adapted for every purpose".

Family

Lord Napier married Elizabeth Cochrane-Johnstone (c. 1795–1883), daughter of Scottish adventurer Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone, in 1816; they had two sons and six daughters. His eldest son, Francis Napier, also entered diplomatic service and was promoted by Palmerston for the rest of his life.

Honours

Following his death, the British Government placed a memorial to him before the Macao Customs Office. After being lost for a short time, it was moved to the Hong Kong Cemetery, and then to the Hong Kong Museum of History, where it now rests.

Notes

1. Laughton, J. K.. "Napier, William John, ninth Lord Napier of Merchistoun (1786–1834)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004 ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/19773.
2. Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X.
3. Hanes & Sanello 2004, p. 27.
4. Lydia He. LIU; Lydia He Liu (30 June 2009). The Clash of Empires: the invention of China in modern world making. Harvard University Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-674-04029-8.
5. Eitel 1895, p. 56
6. "Family of William John NAPIER, 9th Lord NAPIER and Elizabeth COCHRANE-JOHNSTONE".

Further reading

• Eitel, E. J. (1895). Europe in China: The History of Hongkong from the Beginning to the Year 1882. London: Luzac & Company.
• Hanes, W. Travis; Sanello, Frank (2004). Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another. Sourcebooks. ISBN 9781402229695.
• Hoe, Susanna; Roebuck, Derek (1999). The Taking of Hong Kong: Charles and Clara Elliot in China Waters. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. ISBN 0-7007-1145-7.
• Melancon, Glenn. "Peaceful Intentions: The First British Trade Commission in China, 1833-5,” Historical Research 73 (2000) password required.
• Morse, Hosea Ballou. International Relations of the Chinese Empire: The Period of Conflict: 1834-1860. (1910) online pp 118-144
• Napier, Priscilla (1995). Barbarian Eye: Lord Napier in China, 1834, the Prelude to Hong Kong. London: Brassey's. ISBN 9781857531169.
• Welsh, Frank; Rao, Maya (1996). A Borrowed Place: The History of Hong Kong. ISBN 1-56836-134-3.

External links

• The Napier Affair (1834)
• Another description of the Napier Affair

******************

Francis Napier, 10th Lord Napier
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/4/21


The Right Honourable The Lord Napier, KT [Order of the Thistle] PC [Privy Council of the UK]
Portrait of Francis Napier, 10th Lord Napier in 1866
Acting Viceroy of India
In office: 24 February 1872 – 3 May 1872
Monarch: Queen Victoria
Preceded by: Sir John Strachey, As Acting Viceroy
Succeeded by: The Lord Northbrook
Governor of Madras Presidency
In office: 27 March 1866 – 19 February 1872
Preceded by: Sir William Thomas Denison
Succeeded by: Alexander John Arbuthnot, As Acting Governor
Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Russia
In office: 1861–1864
Preceded by: John Crampton
Succeeded by: Andrew Buchanan
Personal details
Born: 15 September 1819, Thirlestane Castle, Selkirkshire, United Kingdom

Thirlestane Castle.
Died: 19 December 1898 (aged 79), Florence, Kingdom of Italy
Nationality: British
Spouse(s): Anne Jane Charlotte Manners
Alma mater: Trinity College, Cambridge

Francis Napier, 10th Lord Napier and 1st Baron Ettrick, KT, PC (15 September 1819 – 19 December 1898) was a Scottish polyglot, diplomat and colonial administrator. He served as the British Minister to the United States from 1857 to 1859, Netherlands from 1859 to 1860, Russia from 1861 to 1864, Prussia from 1864 to 1866 and as the Governor of Madras from 1866 to 1872. He also acted as the Viceroy of India from February to May 1872.

Francis Napier was born on 15 September 1819 to William John Napier and had his early education through private tutors. He joined the Trinity College, Cambridge in 1835 but did not complete his graduation. Instead, he mastered foreign languages and served as a diplomat in foreign missions. In 1866, he was appointed Governor of Madras and served from 1866 to 1872. On the assassination of the Earl of Mayo, the then Viceroy of India in February 1872, Napier was appointed to act temporarily as the Viceroy of India and served from February to May 1872. Napier returned to the United Kingdom in July 1872 and in his later life, chaired the Napier Commission. Napier died at Florence, Italy on 18 December 1898 at the age of 79.

Napier was made a Knight of the Thistle in 1864. In 1872, he was created Baron Ettrick in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in recognition of his services in India.

Early life and education

Francis Napier was born on 15 September 1819 to William John Napier, the 9th Lord Napier of Merchistoun and his wife, Elizabeth Cochrane-Johnstone at Thirlestane Castle in Selkirkshire. He was the eldest son of the couple.

Napier had his early education in private and was schooled at Saxe-Meiningen. He joined Trinity College, Cambridge in 1835 but did not complete his graduation. However, he acquired a knowledge of a few foreign languages under the tutorship of one Rev. Walter Patterson. Napier became the 10th Lord Merchistoun on the death of his father William John Napier on 11 October 1834.

Diplomatic career

Due to his fluency in multiple languages, Napier's lack of educational qualifications was overlooked and he was appointed to the British embassy at Vienna and later, Constantinople, where he served as an attache. In 1848, Napier was appointed Secretary of the British delegation at Naples. He served as the Acting Ambassador for a period of eighteen months in Naples, when Italy was embroiled in the Sicilian insurrection.

After his experience in Naples, he found time to publish a book assessing contemporary painters in Naples.[1] An aristocratic haughtiness regarding the local populace infuses his writing, dismissing the skills of more than one artist, and in reactionary fashion, the revolutionary instincts of the masses. In the preface, he writes:

It was the fortune of the author to hold a diplomatic employment at the Court of Naples, during a period in which the appropriate pastimes of that pleasant city were discarded for the illusions and regrets of political change. These transactions, of which the melancholy issue is notorious, were of a nature to engross and often to darken the thoughts of one, who had an intimate knowledge and a foreboding view of the revolutionary drama; the resources of society were limited by the suspicions and passions which altered and envenomed the conversation even of cultivated men; and the author was induced, alike by necessity and taste, to expend his relaxation and recover his serenity in the study of the local Arts.

— Notes on Modern Painting at Naples, 1850

Napier's handling of affairs as acting ambassador in Naples impressed the then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Palmerston. He was posted to the British embassy at St Petersburg, where he became a close confidante of Tsar Alexander II. After serving short, satisfactory terms at the British embassies at St Petersburg and Constantinople, Napier was appointed envoy extraordinaire and minister plenipotentiary to the United States and served from 1857 to 1859. Napier's tenure in Washington was soon mired in controversy. The abolitionist Charles Sumner and elements of the Northern press accused the British minister of being a pro-slavery partisan. More damaging still in the eyes of the British government was the claim that he had taken upon himself to declare in conversations that Britain recognized the Monroe Doctrine, when all the British governments till then had repudiated it. Critics at the Foreign Office accused him of "giving up everything the United States can wish for, even before they ask it", which for them explained Napier's immense popularity with Washington's influential residents. He was recalled and given the less sensitive post of minister to the Netherlands.[2] Napier served there from 1859 to 1861 and in Prussia from 1864 to 1866. He was then appointed Governor of Madras in 1866 and served from 27 March 1866 to 19 February 1872.

Governor of Madras


Napier Bridge in Chennai

As soon as Napier took office as the Governor of Madras, he was faced with a severe famine in Ganjam District. He took the services of Florence Nightingale whom he had known in Constantinople. Napier undertook many major irrigation schemes during his tenure. The Pennar Dam was completed during his tenure and two other irrigation works, the Rushikulya Dam in Ganjam and the Mullaperiyar Dam were conceived during his tenure.

Despite being at odds with different viceroys over financial issues throughout his tenure, Napier was able to resolve disputes in an amicable manner due to the friendly relations he had with Sir John Lawrence and well as his successor, Richard Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo. When the Earl of Mayo was assassinated in the Andamans on 8 February 1872, Napier was designated to act as the Viceroy of India and he served for a short time before being relieved by Lord Northbrook. For his creditable performance as Governor of Madras, Napier was created Baron Ettrick of Ettrick in the peerage of the United Kingdom.[3]

In 1869, Napier constructed the Napier Bridge across the Coovum River in Chennai.[4] The Napier Park in Chennai[5] and the Napier Museum in Trivandrum, Travancore were set up in his memory. Between 1866 and 1872,[6] he had partially restored the Thirumalai Nayakkar Mahal as well, which was earlier demolished considerably by Grandson of King Thirumalai Nayak.

In addition there is a surgical ward in Stanley Medical College Hospital in Chennai, named in his honor. The ward was originally built with the help of donations by the Governor Napier.

Later life and death

At the end of his term as acting Viceroy of India, Napier returned to the United Kingdom and acted as the President of the Social Science Association during its meetings at Plymouth and Glasgow in October 1874.[7] During this time, Napier also served in the London School Board.[7]

Lord Napier was the chairman of the Napier Commission[7](the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Condition of Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands) which was appointed in 1883 and reported in 1884.

Napier died in Florence, Italy on 19 December 1898 at the age of 79.[7]

Honours

Napier was appointed to Privy Council in 1861 and made a Knight of the Thistle in 1864.

Family

Napier married Anne Jane Charlotte (1824–1911) on 2 September 1845. The couple had four sons.[8]

• William Napier, 11th Lord Napier (1846–1913)
• John Scott (1848–1928)
• R. N. Basil (1850–1874)
• Mark Francis (1852–1919)

Portrait

The New York Times gives a short physical description of Napier on his appointment as Viceroy of India.
Lord Napier is sixty-two years old, considerably above middle size, strong, healthy, with calm, handsome face, gray hair and whiskers, an early riser, very often a late goer to bed, gifted with inexhaustible energy, tact common sense and acuteness of judgement.[9]

References

1. Napier, Lord Francis (1855). Notes on Modern Painting at Naples.. West Strand, London: John W. Parker and Son. pp. I.
2. Brian Jenkins, Lord Lyons, A Diplomat in An Age of Nationalism and War, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014, pp. 85–89.
3. "GREAT BRITAIN.; The American Squadron Protest of English Catholics Against Italy's Coorse to the Pope-Governor-General of India" (PDF). The New York Times. London. 17 July 1872.
4. "Special lighting on Napier Bridge". The Hindu. Chennai. 29 July 2010.
5. Illustrated guide to the South Indian Railway: including the Mayavaram-Mutupet, and Peralam-Karaikkal railways. Higginbotham's. 1900. pp. 18.
6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 22 April 2012. Retrieved 26 July 2013.
7. "BARON NAPIER IS DEAD.; He Was at One Time British Minister to This Country" (PDF). The New York Times. 19 December 1898.
8. "The Royal Household in Scotland". Burke's Landed Gentry of Scotland. Burke's Peerage. p. 1104.
9. "LORD NAPIER.; The Next Ruler for the Eastern Empire of Britain His Record What May be Expected of Him" (PDF). The New York Times. 17 February 1872.

**********************

Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer, youngest son
by genealogy.org
Accessed: 7/3/21

Ancestors

1. Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer (Mason)
2. Sir Francis V. Beaufort Palmer 1845 - ante 1941
4. Rev. William Palmer (Beaufort) 1803 - post 1881
5. F/? Beaufort (Palmer) + ante 1881

Spouses

1. 23rd Jul 1929 Jessie (Sylvia) Mason (Beaufort-Palmer)

**************************

Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer
by billiongraves.com
Accessed: 7/3/21

Died: 24 Sep 1984
Cemetery: Hove Cemetery (South), Old Shoreham Road, Hove, Brighton and Hove, England, United Kingdom

***********************

William Palmer (theologian)
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/5/21

The Reverend William Palmer
Born: William Patrick Palmer, 14 February 1803
Died: October 1885 (aged 81–82), London, England
Spouse(s): Sophia Bonne ​(m. 1839; died 1872)​
Ecclesiastical career
Religion: Christianity (Anglican)
Church: Church of England
Academic background
Alma mater: Trinity College, Dublin; Worcester College, Oxford
Influences: Charles Lloyd[1]
Academic work
Discipline: Theology
School or tradition: High-church Anglicanism[2]
Institutions: Worcester College, Oxford[3]

William Patrick Palmer (1803–1885), who called himself Sir William Palmer, 9th Baronet, from 1865 (although his claim to the title was never acknowledged), was an Anglican theologian and liturgical scholar of the 19th century.

Life

Born 14 February 1803,[4] Palmer graduated from Worcester College, Oxford. He was an early supporter and influence in the Oxford Movement, but was superseded by John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey. Palmer initially supported the Tracts for the Times, but as opposition to the Oxford Movement grew, he withdrew his support, prompting a cooling in his friendship with Newman and a slow decline in his involvement with the movement.[2] Palmer died in October 1885 in London.[2]

Works

Palmer was author of the Origines Liturgicæ and Treatise on the Church of Christ (1838).[2] The latter formulated the notion, called the "Branch Theory" that, provided that both the apostolic succession, and the Faith of the Apostles are kept intact, then there the Church exists, albeit in one of its branches. This was applied to the Anglican Church.

References

Footnotes

1. Andrews 2015, p. 23.
2. Nockles 2004.
3. Douglas 2012, p. 560; Lebreux 1998, p. 7.
4. Nockles 2004; Rigg 1895, pp. 168–169.

Bibliography

• Andrews, Robert M. (2015). Lay Activism and the High Church Movement of the Late Eighteenth Century: The Life and Thought of William Stevens, 1732–1807. Brill's Series in Church History. 70. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004293793. ISBN 978-90-04-29379-3. ISSN 1572-4107.
• Douglas, Brian (2012). A Companion to Anglican Eucharistic Theology. Volume 1: The Reformation to the 19th Century. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004221321. ISBN 978-90-04-21930-4.
• Lebreux, Marie-Pascale (1998). William Palmer of Magdalen College: An Ecclesiastical Don Quixote (MA thesis). Montreal: McGill University. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
• Nockles, Peter B. (2004). "Palmer, William Patrick (1803–1885)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/21225.
• Rigg, James McMullen (1895). "Palmer, William (1803–1885)" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. 43. New York: Macmillan and Co. pp. 168–170.

External links

• Works by or about William Palmer in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

***********************

Francis Beaufort Palmer
by prabook.com
Accessed: 7/5/21

Francis Beaufort PALMER

Background

PALMER, Francis Beaufort was born on July 7, 1845. Son of Reverend William Palmer (one of the originators of the Oxford Movement) ...

The Oxford Movement was a movement of High Church members of the Church of England which eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original devotees were mostly associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of some older Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy and theology. They thought of Anglicanism as one of three branches of the "one holy, catholic, and apostolic" Christian church. By the 1840s many participants decided that the Anglican Church lacked grace, and converted to Roman Catholicism.

The movement's philosophy was known as Tractarianism after its series of publications, the Tracts for the Times, published from 1833 to 1841. Tractarians were also disparagingly referred to as "Newmanites" (before 1845) and "Puseyites" (after 1845) after two prominent Tractarians, John Henry Newman and Edward Bouverie Pusey...

Tractarians argued for the inclusion of traditional aspects of liturgy from medieval religious practice, as they believed the church had become too "plain"...

[T]he Oxford Movement was also criticised for being both secretive and collusive....

It incorporated ideas and practices related to the practice of liturgy and ceremony to incorporate more powerful emotional symbolism in the church... the Eucharist gradually became more central to worship, vestments became common, and numerous Roman Catholic practices were re-introduced into worship....

One of the results was the establishment of the Christian Social Union, of which a number of bishops were members, where issues such as the just wage, the system of property renting, infant mortality and industrial conditions were debated...

Concerns that Tractarianism was a disguised Roman Catholic movement were not unfounded; Newman believed that the Roman and Anglican churches were wholly compatible. He was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845 and was ordained a priest of the Church the same year. He later became a cardinal (but not a bishop)...

Others associated with Tractarianism.

• Lord Salisbury

-- Oxford Movement, by Wikipedia

and Sophia, daughter of Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, Knight Commander of the Bath, Fellow of the Royal Society.

Sir Francis Beaufort, KCB [Order of the Bath] FRS [Fellow of the Royal Society] FRGS [Royal Geographical Society] FRAS [Royal Astronomical Society] MRIA [Royal Irish Academy]

-- Francis Beaufort, by Wikipedia

Education

Studied at University College, Oxford.

Career

Bar, 1873; Bencher Inner Temple, 1907. Ivt. cartulary-register 1907.

Works

Company Precedents, for Use in Relation to Companies: Subject to the Companies Acts 1862 to 1883 (Classic Reprint) (Excerpt from Company Precedents, for Use in Relation to C...)

The Companies ACT, 1900, with Explanatory Notes and Appendix Containing Prescribed and Other Forms; Together with Addenda to "Company Precedents" (Paperback) - Common (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

Company Precedents, for Use in Relation to Companies Subject to the Companies Acts 1862 to 1883. with Copious Notes (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

Conveyancing and Other Forms and Precedents: Relating to Companies Incorporated Under the Companies Acts, 1862 to 1867. with Copious Notes (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

Membership

Clubs: Athenaeum, Burlington Fine Arts.

Clubs: Athenaeum, Burlington Fine Arts.

Connections

Spouse 1898, Georgiana Elizabeth, daughter of 8th Baron [Arthur John] de Hochepied Larpent [Father: John James de Hochepied Larpent [1783-1860]; Mother: Georgiana Frances Reeves [1801-1886]; Spouse: Catherine Mary Melville (m. 9/27/1859); Child: Sybil Margurite Gonne de Hochepied Larpent].

Father: William Palmer

Mother: Sophia

Spouse: Georgiana Elizabeth

**********************

John James De Hochepied Larpent (1783 - 1860)
by ancestry.ca
Accessed: 7/5/21

John James De Hochepied Larpent family tree

Father: John Larpent: 1741 - 1824
Mother: Anna Margaretta Porter 1758 - 1832
Spouse(s): Georgiana Frances Reeves 1801 - 1886
Children

1. Arthur John Hochpied Larpent 1832 - 1887
2. Lionel Henry Planta [L.H.P.] De Hochepied Larpent 1834 - 1907
3. Egmont De Hochepied Larpent 1841 - 1912
4. Rev. George Porter De Hochepied Larpent 1839 - 1871. Born in Bel Antwerp British Subject in 1839 ...
5. Clarissa Catherine Larpent 1830 - 1861
6. Geraldine De Hochepie. Larpent 1836 - 1913
7. Augustus De Hochepied Larpent 1827 - 1827
8. Louisa De Hochepied Larpent 1833 - 1920
9. Juliet De Hochepied Larpent 1829 - 1829
10. Frederick De Hochepied Larpent 1843 - 1919

**********************

In January 1898, Mr W. C. Peppe, manager of the Birdpur Estate in north-eastern Basti District, U. P., announced the discovery of soapstone relic-caskets and jewellery inside a stupa near Piprahwa, a small village on this estate. An inscription on one of these caskets appeared to indicate that bone relics, supposedly found with these items, were those of the Buddha. Since this inscription also referred to the Buddha’s Sakyan kinsmen, these relics were thus generally considered to be those which were accorded to the Sakyas of Kapilavastu, following the Buddha’s cremation. The following year (1899) these bone relics were presented by the (British) Government of India to the King of Siam, who in turn accorded portions to the Sanghas of Burma and Ceylon.

William George Peppe, brutal murderer of 1857 in the eye of Hindustan (INDIA).

How William George Peppe became Hero For East India Company?

It was year 1857, The British were amazed and stunned. They could understand it well that the sepoy "Mutiny" has developed into a People's War and they realized it fully that the people's uprising is like a flood which sweeps away everything that comes in its way and spares nothing.

During this same period people of Mahua Dabar had killed Six British Army Officer in bits and pieces this was in revenge that British army had given to their fathers and to their village. In the early 19th century, the East India Company, eager to promote British textiles, had cut off the hands of hundreds of weavers in Bengal. Twenty weavers’ families from Murshidabad and Nadia had then fled to Awadh, whose nawab resettled them in Mahua Dabar and allowed them to carry on with their livelihood. Many of the first-generation weavers had already lost their hands, but they taught the craft to their sons and the small town of 5,000 people soon became a bustling handloom centre. It was around March-April 1857 when Zaffar Ali, a young man whose grandfather had migrated from Bengal, spotted a boat coming down the Manorama (a tributary of the Ghagra) on whose banks the town was located. The historians’ report names the six soldiers beheaded: Lt T.E. Lindsay, Lt W.H. Thomas, Lt G.L. Caulty, Sgt Edwards and privates A.F. English and T.J. Richie.

It was in consequence of this understanding that the Gorakhpur Judge W. Wynard and Collector W. Peterson appointed the Zamindar of Birdepur Willam Peppe as Deputy Magistrate of Basti and gave him half the troops of the 12th Irregular Horse Cavalry for his backing. Peppe was ordered to crush the people's uprising immediately by whatever means it may be possible.

So, on 20 June 1857, Peppe deployed the 12th Irregular Horse cavalry and surrounded Mahua Dabar from all sides and burned the township murdered thousands of people and burned them to ashes. Razed the entire town of Mahua Dabar. After this event he also mentioned on the colonial revenue records, that the area was marked as gair chiragi (non-revenue land). Soon this message reached like fire in every home and town of Hindustan that if any one revolt against British Empire he or they will be crushed to the ground, and very soon British Army gained its power again in India for this great work Willam Peppe was rewarded by East India Company he was granted land is in Basti district, round Birdpur. He was first manager and then owner of a large European estate there, which is still held by his successors, his sons Messrs. W. C. and G. T. Peppe and Mrs. Larpent, his daughter. Annie Jane Peppe married Lieut. Col. L. H. P. [Lionel Henry Planta de] Larpent, H. C. S. (References : Gazetteer; Foster B., M. N page# 822).

-- William Claxton Peppe: Persons of Indian Studies, by Prof. Dr. Klaus Karttunen

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Arthur John de Hochepied Larpent, 8th Baron de Hochepied Larpent
by the peerage.com
Last Edited=13 Feb 2017
Accessed: 7/5/21

Arthur John de Hochepied Larpent, 8th Baron de Hochepied Larpent1

M, #585043, b. 18 March 1832, d. 24 August 1887

Arthur John de Hochepied Larpent, 8th Baron de Hochepied Larpent was born on 18 March 1832.1 He was the son of John James de Hochepied Larpent and Georgiana Frances Reeves.1 He married Catherine Mary Melville [1838-1872] on 27 September 1859 at Hove, Sussex, England.1 He died on 24 August 1887 at age 55.1

Children of Arthur John de Hochepied Larpent, 8th Baron de Hochepied Larpent and Catherine Mary Melville

1. John Melvill de Hochepied Larpent, 9th Baron de Hochepied:
2. Henrietta Kemble de Hochepied Larpent1 b. 23 Sep 1865, d. 1941
3. Sybil Margurite Gonne de Hochepied Larpent1 b. c 1868, d. 1948

Children of Arthur John de Hochepied Larpent, 8th Baron de Hochepied Larpent and Catherine Mary Melville

1. 9th Baron John Melvill de Hochepied Larpent, Male, 1860–1903
2. Clarissa Catharine de Hochepied Larpent, Female, 1862–Deceased
3. Georgiana Elizabeth de Hochepied- Larpent, Female, 1863–1923
4. Henrietta Kemble de Hochepied Larpent, Female, 1865–1941
5. Catherine Mary Louisa de Hochepied Larpent, Female, 1867–1953 (Stoke Bishop, Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom)
6. Sybil Marguerite Gonne de Hochepied Larpent, Female, 1868–1948
7. Beatrice Charlotte Frances de Hochepied, Female, 1870–1942

-- by ancestors.familysearch.org

Citations

[S4567] Bill Norton, "re: Pitman Family," e-mail message to Darryl Roger LUNDY (101053), 6 April 2010 and 19 April 2011. Hereinafter cited as "re: Pitman Family."

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Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
by Holmescourt.org
Accessed: 7/3/21

Born: 1846, Marylebone, London
Marriage: Georgiana Elizabeth de Hochepied Larpent in 1898 in Kensington, London 27
Died: 15 June 1917, London aged 71

Francis Seymour Larpent; Charlotte Rosamund Larpent (née Arnold)
by Unknown artist
oil on canvas, circa 1830
29 1/2 in. x 24 1/2 in. (749 mm x 622 mm)
Sitters: Charlotte Rosamund Larpent (née Arnold) (died 1879), Second wife of Francis Seymour Larpent. Sitter in 1 portrait. Identify
Francis Seymour Larpent (1776-1845), Civil Servant. Sitter in 1 portrait. Identify

Given by Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer, 1951

-- Francis Seymour Larpent; Charlotte Rosamund Larpent (née Arnold), by National Portrait Gallery

Charlotte Rosamund (Arnold) Larpent (abt. 1792)
by WikiTree
Accessed: 7/5/21

Charlotte Rosamund Larpent formerly Arnold
Born about 1792 [location unknown]
Daughter of [George Arnold Arnold of Halstead Place, Kent] and [mother unknown]

George Arnold Arnold (1748 - 1805), British (English) School

Category: Art / Oil paintings
Date: 1768 - 1805
Materials: Oil on canvas
Measurements: 744 x 610 mm
Place of origin: England
Collection: Knightshayes Court, Devon (Accredited Museum) NT 541116

-- George Arnold Arnold (1748 - 1805), British (English) School, by nationaltrustcollections.org

[sibling(s) unknown]
Wife of Francis Seymour Larpent — married 4 Dec 1829 [10 Dec. 1829] in All Souls Mary le Bone, Middlesex, England, United Kingdom
[children unknown]
Died [28 April 1879.] [Bath]
Profile last modified 22 Aug 2020

Biography

Charlotte was born about 1792.

Sources

1. "England Marriages, 1538–1973 ", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NJWD-C2Z : 13 March 2020), Francis Seymour Larpent, Esquire, 1829.

2, "England and Wales Census, 1841," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MQKZ-MVK : 22 May 2019), Francis Larpent, Dorking, Surrey, England, United Kingdom; from "1841 England, Scotland and Wales census," database and images, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : n.d.); citing PRO HO 107, The National Archives, Kew, Surrey.

General Notes:

Barrister (1911)

Noted events in his life were:

1. He appeared on the census in 1871 in 62 Montagu Square, St. Marylebone, London.

2. Census UK 1911: 1911, 29 Bryanston Square, Marylebone, London.

3. Resided: 15 June 1917, 29 Bryanston Square, Marylebone, London. 13

4. He had an estate probated on 12 September 1917 in London. 13

Francis married Georgiana Elizabeth de Hochepied Larpent in 1898 in Kensington, London.27 [England and Wales free Marriage Index, 1837-1915.] (Georgiana Elizabeth de Hochepied Larpent was born c 1865 in Bombay, India 10 [1911 UK Census.] and died on 26 April 1923 in London 13 [13 England and Wales National Probate Calendar, 1861-1941, England and Wales National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administration), 1861 - 1941 (Ancestry.co.uk).])

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Palmer's Company Law -- A Practical Handbook for Lawyers and Business Men. With an Appendix containing the Companion (Consolidation) Act, 1908, and Rules. Eighth Edition. By Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer, Bencher of the Inner Temple. Royal 8vo. 1910. Price 12s. 6d. cloth.

Palmer's Company Precedents -- For use in relation to Companies subject to the Companies Acts.

Part I: General Forms. Tenth Edition. By Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer Bencher of the Inner Temple, assisted by the Hon. C. MacNaghten, K.C., and Edward Manson, Barrister-At-Law. Royal. 8vo. 1910. Price 38s. cloth.

Part II: Winding-Up Forms and Practice. Tenth Edition. By Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer. Royal 8vo. 1910. Price 32s. cloth.

Part III: Debentures and Debenture Stock. Tenth Edition. By Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer. Royal 8vo. 1907. Price 25s. cloth.

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Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
by Open Library
1845-1917
31 works

Company law
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer, Geoffrey Morse
First published in 1902

Company precedents
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1956

(Palmer's) Company guide
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1946

Palmer's corporate insolvency
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1996

(Palmer's) Private companies
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1941

Private companies
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1877

Private companies, their formation and advantages and the mode of converting a business into a private company
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1949

Palmer's Company precedents
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer, K.W. Mackinnon, R. Buchanan-Dunlop
First published in 1951

Peerage law in England
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1978

Company precedents for use in relation to companies subject to the Companies (consolidation) Act, 1908
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer

Milner a Palmers Company Cases 1987 V 3
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1988

Schmitthoff C M Palmer Comp Law V1 Special E24
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1987

Milner a Palmers Company Cases 1988 V 4
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1989

Company Cases
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1986

Company law
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 2000

Peerage Law in England
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 2007

Palmer's Company Precedents
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer, R A K Wright, Buchanan-Dunlop
First published in 1960

Peerage law in England
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1907
The Shareholders' and Directors' Legal Companion: A Manual of Every Day Law and Practice, for ..
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1882

The Shareholders' and Directors' Companion: A Manual of Every-day Law and Practice for Promoters ..
by Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer
First published in 1880

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A Handbook of Tibetan Culture [Excerpt]
by Graham Coleman
Copyright The Orient Foundation, 1993

About the Book: Over the past nine years the Orient Foundation has compiled a database that brings together information on over 600 Tibetan-related organizations throughout the world. Compiled under teh auspices of HH The Dalai Lama, this book provides comprehensive information about Tibetan Buddhism and culture for the general public including: Museums, teaching centres, retreat centres and publications listed in a country-by-country gazetteer.

About the Author: Graham Coleman is President of the Orient Foundation for Arts and Culture (UK), a major Tibetan cultural conservancy organization. He has been editing Tibetan Buddhist poetry and prose texts in cooperation with various distinguished translators since the mid-1970s, and is the writer and director of the acclaimed feature documentary "Tibet -- A Buddhist Trilogy."

TIBET SOCIETY AND RELIEF FUND OF THE UK

Address: Olympia Bridge Quay, 70 Russell Road, Kensington, London, UK, W14 8JA.

Tel: 071-603 7764.

Telex/Fax: 071-603 7764.

Year Established: 1959.

Founder: Francis Napier Beaufort Palmer.

General Description: The society was founded in June 1959 in order to give expression to the widespread interest and deep concern aroused in the UK by the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The objects are: to promote the cause of Tibetan independence, to bring before the world the sufferings of the oppressed people of Tibet, to assist those Tibetans who had fled from Tibet to India and elsewhere and to promote understanding of Tibetan history, culture and religion.

Facilities and Services: Members receive periodical newsletters giving the latest information about the Tibetan situation in general and the society's activities. The latter include lectures, film sows, exhibitions and social events.

Ecumenical Centres:

BUDDHIST SOCIETY

Address: 58 Eccleston Square, London, UK, SW1V 1PH.

Tel: 071 834 5858.

Distribution Details: The Society publishes a quarterly journal entitled The Middle Way.

Year Established: 1924.

Lama/Scholar: Ven. Sumedho Bhikkhu.

General Description: The Buddhist Society was established in 1924; it is one of the oldest Buddhist Societies in Europe. The object of the society is to publish and make known the principles of Buddhism and to encourage the study and application of these principles. The society adheres to no one Buddhist school, and aims to give the newcomer an impartial introduction to the many branches of Buddhism practised in Britain today.

Teaching Programme: A comprehensive programme of all classes, lectures and special events held at the Society is printed in the quarterly journal The Middle Way.

Facilities and Services: The Society's premises are open to both members and non-members between 2 and 6pm every day except Sunday. Public lectures and classes are mostly held from 6:30pm. Members are entitled to use the society's General Lending and Reference Libraries, the former either by direct borrowing or by post.

Government Offices

OFFICE OF TIBET (UK)

Address: Linburn House, 342 Kilburn High Road, London, UK, NW6 2QJ.

Tel: 071 328 8422.

Telex/Fax: 071 624 4100.

General Description: Bureau of the Representative of H.H. the Dalai Lama for the UK and Scandinavia.

Libraries

BRITISH LIBRARY OMPB

Address: Great Russell Street, London, UK, WC1 3DG.

INDIA OFFICE LIBRARY AND RECORD NEWS, DEPT. ORIENTAL MSS AND PRINTED BOOKS

Address: British Library, 197 Blackfriars Road, London, UK, SE1 8NG.

WELLCOME INSTITUTE, FOR THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE

Address: 183 and 200 Euston Road, London, UK, NW1 2BP.

Tel: 071 383 4414.

Telex/Fax: 071 388 3164

Year Established: 1913.

Founder: Sir Henry Wellcome.

General Description: The Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine is a reference library and contains manuscripts, xylographs, books, paintings and drawings chiefly connected with the history of medicine. The institute has acquired prior to 1970 seventy-seven Tibetan manuscripts, fifty-four Tibetan xylographs, one modern print in Tibetan script, a mani stone, twenty-eight thangkas, eighteen banners, ten other paintings and drawings and eight printing blocks. Museum objects are on indefinite loan to the Science Museum.

Museums

ASHMOLENA MUSEUM

Address: Department of Eastern Art, Ashmolen Museum, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK, OX1 2PH.

Tel: 0865 278071.

Telex/Fax: 0865 278018.

Year Established: 1683.

Founder: Elias Ashmole.

General Description: The Department of Eastern Art holds a collection of several hundred Tibetan artefacts, some being on longterm loan from the Bodleian Library and a private collection. Bronze and other metal images and various ritual objects and vessels predominate. There are also over 100 thangkas at present in the collection; the majority of which are on loan. A selection from the collections is on permanent display in the department's galleries.

BRITISH MUSEUM, DEPARTMENT OF ORIENTAL ANTIQUITIES

Address: Great Russell Street, London, UK, WC1B 3DG.

Tel: 071 636 1555.

Telex/Fax: 071 323 8480.

Year Established: 1753.

General Description: The British Museum was founded by an Act of Parliament in 1753. The material from Tibet includes objects in the following categories: religious and ritual equipment of all kinds, costumes, arms and armour, banner paintings, inscriptions, bookcovers, sculpture in most media, and some categories of domestic equipment.

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OF THE ORIENT FOUNDATION: About Us
by The Orient Foundation
Accessed: 7/3/21

Activities:

The principal activity of the Foundation is the multimedia documentation of Classical Indian and Tibetan Knowledge Resources and the development of regional and international access to these resources.

Creating, Conserving and Developing Access to Multimedia Documentary Resources:

Beginning in 1995, the Foundation assisted in the setting up of twenty-four fully equipped multimedia documentation centres and libraries in the major Tibetan monasteries of India. The project’s archive and administrative hub is housed at the Foundation’s New Media Centre in the library building of the Central University for Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, U.P. To date, the multimedia documentation programme has resulted in the live recording and archiving of 20,500 hours of oral commentary to the key classical texts of Indo-Tibetan culture by the greatest masters, scholars, doctors and artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. In addition, a still image archive of over 19,000 photographs has been created and over 900 hours of digital video documentation of the classical arts traditions has been completed. This documentation programme, has been supported by grants from the Sir Dorabji Tata Trusts, the Prince Claus Fund and the Ministry of Culture (Government of India).

From the start of the project, each partner library received analogue master and distribution copies of the documentary records created in their educational institution and each partner library has provided day-to-day access to the documentary materials to their institution’s scholars and students.

In 2007, the Foundation completed the digitization of the entire master analogue collections and in January 2010, the Foundation completed the compression of the entire master digital collections into MP3 format (for audio material), MP4 format (for video material) and JPEG format (for photographic material).

In March 2010, copies of the entire oral commentarial archive began to be distributed throughout the network of partner monastery and nunnery libraries in both India and Nepal. (See partner list.) In order to increase the security of the master archival materials, both master analogue and digital copies of the entire archive are now held at the Songtsen Library in Dehradun and the Tibetan Yungdrung Bon Library at Dolanji.

Throughout the development of both the analogue and digital multimedia resource materials the Foundation has followed the technical guidelines as set out by the National Sound Archive of the UK, the National Film and Television Archive of the UK, and UNESCO.

In April 2010, the process of creating an internet based multimedia platform for providing worldwide access to the Foundation’s archival resources began. The online multimedia digital archive was completed and launched in March 2012. (See: http://www.tibetan-knowledge.org.) New documentary materials are being added to the archive continuously and the online resource is being regularly updated, as new documentary materials are digitally processed and catalogued.

Since 2010, in order to provide a means whereby apprentice artists could study the surviving works of earlier generations of eminent artists, the Foundation has been working in partnership with the major museums, monasteries and private collectors in India and Nepal, who hold classical Tibetan art collections. As a result, the most exemplary thangkas, held in over 30 collections, have either been photographed in situ by Foundation staff or high resolution photographs have been donated to the archive by the collection holders. Between 2011 and 2012, the Foundation assisted in the creation of the first online training resource for classical Tibetan artists. (See: http://www.tibetan-arts.org.)

Training:

In 1997, the Foundation assisted in an All-India initiative to introduce the benefits of networked, multilingual, multimedia Information Technologies to the Vice Chancellors of India’s leading universities and the heads of India’s major archives, libraries and museums, co-funded by the European Commission and the Ford Foundation.

Since 1997, the Foundation has conducted regular workshops at the Central University for Tibetan Studies for its network of partner monastery and nunnery libraries. These workshops have focused on providing training in multimedia documentation, archival conservation and library distribution methods.

[admin]

Major J.C.W. Napier-Munn
from Various Sources

***********************

The Founding of Tibet Relief Fund: Tibet Matters
by Tibet Relief Fund
Issue 17
Autumn 2013

Major J.C.W. Napier-Munn, Hon. Secretary, The Tibet Relief Fund, 58 Eccleston Square, S.W. I., Letter to the Times, July 31, 1959, p.7.

TIBETAN REFUGEES

Sir. – Recent devastating events in Tibet caused over 15,000 Tibetans to cross the perilous Himalayas into India. It may be a long time before these unfortunate people can safely return to their overrun country. Our own consciences should allow us neither to neglect nor forget them.

The Indian Government has manfully coped with this addition to its own problems at home. In this country we are bound in honour to help relieve needs of the Tibetan refugees, because from 1905 to 1947 there was a special relationship between Tibet and the United Kingdom – a relationship handed on to the new India.

On balance we think it wisest to concentrate chiefly on collecting money which can be used for the benefit of the refugees, not least in the purchase of necessary antibiotics and other medicaments. The Tibet Society has opened a Tibet Relief Fund for which we now appeal in the hope of a generous response. Donations should be sent to the address below or direct to the National Bank Ltd. (Belgravia Branch), 21 Grosvenor Gardens, S.W.I.

Yours faithfully,

Thubten Jigme Norbu; F.M. Bailey; Birdwood; J.D. Boyle; [Indian Foreign Secretary Sir] Olaf Caroe; Clement Davies; A.D. Dodds-Parker; Peter Fleming [Master of Deception: The Wartime Adventures of Peter Fleming, by Alan Ogden]; Thomas Moore; [Esmond Harmsworth, 2nd Viscount Rothermere] Harmsworth; Marco Pallis; Hugh E. Richardson; Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer, Chairman; Major J.C.W. Napier-Munn [Tac HQ Calcutta (Advanced HQ ALFSEA)], Hon. Secretary; D.C. Nicole, Hon. Treasurer, The Tibet Society.

-- The Tibet Relief Fund, 58 Eccleston Square, S.W. I., Letter to the Times, July 31, 1959, p.7.

-- The Founding of Tibet Relief Fund, Tibet Matters, Issue 17, Autumn 2013, by Tibet Relief Fund

***********************

Master of Deception: The Wartime Adventures of Peter Fleming [Excerpt]
by Alan Ogden
2019

The Founding of Tibet Relief Fund: Tibet Matters
by Tibet Relief Fund
Issue 17
Autumn 2013

Peter Fleming [Master of Deception: The Wartime Adventures of Peter Fleming, by Alan Ogden]; The Tibet Relief Fund, 58 Eccleston Square, S.W. I., Letter to the Times, July 31, 1959, p.7.

Annex C
Excerpt from Master of Deception, The Wartime Adventures of Peter Fleming
by Alan Ogden
2019

Annex C

Staff List - GSI (d) / D. Division / Force 456

Officer commanding GSI (d)
Colonel Peter Fleming

Officers commanding D. Division
Colonel Peter Fleming (from November 1943)
Colonel Sir Ronald Wingate Bt. (from 25 April 1945) 

Officer commanding Force 456 (from 25 April 1945)
Colonel Peter Fleming

Policy and Plans HQ SEAC Kandy
Wing Commander The Hon. Mervyn Horder, RAFVR
Lieutenant Commander the Earl of Antrim, RNVR5 [Posted SACSEA 14 November 1944.]
Captain Saunders

D. Division Rear HQ Delhi
Commander Alan Robertson-Macdonald RN, Eastern Fleet Representative
Major Peter Thorne, Grenadier Guards
Major Lucas J. Ralli, Royal Signals, GSO 2 Wireless Comms
Major A.D.R. Wilson
Captain the Hon. A.J.A Wavell
Navy Lieutenant Pei, Chinese LO

Operations Section
Lieutenant Colonel A.G. 'Johnnie' Johnson, RA6 [He does not show up on 1944/45 Indian Army Intelligence Directorate List. Holt says he came across from A Force.]
Major Gordon Rennie
Captain K.L. Campbell (from 12 March 1945)
Captain J.N. Carleton-Stiff, R.Sigs.

Technical Section
Major C.H. Starck, RE
Captain J.A. Gloag, (Z Force from 15 March 1945)
Captain G.T.H. Carter, RE (from 2 April 1945)
Captain D.W. Timmis
Captain Skipworth

Tac HQ Calcutta (Advanced HQ ALFSEA)
Lieutenant Colonel 'Frankie' Wilson, GSO 1
Major J.M. Howson (from 30 March 1945)
Major J.C.W. Napier-Munn, RA
Major R.A. Gwyn, Base Signal Office Calcutta
Squadron Leader J. King7 [Does not show on 1945 RAF List (India).]
Captain 'Jack' Corbett (US) March 1945

Control Section
Major S.C.F. Pierson, GSO 2

D Force

Force HQ
Lieutenant Colonel P.E.X Tumbull -- Commanding officer
Major E.F.A 'Ted' Royds -- 2 i/c
Major J.C. Gladman8 [Keen collector of butterflies of the Arakan coast!] - Officer i/c Sonic
Captain K.A.J. Booth -- Adjutant
Captain P.R. Hedges -- 2 i/c Sonic
Lieutenant M.W. Trennery -- i/c Sonic training
Lieutenant B.E. Chambers -- i/c Sonic training

Companies
Captain G. Morgan -- OC 51 Coy
Lieutenant E.H. Morris, RE -- 2 i/c 51 Coy
Captain J.A. Fosbury -- OC 52 Coy
Captain C.A.R. Richardson -- OC 53 Coy
Lieutenant R.A. Spark -- 2 i/c 53 Coy
Captain J.I. Nicolson, KAR Reserve of Officers -- OC 54 Coy
Lieutenant R.H. Walton, RA -- 2 i/c 54 Coy
Lieutenant G.H. Smith -- i/c Sonic 54 Coy
Captain G.W. Boyd -- OC 55 Coy
Lieutenant J.D. Taylor -- 2 i/c 55 Coy
Captain C.J.C. Lumsden -- OC 56 Coy
Lieutenant J.H. Atkinson -- i/c Sonic 56 Coy
Captain D.W. Timmis -- OC 57 Coy
Captain R.H.D. Norman -- OC 58 Coy
Lieutenant B. Raymond -- 2 i/c 58 Coy
Lieutenant J.G. Sommerville -- i/c Sonic 58 Coy

No.1 Naval Scout Unit
Lieutenant Commander H.B. Brassey, RNVR

ITB
Colonel Reginald Bicat
Chief Clerk: Sergeant Ashley
Major N.P. Dawnay
Major J.A. Denney
Major H.L. Frenkel
Major D.W. Gaylor
Major J.F. Howarth
Major D.K. Kerker
Major J.L. Schofield
Major J.E. Vaughan
Captain H.N. Barker
Captain R. Baxter
Captain A. Forbes
Captain D.H. Pickhard
Captain B.K.H. Richards
Captain E.G. Sperring
Captain A.H.D. Williams

Liaison officers with Army Formations
Eastern Army (1943): Colonel 'Fookiform' Foulkes and Major Frankie Wilson
HQ Fourteenth Army: Major John Warde-Aldham
NCAC: Captain Jack Corbett (US). Appointed February 1945
IV Corps: Major J.M. Howson
XV Corps: Major D. Graham, MC
XXXIII Corps: Major R. Campbell GSO 2

Control Section China Chungking
Major S.C.F. Pierson
Lieutenant Colonel F.G. Bishop

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South East Asia Command
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/4/21


South East Asia Command
South East Asian Command insignia
Active: 1943 – 1946
Country: United Kingdom
Type: Command
Garrison/HQ: Kandy, British Ceylon
Insignia

SEAC flag

South East Asia Command (SEAC) was the body set up to be in overall charge of Allied operations in the South-East Asian Theatre during World War II.

History

Organisation

The initial supreme commander of the theatre was General Sir Archibald Wavell while head of the short-lived American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) which was dissolved after the fall of Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. Afterwards, Allied forces in the region were divided between SEAC and the South West Pacific Area command (SWPA).

In August 1943, the Allies created the combined South East Asian Command, to assume overall strategic command of all air, sea and land operations of all national contingents in the theatre. In August 1943, with the agreement of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Winston Churchill appointed Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia. US Army General Joseph Stilwell was appointed deputy supreme commander. Stilwell was also, officially, deputy to Chiang Kai Shek, as Allied commander in China, and commanded all US forces across both theatres (which were known in the US as the China Burma India (CBI) Theater).

Mountbatten arrived in India on 7 October[1] and SEAC came formally into being in Delhi at midnight on 15/16 November.[2]

SEAC headquarters moved in April 1944 to Kandy in Ceylon.[3]

General strategy

From the outset, Western Allied forces available for the wider war against Japan were limited – by an overall Allied commitment towards defeating Nazi Germany, before the Empire of Japan. This was especially the case for the UK, and major advances were not anticipated in Asia until mid-late 1944 at least – that is, not until the defeat of Germany had become inevitable.[4]

A strategic focus by the Western Allies on the Central Pacific (i.e. the "Pacific Ocean Areas" in contemporaneous Allied terminology) and the South-West Pacific, resulted from compromises reached at the Casablanca Conference. UK participants were focused on Nazi Germany, and saw the war against Japan being limited "to the defense of a fixed line in front of those positions that must be held".[5] However, because such an approach was unacceptable to the United States, it was agreed that there would be offensive actions in Burma, operations in support of China, and other activity beyond holding a defensive line in South East Asia, as a result of US demands that the Japanese be kept off-balance, throughout any areas in which they might encounter Allied forces.[6] Nevertheless, for the Western Allies, the South East Asia theatre, China, and the North Pacific (including Alaska),[7] were destined to become secondary theatres, relative to efforts in the Pacific Ocean Areas, in which the supreme commander was US Admiral Chester Nimitz.

On 2 December 1943, the Combined Chiefs of Staff officially approved in principle a plan designating the Pacific Ocean Areas as the focus of the main effort against Japan. Their reasoning was that advances in the Central Pacific were the most rapid route towards sustained, direct attacks on the Japanese Home Islands -– e.g. subjecting Tokyo and other major cities to attacks by strategic bombers. A secondary line of advance -– by US and Australian forces – "along the New Guinea-N.E.I.-Philippine axis", was to be controlled by the separate South West Pacific Area command under Douglas MacArthur (US Army).

Description

The initial land forces operational area for SEAC was India, Burma, Ceylon, Malaya, northern islands of Sumatra, and, for offensive operations, Siam (Thailand). On 15 August 1945 (VJ-Day) this was expanded to include the rest parts of Dutch East Indies and southern part of French Indochina.


Lieutenant-General Montagu Stopford, the second and final commander of SEAC, who commanded June–November 1946.

Command arrangements in SEAC were always complicated. Ideally there should have been under the Supreme Commander a Commander in Chief for each of the land sea and air forces. This was implemented for the naval and air forces (including the establishment of Air Command, South East Asia) but the British 11th Army Group, under SEAC itself, controlled only British land forces. US and Chinese forces serving in the South East Asian theatre, organised as the Northern Combat Area Command or NCAC commanded by Stilwell, answered directly to the Supreme Commander because Stilwell refused to serve under the 11th Army Group commander George Giffard.[8] The Eleventh Army Group had the Fourteenth Army on the Burma front, and the British garrison in Ceylon under its direct command. Stilwell also served as Chief of Staff to Chiang Kai-shek, who was officially the Supreme Allied Commander in China. Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Peirse was appointed the Air Commander in Chief under Mountbatten. Air units taking part in the Burma Campaign were, at first, part of either the RAF Third Tactical Air Force or the USAAF Tenth Air Force. Tenth Air Force came under SEAC only through Stilwell as commanding General CBI Theater. To avoid a potentially cumbersome chain of command and overlapping effort Mountbatten gave orders in December for the two air forces to be integrated under the name Eastern Air Command. The US Fourteenth Air Force, which was based in China and the US Twentieth Air Force –- strategic bomber units based in India –- were never controlled by SEAC but their operations were coordinated with SEAC. At sea, the command structure was relatively simple, since the Royal Navy was providing almost all naval forces in the area. Admiral Sir James Somerville, Commander-in-Chief, Eastern Fleet, became the naval commander under Mountbatten.[9]


Lord Louis Mountbatten Supreme Allied Commander of the South East Asia Command from October 1943 through the disbandment of SEAC in 1946. This photograph, taken in February 1944, is from his tour of the Arakan front, as part of the Burma Campaign

It was not until late 1944 that the land forces chain of command was clarified, after Stilwell was recalled to Washington. His overall role, and the CBI command were then split among three people: Lt Gen. Raymond Wheeler became Deputy Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia; Maj. Gen. Albert Wedemeyer became Chief of Staff to Chiang, and commander of US Forces, China Theater (USFCT). Lt Gen. Daniel Sultan was promoted, from deputy commander of CBI to commander of US Forces, India-Burma Theater (USFIBT) and commander of the NCAC. The 11th Army Group was redesignated Allied Land Forces South East Asia (ALFSEA) under a new commander Lieutenant-General Oliver Leese who had relinquished command of the Eighth Army in Italy, and NCAC (which by this time included Chinese, American and British units) was placed under ALFSEA.[10] As the drive to liberate Burma began in earnest however, Chiang Kai-shek and Wedemeyer made increasing demands for NCAC's formations to be moved to the China Theatre to meet the threat of Japanese attacks from the north. Once the Burma Road from Mandalay to Chungking was secured NCAC became passive and in March 1945 Mountbatten agreed to the US and Chinese troops in NCAC being gradually withdrawn to the China.[11]

RAF aircraft destined for SEAC had the word "SNAKE" applied after the serial during ferrying to prevent them being appropriated by other commands along the route.

In February 1945 Air Marshal Keith Park was appointed Allied Air Commander of South-East Asia Command [SEAC] where he served until the end of the war.

Once most of Burma was re-captured by Fourteenth Army, the command turned its attention towards its next major operational objective: Malaya. However, the use of atomic bombs on the Japanese mainland brought the war to an abrupt end.

Post–World War II


General Joseph Stilwell (right), First Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of the South East Asia Command, together with General Frank Merrill, in Burma during the Burma Campaign.

The command shifted its emphasis from combat operations to military government, and the repatriation of internees and prisoners of war.

The borders of SEAC were adjusted in the aftermath of the war. French Indochina was added, along with Borneo –- most of which had already been captured by Australian forces, under the South West Pacific Command -– and Java. This added immensely to the problems of the command. Western governments expected SEAC to re-establish colonial regimes in territories lost to Japan in 1941–45, and in which anti-colonial, nationalist forces had gained strength.

British Commonwealth troops were landed in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and Indochina to facilitate the return of forces from the pre-war colonial powers. The force landed in the East Indies was the Indian XV Corps, which included 5th Indian Infantry Division, 23rd Indian Infantry Division and 5th Parachute Brigade.[12] Military government was soon established in Burma, Malaya, Singapore and British Borneo. Sarawak and Sumatra did not prove to be major headaches for the British, except that one Japanese unit in Borneo refused to surrender until November 1945.

Thailand, although it had officially been an ally of Japan, quickly resumed both its independence and its ties with the western powers.

Because of shortages of personnel, some use was made of Japanese Surrendered Personnel (JSP) in these areas. The Allies found that their war-time allies in the Viet Minh in Indochina, and Indonesian nationalist forces in the East Indies, were well armed, well-organised and determined. It was intended that British forces would temporarily enforce military government over a small section of Indochina, because of local resistance, logistics and French sensibilities. However, in the end the commander of British forces declared de facto military government, to make it possible for French forces to return.

Indonesian National Revolution, 1945–46

Aided by armed militias formed by the Japanese during the occupation, Indonesian nationalists in Java declared the Dutch East Indies a republic, and independent from the Netherlands. The British intended that the Dutch colonial administration should return, and assisted a small military contingent, the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration (NICA). However they initially avoided significant conflict with the nationalists. It was only possible for British forces to establish military government in parts of Indonesia, and they found that the location of Allied prisoners of war – and civilians interned by Japanese forces – were sometimes used by nationalists in bargaining for political ends.

British troops found themselves in increasing conflict with the nationalists. The nationalists attacked JSP garrisons awaiting repatriation, to seize their arms. A British Brigadier, A. W. S. Mallaby, was killed, as he pushed for the nationalists to surrender their weapons. As a result, on 10 November 1945, Surabaya was attacked by British forces, leading to the bloody Battle of Surabaya. The city was secured later that month. The battle for Surabaya was the bloodiest single engagement of the Indonesian National Revolution (1945–49). However, the British were reluctant to devote their scarce resources to a defence of Dutch interests, and withdrew from Indonesia.

Disbandment

As 1946 drew on, under its second and final commander, Lieutenant-General Montagu Stopford (June to November 1946), SEAC discharged its final tasks and was disbanded. It was no longer felt that a joint command was needed in the area.

See also

• Radio SEAC

References

1. Woodburn Kirby 2004c, p. 11.
2. Woodburn Kirby 2004c, p. 45.
3. Woodburn Kirby 2004c, p. 52.
4. Morton 1962, pp. 670–671.
5. Morton 1962, p. 381.
6. Morton 1962, pp. 382–386.
7. Morton 1962, pp. 668–669.
8. Woodburn Kirby 2004c, p. 47.
9. Woodburn Kirby 2004c, pp. 45 to 49.
10. Woodburn Kirby 2004d, pp. 117–119.
11. Woodburn Kirby 2004e, p. 2.
12. Graham Watson, Allied Land Forces South East Asia 1945 Archived 2 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine, Orbat.com, accessed November 2008

Sources

• Morton, Louis (1962). Strategy and Command: The First Two Years (PDF). Washington, D. C.: United States Army Center of Military History. OCLC 63151391. Retrieved 4 May 2013.
• Woodburn Kirby, Major-General S. (2004c) [1st. pub. HMSO:1961]. Butler, Sir James (ed.). The War Against Japan: The Decisive Battles. History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Military Series. III. Uckfield: Naval & Military Press. ISBN 1-84574-062-9.
• Woodburn Kirby, Major-General S. (2004d) [1st. pub. HMSO:1965]. Butler, Sir James (ed.). The War Against Japan: The Reconquest of Burma. History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Military Series. IV. Uckfield: Naval & Military Press. ISBN 1-845740-63-7.
• Woodburn Kirby, Major-General S. (2004e) [1st. pub. HMSO:1969]. Butler, Sir James (ed.). The War Against Japan: The Surrender of Japan. History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Military Series. V. Uckfield: Naval & Military Press. ISBN 1-845740-64-5.

Further reading

• Jon Latimer, Burma: The Forgotten War, London: John Murray, 2004. ISBN 978-0-7195-6576-2
• Peter Dennis, Troubled days of peace : Mountbatten and South East Asia command, 1945–46, Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1987, ISBN 0719022053.

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Obituary: Sir Algernon Rumbold
by John Billington
UK Independent
Sunday 23 October 2011 04:05

TIBETAN REFUGEES

Sir. – Recent devastating events in Tibet caused over 15,000 Tibetans to cross the perilous Himalayas into India. It may be a long time before these unfortunate people can safely return to their overrun country. Our own consciences should allow us neither to neglect nor forget them.

The Indian Government has manfully coped with this addition to its own problems at home. In this country we are bound in honour to help relieve needs of the Tibetan refugees, because from 1905 to 1947 there was a special relationship between Tibet and the United Kingdom – a relationship handed on to the new India.

On balance we think it wisest to concentrate chiefly on collecting money which can be used for the benefit of the refugees, not least in the purchase of necessary antibiotics and other medicaments. The Tibet Society has opened a Tibet Relief Fund for which we now appeal in the hope of a generous response. Donations should be sent to the address below or direct to the National Bank Ltd. (Belgravia Branch), 21 Grosvenor Gardens, S.W.I.

Yours faithfully,

Thubten Jigme Norbu; F.M. Bailey; Birdwood; J.D. Boyle; [Indian Foreign Secretary Sir] Olaf Caroe; Clement Davies; A.D. Dodds-Parker; Peter Fleming [Master of Deception: The Wartime Adventures of Peter Fleming, by Alan Ogden]; Thomas Moore; [Esmond Harmsworth, 2nd Viscount Rothermere] Harmsworth; Marco Pallis; Hugh E. Richardson; Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer, Chairman; Major J.C.W. Napier-Munn [Tac HQ Calcutta (Advanced HQ ALFSEA)], Hon. Secretary; D.C. Nicole, Hon. Treasurer, The Tibet Society.

-- The Tibet Relief Fund, 58 Eccleston Square, S.W. I., Letter to the Times, July 31, 1959, p.7.

-- The Founding of Tibet Relief Fund, Tibet Matters, Issue 17, Autumn 2013, by Tibet Relief Fund

Tibet Society is the world’s first ever Tibet support group. The Society was founded in 1959, within weeks of the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet following the uprising against China’s occupation. Today, the organisation continues to work actively for the freedom of the Tibetan people and their right to self-determination.

All the founders of Tibet Society had personal knowledge of an independent and free Tibet, having either lived in Lhasa or had direct dealings with the Tibetan government.

Hugh Richardson, the British Representative in Tibet, was among the dignitaries who greeted the young Dalai Lama when, in 1939, aged just four, he first entered Lhasa. Heinrich Harrer, when in Lhasa in the 1940s, coached the Dalai Lama in English and maths. Robert Ford, who remained Vice President until his death in 2013, was captured and imprisoned for five years by the invading Chinese army in 1950 when serving as radio officer to the Tibetan Government. Well known High Court Judge and founder of the Buddhist Society, Christmas Humphreys, first met the Dalai Lama in 1956.

-- Tibet Society: Our Story, by tibetsociety.com

Horace Algernon Fraser Rumbold, diplomat: born 27 February 1906; Deputy High Commissioner, Union of South Africa 1949-53; CMG 1953, KCMG 1960; Assistant Under-Secretary of State, Commonwealth Relations Office 1954-58, Deputy Under-Secretary of State 1958-66; Deputy Chairman, Air Transport Licensing Board 1971-72; President, Tibet Society of the UK 1977-88; author of Watershed in India 1914-1922 1979; married 1946 Margaret Hughes (two daughters); died Guildford 23 October 1993.

ALGERNON RUMBOLD was a staunch friend of Tibet and a forceful champion of the right of Tibetans to determine their own destiny.

His interest in Tibet dated from his service, from 1929 to 1943, at the desk in the India Office concerned with Afghanistan, Tibet, and other territories bordering on Northern India.

Rumbold was born in 1906 into a family with military and diplomatic connections; his uncle, Sir Horace Rumbold, was British ambassador in Berlin from 1928 to 1933.

British diplomat Sir Horace Rumbold, 9th Baronet (1861-1941)

Sir Horace George Montagu Rumbold, 9th Baronet, GCB, GCMG, KCVO, PC (5 February 1869 – 24 May 1941) was a British diplomat. A well-travelled diplomat who learned Arabic, Japanese and German, he is best remembered for his role as British Ambassador to Berlin from 1928 to 1933 in which he warned of the ambitions of Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Rumbold was born on 5 February 1869 at St. Petersburg in the Russian Empire, the son of Sir Horace Rumbold, 8th Baronet and Caroline Barney (née Harrington). Horace was educated at Aldin House Prep School and at Eton.

Rumbold was an honorary attaché at The Hague (1889–1890), where his father was ambassador. In 1891, he passed the first of the required examinations and entered the Diplomatic Service.

After a year at the Foreign Office in London, he served in Cairo, Tehran, Vienna, Madrid and Munich between 1900 and 1913. He was then moved to Tokyo (1909–1913) and to Berlin (1913–1914).

In Berlin, he took up the position of counsellor. Rumbold was in charge of the British Embassy when the ambassador, Sir Edward Goschen, went home on leave on 1 July. Rumbold conducted negotiations in the first four of the ten days that preceded the outbreak of the First World War.

Rumbold left Berlin with the ambassador on 5 August 1914 with crowds attacking the embassy and their train.

In 1916, he was appointed ambassador to Berne. After the war, he was appointed ambassador to Poland in 1919. The following year, he became the High Commissioner to Constantinople during which he signed the Lausanne Treaty on behalf of the British Empire. He then became ambassador to Madrid from 1924 to 1928.

Rumbold went on to his last position when he was appointed as ambassador to Berlin in 1928. Rumbold supported appeasing Heinrich Brüning's government in the hope of staving off German nationalist parties like Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party. Once Hitler came to power in 1933, Rumbold was deeply unsettled by the Nazi regime and produced a succession of despatches critical of the Nazis. On 26 April 1933 Rumbold sent to the Foreign Office his valedictory despatch in which he gave an unvarnished view of Hitler, the Nazis and their ambitions:

[Hitler] starts with the assumption that man is a fighting animal; therefore the nation is a fighting unit, being a community of fighters.... A country or race which ceases to fight is doomed.... Pacifism is the deadliest sin.... Intelligence is of secondary importance.... Will and determination are of the higher worth. Only brute force can ensure survival of the race. The new Reich must gather within its fold all the scattered German elements in Europe.... What Germany needs is an increase in territory... [to Hitler] the idea that there is something reprehensible in chauvinism is entirely mistaken... the climax of education is military service [for youths] educated to the maximum of aggressiveness.... It is the duty of the government to implant in the people feeling of manly courage and passionate hatred.... Intellectualism is undesirable...It is objectionable to preach international understanding... [he] has spoken with derision of such delusive documents as peace-pacts and such delusive ideas as the spirit of Locarno.

Rumbold concluded by giving stark warnings for the future of international relations:

...it would be misleading to base any hopes on a return to sanity...[the German government is encouraging an attitude of mind]...which can only end in one way.... I have the impression that the persons directing the policy of the Hitler government are not normal.

Sir John Simon, the Foreign Secretary, found Rumbold's descriptions to be "definitely disquieting". Ralph Wigram, an official in the Foreign Office, gave Winston Churchill a copy of this despatch in the middle of March 1936. After Rumbold's death, Lord Vansittart said of him that "little escaped him, and his warnings [about Nazi Germany] were clearer than anything that we got later". Walter Laqueur concurred by claiming that Rumbold's "prophetic" insights explained the Third Reich better than the expert opinions that were later issued from the OSS.

Rumbold was made a Member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) in 1907, a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1917,[12] sworn of the Privy Council in 1920 and appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) in 1922.

Rumbold married Etheldred Constantia Fane, younger daughter of the British diplomat Sir Edmund Douglas Veitch Fane (1837–1900)[a] by his wife Constantia Wood, a niece of the 3rd Earl of Lonsdale, on 18 July 1905.

On his father's death in November 1913, Horace succeeded him as 9th baronet.

They had one son and two daughters; the younger daughter died young in 1918. [b]Lady Rumbold's only brother Henry Nevile Fane was married in 1910 (divorced 1935) to the elder daughter of the 21st Baron Clinton, and the Rumbolds were thus indirectly related to the British Royal Family after 1923.

Rumbold retired due to his age in June 1933. He died on 24 May 1941, aged 72, at his home in Tisbury, Wiltshire. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his son, Anthony, who also became a distinguished diplomat.

-- Sir Horace Rumbold, 9th Baronet, by Wikipedia

Algy was educated at Wellington College and at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1929 he entered the civil service at the India Office, where he served as Private Secretary to a succession of Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State for India and then to the Permanent Under-Secretary until 1934. By 1943 he had become Assistant Secretary at the India Office; and when India became independent in 1947, he moved to the Commonwealth Relations Office. From 1949 until 1953 he was Deputy High Commissioner in South Africa.

In 1954 he became Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Commonwealth Office, and four years later Deputy Under-Secretary with responsibility for economic affairs. He was deeply involved in the negotiation of Commonwealth preferences in the European Free Trade Area (Efta) and was instrumental in securing special treatment for New Zealand butter, but his outspoken hostility to Britain's entry into the Common Market brought him into conflict with the then Commonwealth Secretary, Duncan Sandys.

It was Rumbold who briefed Sir Anthony Eden in 1943 before his crucial meeting with the Chinese Foreign Minister, TV Soong. At this meeting Britain's view on the status of Tibet was reiterated in its most authoritative form. While Britain recognised Tibet as having enjoyed de facto independence since 1911, and stated that the British government had 'always been prepared to recognise Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, but only on the understanding that Tibet is regarded as autonomous'. The British government's definition of autonomy covered Tibet's complete internal freedom and her right to conduct her own external relations with other countries without reference to China.

The Right Honourable, The Earl of Avon, KG MC PC

Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977), was a British Conservative politician who served three periods as Foreign Secretary and then a relatively brief term as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 to 1957.

Achieving rapid promotion as a young Conservative Member of Parliament, he became Foreign Secretary aged 38, before resigning in protest at Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Mussolini's Italy. He again held that position for most of the Second World War, and a third time in the early 1950s. Having been deputy to Winston Churchill for almost 15 years, Eden succeeded him as the Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister in April 1955, and a month later won a general election...

Eden was born on 12 June 1897 at Windlestone Hall, County Durham, into a conservative family of landed gentry. He was the third of four sons of Sir William Eden, 7th and 5th Baronet, a former colonel and local magistrate from an old titled family. Sir William, an eccentric and often foul-tempered man, was a talented watercolourist, portraitist and collector of Impressionists.

Eden's mother, Sybil Frances Grey, was a member of the prominent Grey family of Northumberland....

As an Oxford 'aesthete' after the First World War, Eden conducted a number of homosexual affairs with fellow students, including Eddy Sackville-West, Edward Gathorne-Hardy, and Eardley Knollys. Later, his wartime colleague James Grigg regarded him as "a poor feeble little pansy", while Rab Butler described him as "half mad baronet, half beautiful woman."

On 5 November 1923, shortly before his election to Parliament, he married Beatrice Beckett, who was then eighteen. They had three sons: Simon Gascoigne (1924–1945), Robert, who died fifteen minutes after being born in October 1928, and Nicholas (1930–1985).

The marriage was not a success, with both parties apparently conducting affairs. By the mid-1930s his diaries seldom mention Beatrice. The marriage finally broke up under the strain of the loss of their son Simon, who was killed in action with the RAF in Burma in 1945. His plane was reported "missing in action" on 23 June and found on 16 July; Eden did not want the news to be public until after the election result on 26 July, to avoid claims of "making political capital" from it.

Between 1946 and 1950, whilst separated from his wife, Eden conducted an open affair with Dorothy, Countess Beatty, the wife of David, Earl Beatty.

Eden was the great-great-grandnephew of author Emily Eden and in 1947, wrote an introduction to her novel The Semi-Attached Couple (1860).

In 1950, Eden and Beatrice were finally divorced, and in 1952, he married Churchill's niece Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, a nominal Roman Catholic who was fiercely criticised by Catholic writer Evelyn Waugh for marrying a divorced man.

-- Anthony Eden, by Wikipedia

When Tibet finally lost her freedom in 1959 and the Dalai Lama was forced into exile, Rumbold, and old India hands like Sir Olaf Caroe (a former Foreign Secretary to the Indian Government and Governor of the North-West Frontier Province) and Hugh Richardson (Head of British Mission, Lhasa), joined with Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer to found the Tibet Society of the UK, an organisation that for many years stood alone in advocating Tibet's independence. Members of the society persistently challenged Chinese propaganda, principally by letters to the broadsheet papers, until the British media came to understand that there was a more reliable source for news about Tibet than the Anglo-China Association and the Chinese Ambassador.

For 11 years, from 1977 to 1988, Rumbold served the Tibet Society as its president. In 1991, with Hugh Richardson, he produced for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Tibet a pamphlet, Tibet, the Truth about Independence, which remains the most succinct and authoritative account of Tibet's status and the British government's relations with Tibet.

He retired from the Commonwealth Relations Office in 1966 but soon found himself in further conflict, on this occasion with Harold Wilson, who claimed in his memoirs that he had been badly advised by the Commonwealth Relations Office in a statement on the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war.

Wilson claimed that in making a statement deploring the extension of the fighting into Kashmir and the Punjab, at the time when India was winning, he had appeared to be supporting Pakistan and had damaged Britain's relations with India. He laid the blame on an official at the Commonwealth Office who was clearly identifiable as Rumbold. He even suggested that the official had been forced into early retirement.

Rumbold broke silence to defend himself and forcefully denied these charges and Wilson subsequently withdrew the implied slur and publicly apologised. Rumbold maintained that Wilson knew very well that there were important international reasons for wanting to bring the Indo-Pakistan conflict to a speedy conclusion in 1965 and that the reasons would be available to historians in 1996.

Rumbold continued to work actively, throughout his retirement, with a commitment in a variety of fields but especially in the cause of Tibet, where he aimed to [url=Tibet and the British Raj, 1904-47: The Influence of the Indian Political Department Officers, by Alexander McKay]correct the bias that the Foreign Office held in favour of the Chinese interpretation of events in that country[/url].

A scholarly man, and one of great personal integrity, Rumbold was a stickler for detail and accuracy, and outspoken in denouncing misrepresentation of facts.

(Photograph omitted)

***************************

Sir Algernon Rumbold, KCMG, CIE
Obituary
by Bill Peters
Asian Affairs, Volume 25, 1992, Issue 2
1992

Sir Algernon Rumbold was for many years an active member of the Editorial Board of the R.S.A.A. [Royal Society for Asian Affairs] as well as a frequent and pungent reviewer for Asian Affairs, mainly on Central Asian subjects.

The Royal Society for Asian Affairs (RSAA) is a learned society based in London (United Kingdom). Its objective is to advance public knowledge and understanding of Asia through its worldwide networks, its public events, its publications and its support to research. It is independent of governments and political bodies and does not take institutional positions on issues of policy at its meetings or in its publications.

The Society was founded in 1901 as the Central Asian Society to "promote greater knowledge and understanding of Central Asia and surrounding countries". The geographical extent of the society's interest has since expanded to include the whole of Asia. Taylor & Francis publishes the society's journal, Asian Affairs, which has been in print since 1914....

Meetings were traditionally held at a range of central London locations including the Royal Astronomical Society, the Society of Antiquaries, the Medical Society of London and the Army and Navy Club. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, all RSAA activities are online and many are open to the general public...

The Society's library and archive are split between Hailebury school and the Society's London offices....

The journal of the society, Asian Affairs, is published quarterly by Taylor and Francis. It has been continuously in publication since 1914. It contains original articles and book reviews.

The Society has for many years run Schools' days jointly with the School of Oriental and African Studies, London for sixth-form students. These offer interested A-level students an opportunity to hear talks on a wide range of Asian topics and to try out a variety of Asian languages...

The Royal Society for Asian Affairs awards two medals, the "Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal" (named for Percy Sykes, honorary secretary 1924-1932) and the "Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal", named for T. E. Lawrence, to individuals who have distinguished themselves in their contribution to cultural relations, exploration, research, or literature....

Notable members

• George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston KG GCSI GCIE PC
• Ella Sykes, founder member
• Sir Percy Sykes, KCIE CB CMG (28 February 1867 – 11 June 1945)
• Sir Francis Younghusband, KCSI KCIE (31 May 1863 – 31 July 1942)
• K. P. S. Menon CIE ICS (October 18, 1898 – November 22, 1982)
• Vyvyan Holt (1887–1960), diplomat and Oriental scholar, who was captured during the Korean War[2]
• William Anthony Furness, 2nd Viscount Furness (31 March 1929 – 1 May 1995)
• Violet Conolly OBE (11 May 1899 – 11 January 1988)[3]
• Sir Wilfred Thesiger KBE, DSO, FRAS, FRSL, FRGS (3 June 1910 – 24 August 2003)
• F.M. Bailey CIE FRGS (3 February 1882 – 17 April 1967)
• Sir Aurel Stein KCIE, FRAS, FBA (26 November 1862 – 26 October 1943)
• Lt Col R.C.F. Schomberg (1880-1958)[4]
• Sir Olaf Caroe KCSI KCIE (15 November 1892 – 23 November 1981)
• Peter Hopkirk (died August 2014), writer and traveller

-- Royal Society for Asian Affairs, by Wikipedia

His interest and expertise in the area derived from distinguished service at the India Office and later the Commonwealth Relations Office, where he was an authority on the defence of the Northern frontiers of India. It was he who in 1943 drafted the essential text on the British view of Tibet for a crucial meeting of Anthony Eden with T.V. Soong, the Chinese Foreign Minister. This asserted that Britain recognised Tibet as having enjoyed de facto independence since 1911 and the British Government had "always been prepared to recognize Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, but only on the understanding that Tibet is regarded as autonomous," i.e. Tibet should have complete internal freedom and the right to conduct her own external relations.

Horace Algernon Fraser Rumbold was born on 27 February, 1906 into a family with military and diplomatic connections. He was educated at Wellington College and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1929 he joined the Foreign Office, where he won early recognition in the offices of a succession of Parliamentary Under-Secretaries and then the Permanent Under-Secretary. He remained engaged with policy towards India until that country became independent in 1947. Shortly thereafter he was posted to South Africa as Deputy High Commissioner, returning to Whitehall in 1953 as Assistant Under-Secretary, then Deputy Under-Secretary with special concerns for Commonwealth economic affairs.

After retirement Sir Algernon remained active, successively Chairman of the Committee on Inter-Territorial Questions in Central Africa, and Adviser at the Welsh Office and Deputy Chairman of the Air Transport Licensing Board. He was on the Governing Body of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London from 1965 to 1980 and became an Honorary Fellow in 1981.

SOAS University of London (/ˈsoʊæs/; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area of central London.

SOAS is one of the world's leading institutions for the study of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. It also houses the Brunei Gallery, which hosts a programme of changing contemporary and historical exhibitions from Asia, Africa and the Middle East with the aim to present and promote cultures from these regions.

SOAS is divided into three faculties: Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Faculty of Languages and Cultures and Faculty of Law and Social Sciences. It is home to the SOAS School of Law which is one of leading law schools in the UK. The university offers around 350 undergraduate bachelor's degree combinations, more than 100 one-year master's degrees and PhD programmes in nearly every department. The university has a student-staff ratio of 11:1. The university has produced several heads of states, government ministers, diplomats, central bankers, Supreme Court judges, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and many other notable leaders around the world. SOAS is a member of Association of Commonwealth Universities.

Origins

The School of Oriental Studies was founded in 1916 at 2 Finsbury Circus, London, the then premises of the London Institution. The school received its royal charter on 5 June 1916 and admitted its first students on 18 January 1917. The school was formally inaugurated a month later on 23 February 1917 by George V. Among those in attendance were Earl Curzon of Kedleston, formerly Viceroy of India, and other cabinet officials.

The School of Oriental Studies was founded by the British state as an instrument to strengthen Britain's political, commercial and military presence in Asia and Africa. It would do so by providing instruction to colonial administrators (Colonial Service and Imperial Civil Service), commercial managers and military officers, but also to missionaries, doctors and teachers, in the language of that part of Asia or Africa to which each was being posted, together with an authoritative introduction to the customs, religion, laws and history of the people whom they were to govern or among whom they would be working.

The school's founding mission was to advance British scholarship, science and commerce in Africa and Asia and to provide London University with a rival to the Oriental schools of Berlin, Petrograd and Paris. The school immediately became integral in training British administrators, colonial officials and spies for overseas postings across the British Empire. Africa was added to the school's name in 1938....

In 1942, the War Office joined with the school's Japanese department to help alleviate the shortage in Japanese linguists. State scholarships were offered to select grammar and public school boys to train as military translators and intelligence officers. Lodged at Dulwich College in south London, the students became affectionately known as the Dulwich boys.

Bletchley Park, the headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), was concerned about the slow pace of the SOAS, so they started their own Japanese-language courses at Bedford in February 1942. The courses were directed by army cryptographer Col. John Tiltman, and retired Royal Navy officer Capt. Oswald Tuck.

1945 to present

In recognition of SOAS's role during the war, the 1946 Scarborough Commission (officially the "Commission of Enquiry into the Facilities for Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African Studies") report recommended a major expansion in provision for the study of Asia and the school benefited greatly from the subsequent largesse. The SOAS School of Law was established in 1947 with Professor Vesey-Fitzgerald as its first head. Growth however was curtailed by following years of economic austerity, and upon Sir Cyril Philips assuming the directorship in 1956, the school was in a vulnerable state. Over his 20-year stewardship, Phillips transformed the school, raising funds and broadening the school's remit.

A college of the University of London, the School's fields include Law, Social Sciences, Humanities, and Languages with special reference to Asia and Africa. The SOAS Library, located in the Philips Building, is the UK's national resource for materials relating to Asia and Africa and is the largest of its kind in the world. ...

In 2011, the Privy Council approved changes to the school's charter allowing it to award degrees in its own name, following the trend set by fellow colleges the London School of Economics, University College London and King's College London. All new students registered from September 2013 will qualify for a SOAS, University of London, award....

Directors

Since its foundation, the school has had nine directors. The inaugural director was the celebrated linguist Sir Edward Denison Ross. Under the stewardship of Sir Cyril Philips, the school saw considerable growth and modernisation.

-- SOAS University of London, by Wikipedia

His book Watershed in India, 1914-1922 was published in 1979. But it was his concern for Tibet which remained most active until the end. Having been President of the Tibet Society of the U.K. and the Tibet Relief Fund from 1977 to 1988, he continued to attend major meetings and Tibetan functions until last year. In a letter shortly before his death he expressed satisfaction at the progress recently made in pressing the Tibetan case, which he characterised as a "transformation."

Sir Algernon's widow, Margaret Adel, and his two married daughters survive him.

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Gangaridai [Gandaridai] [Gandaridae] [Gandaritae] [Gandridae] [Gangaridae] [Gargaridae]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/6/21

47. The country inland from Barygaza is inhabited by numerous tribes, such as the Arattii, the Arachosii, the Gandaraei and the people of Poclais, in which is Bucephalus Alexandria. Above these is the very warlike nation of the Bactrians, who are under their own king. And Alexander, setting out from these parts, penetrated to the Ganges, leaving aside Damirica and the southern part of India; and to the present day ancient drachmae are current in Barygaza, coming from this country, bearing inscriptions in Greek letters, and the devices of those who reigned after Alexander, Apollodorus and Menander. [Librarian's Comment: A significant and presumably knowing omission from the Wikipedia article on the Periplus is paragraph 47, missing along with everything from 42-48, this extraordinary piece of testimony that cuts against the general trend of Indian pseudo-history that contends Alexander never reached the Ganges. Indeed, never crossed the Indus, spooked by Sandrocottus' herd of war elephants.]

-- The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century, Translated & edited by W.H. Schoff (London, Bombay & Calcutta 1912).

Gangaridai in Ptolemy's Map

Gangaridai (Greek: Γανγαρίδαι; Latin: Gangaridae) is a term used by the ancient Greco-Roman writers to describe a people or a geographical region of the ancient Indian subcontinent. Some of these writers state that Alexander the Great withdrew from the Indian subcontinent because of the strong war elephant force of the Gangaridai. The writers variously mention the Gangaridai as a distinct tribe, or a nation within a larger kingdom (presumably the Nanda Empire).

A number of modern scholars locate Gangaridai in the Ganges Delta of the Bengal region, although alternative theories also exist. Gange or Ganges, the capital of the Gangaridai (according to Ptolemy), has been identified with several sites in the region, including Chandraketugarh and Wari-Bateshwar.

Names

The Greek writers use the names "Gandaridae" (Diodorus), "Gandaritae", and "Gandridae" (Plutarch) to describe these people. The ancient Latin writers use the name "Gangaridae", a term that seems to have been coined by the 1st century poet Virgil.[1]

Some modern etymologies of the word Gangaridai split it as "Gaṅgā-rāṣṭra", "Gaṅgā-rāḍha" or "Gaṅgā-hṛdaya". However, D. C. Sircar believes that the word is simply the plural form of "Gangarid" (derived from the base "Ganga"), and means "Ganga (Ganges) people".[2]

Greek accounts

Several ancient Greek writers mention Gangaridai [rather, "Gandaridae; Gandaritae and Gandridae"???], but their accounts are largely based on hearsay.[3]

Diodorus

The earliest surviving description of Gangaridai ["Gandaridae"????] appears in Bibliotheca historica of the 1st century BCE writer Diodorus Siculus. This account is based on a now-lost work, probably the writings of either Megasthenes or Hieronymus of Cardia.[4]

In Book 2 of Bibliotheca historica, Diodorus states that "Gandaridae" (i.e. Gangaridai[???]) territory was located to the east of the Ganges river, which was 30 stades wide. He mentions that no foreign enemy had ever conquered Gandaridae, because of its strong elephant force.[5] He further states that Alexander the Great advanced up to Ganges after subjugating other Indians, but decided to retreat when he heard that the Gandaridae had 4,000 elephants.[6]

This river [Ganges], which is thirty stades in width, flows from north to south and empties into the ocean, forming the boundary towards the east of the tribe of the Gandaridae, which possesses the greatest number of elephants and the largest in size. Consequently no foreign king has ever subdued this country, all alien nations being fearful of both the multitude and the strength of the beasts. In fact even Alexander of Macedon, although he had subdued all Asia, refrained from making war upon the Gandaridae alone of all peoples; for when he had arrived at the Ganges river with his entire army, after his conquest of the rest of the Indians, upon learning that the Gandaridae had four thousand elephants equipped for war he gave up his campaign against them.

-- Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 2.37.2-3. Translated by Charles Henry Oldfather.[7]

37. The land of the Indians has also many large navigable rivers which have their sources in the mountains lying to the north and then flow through the level country; and not a few of these unite and empty into the river known as the Ganges. This river, which is thirty stades in width, flows from north to south and empties into the ocean, forming the boundary towards the east of the tribe of the Gandaridae, which possesses the greatest number of elephants and the largest in size. Consequently no foreign king has ever subdued this country, all alien nations being fearful of both the multitude and the strength of the beasts. In fact even Alexander of Macedon, although he had subdued all Asia, refrained from making war upon the Gandaridae alone of all peoples; for when he had arrived at the Ganges river with his entire army, after his conquest of the rest of the Indians, upon learning that the Gandaridae had four thousand elephants equipped for war he gave up his campaign against them.1 [A fuller account of this incident is given in Book 17. 93. But Alexander did not reach the river system of the Ganges, the error being due to a confusion of the Ganges with the Sutlej, a tributary of the Indus; cp. W. W. Tarn, “Alexander and the Ganges,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, 43 (1923), 93 ff.]

The river which is nearly the equal of the Ganges and is called the Indus rises like the Ganges in the north, but as it empties into the ocean forms a boundary of India; and in its course through an expanse of level plain it receives not a few navigable rivers, the most notable being the Hypanis,2 [In Book 17. 93. 1 and Arrian, 6. 24. 8, this river is called the Hyphasis, which is the name preferred by most modern writers. Strabo (15. 1. 27, 32), however, calls it the Hypanis, and Quintus Curtius (9. 1. 35), Hypasis.] Hydaspes, and Acesinus. And in addition to these three rivers a vast number of others of every description traverse the country and bring it about that the land is planted in many gardens and crops of every description. Now for the multitude of rivers and the exceptional supply of water the philosophers and students of nature among them advance the following cause: The countries which surround India, they say, such as Scythia, Bactria, and Ariana, are higher than India, and so it is reasonable to assume that the waters which come together from every side into the country lying below them, gradually cause the regions to become soaked and to generate a multitude of rivers. And a peculiar thing happens in the case of one of the rivers of India, known as the Silla, which flows from a spring of the same name; for it is the only river in the world possessing the characteristic that nothing cast into it floats, but that everything, strange to say, sinks to the bottom.

-- Diodorus of Siciliy in Twelve Volumes, Volume I, Books II (continued) 35-IV, 58, with an English translation by C.H. Oldfather, Professor of Ancient History and Languages, The University of Nebraska, 1935 (p. 9-13)

In Book 17 of Bibliotheca historica, Diodorus once again describes the "Gandaridae", and states that Alexander had to retreat after his soldiers refused to take an expedition against the Gandaridae. The book (17.91.1) also mentions that a nephew of Porus fled to the land of the Gandaridae,[6] although C. Bradford Welles translates the name of this land as "Gandara".[8]

Beyond the Hydaspes was the powerful kingdom of Porus, who held sway as far as the Acesines, which we know as the Chenab, the next of the "Five Rivers." East of the Chenab, in the lands of the Ravee and the Beas, were other small principalities, and also free "kingless" peoples, who owned no master.



-- Chapter XVIII: The Conquest of the Far East, Excerpt from "History of Greece for Beginners", by J. B. Bury, M.A.

He [Alexander] questioned Phegeus about the country beyond the Indus River, and learned that there was a desert to traverse for twelve days, and then the river called Ganges, which was thirty-two furlongs in width and the deepest of all the Indian rivers. Beyond this in turn dwelt the peoples of the Tabraesians [misreading of Prasii[1]] and the Gandaridae, whose king was Xandrames. He had twenty thousand cavalry, two hundred thousand infantry, two thousand chariots, and four thousand elephants equipped for war. Alexander doubted this information and sent for Porus, and asked him what was the truth of these reports. Porus assured the king that all the rest of the account was quite correct, but that the king of the Gandaridae was an utterly common and undistinguished character, and was supposed to be the son of a barber. His father had been handsome and was greatly loved by the queen; when she had murdered her husband, the kingdom fell to him.

-- Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 17.93. Translated by C. Bradford Welles.[8]

In Book 18 of Bibliotheca historica, Diodorus describes India as a large kingdom comprising several nations, the largest of which was "Tyndaridae" (which seems to be a scribal error for "Gandaridae"). He further states that a river separated this nation from their neighbouring territory; this 30-stadia wide river was the greatest river in this region of India (Diodorus does not mention the name of the river in this book). He goes on to mention that Alexander did not campaign against this nation, because they had a large number of elephants.[6] The Book 18 description is as follows:

…the first one along the Caucasus is India, a great and populous kingdom, inhabited by many Indian nations, of which the greatest is that of the Gandaridae, against whom Alexander did not make a campaign because of the multitude of their elephants. The river Ganges, which is the deepest of the region and has a width of thirty stades, separates this land from the neighbouring part of India. Adjacent to this is the rest of India, which Alexander conquered, irrigated by water from the rivers and most conspicuous for its prosperity. Here were the dominions of Porus and Taxiles, together with many other kingdoms, and through it flows the Indus River, from which the country received its name.

-- Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 18.6.1-2. Translated by Russel M. Geer.[9]

Diodorus' account of India in the Book 2 is based on Indica, a book written by the 4th century BCE writer Megasthenes, who actually visited India. Megasthenes' Indica is now lost, although it has been reconstructed from the writings of Diodorus and other later writers.[6] J. W. McCrindle (1877) attributed Diodorus' Book 2 passage about the Gangaridai to Megasthenes in his reconstruction of Indica.[10] However, according to A. B. Bosworth (1996), Diodorus' source for the information about the Gangaridai was Hieronymus of Cardia (354–250 BCE), who was a contemporary of Alexander and the main source of information for Diodorus' Book 18. Bosworth points out that Diodorus describes Ganges as 30 stadia wide; but it is well-attested by other sources that Megasthenes described the median (or minimum) width of Ganges as 100 stadia.[4] This suggests that Diodorus obtained the information about the Gandaridae from another source, and appended it to Megasthenes' description of India in Book 2.[6]

Plutarch

Plutarch (46-120 CE) mentions the Gangaridai as "'Gandaritae" (in Parallel Lives - Life of Alexander 62.3) and as "Gandridae" (in Moralia 327b.).[1]

The Battle with Porus depressed the spirits of the Macedonians, and made them very unwilling to advance farther into India... This river [the Ganges], they heard, had a breadth of two and thirty stadia, and a depth of 1000 fathoms, while its farther banks were covered all over with armed men, horses and elephants. For the kings of the Gandaritai and the Prasiai were reported to be waiting for him (Alexander) with an army of 80,000 horse, 200,000 foot, 8,000 war-chariots, and 6,000 fighting elephants.

-- Plutarch[11]

Other writers


A modern map identifying the places depicted in the Periplous of the Erythraean Sea

Ptolemy (2nd century CE), in his Geography, states that the Gangaridae occupied "all the region about the mouths of the Ganges".[12] He names a city called Gange as their capital.[13] This suggests that Gange was the name of a city, derived from the name of the river. Based on the city's name, the Greek writers used the word "Gangaridai" to describe the local people.[12]

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea does not mention the Gangaridai, but attests the existence of a city that the Greco-Romans described as "Ganges":

There is a river near it called the Ganges, and it rises and falls in the same way as the Nile. On its bank is a market-town which has the same name as the river, Ganges. Through this place are brought malabathrum and Gangetic spikenard and pearls, and muslin of the finest sorts, which are called Gangetic. It is said that there are gold-mines near these places, and there is a gold coin which is called caltis.

-- Anonymous, Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Translated by Wilfred Harvey Schoff.[14]

Dionysius Periegetes (2nd-3rd century CE) mentions "Gargaridae" located near the "gold-bearing Hypanis" (Beas) river. "Gargaridae" is sometimes believed to be a variant of "Gangaridae", but another theory identifies it with Gandhari people. A. B. Bosworth dismisses Dionysius' account as "a farrago of nonsense", noting that he inaccurately describes the Hypanis river as flowing down into the Gangetic plain.[15]

Gangaridai also finds a mention in Greek mythology. In Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica (3rd century BCE), Datis, a chieftain, leader of the Gangaridae who was in the army of Perses III, fought against Aeetes during the Colchian civil war.[16] Colchis was situated in modern-day Georgia, on the east of the Black Sea. Aeetes was the famous king of Colchia against whom Jason and the Argonauts undertook their expedition in search of the "Golden Fleece". Perses III was the brother of Aeetes and king of the Taurian tribe.

I took notice that the Oreitae and Oxydracae pretended to be descended from Dionusus. The like was said of the Gargaridae, who lived upon the Hypanis [Beas River], near Mount Hemodus, and are mentioned by the poet Dionysius.

82 [Dionys. Perieg. v. 1143. Pompon. Mela speaks of the city Nusa in these parts. Urbium, quas incolunt, Nysa est clarissima et maxima: montium, Meros, Jovi sacer. Famam hic prjecipuam habent in illa genitum, in hujus specu Liberum arbitrantur esse nutritum: unde Graecis auctoribus, ut semori Jovis insitum dicerent, aut materia ingessit, aut error. L. 3. c. 7. p. 276. The most knowing of the Indi maintained that Dionusos came from the west. (Google translate: Nysa is the most famous and the largest of the cities which they inhabit: mountains, Meros, sacred to Jupiter. They have a special reputation here, begotten in it, they think in this cave that they had been brought up; whence, according to Greek authors, to say that it was implanted in the seed of Jupiter, it either caused the matter, or an error.)] [x]

He styles them from their worship and extraction "the servants of Dionusos." As there was a Caucasus in these parts, so was there also a region named 83 [Colchis mentioned by AEthicus, and styled Colche: also by Ptolemy.] Colchis; which appears to have been a very flourishing and powerful province. It was situated at the bottom of that large isthmus, which lies between the Indus and Ganges: and seems to have comprehended the kingdoms, which are styled Madura, Tranquebar, and Cochin. The Gargaridae, who lived above upon the Hypanis, used to bring down to the Colchians the gold of their country, which they bartered for other commodities. The place, where they principally traded, was the city Comar, or Comarin, at the extremity of the isthmus to the south. The Colchians had here the advantage of a pearl fishery, by which they must have been greatly enriched. A learned commentator upon the ancient geographers gives this account of their country. 84 [Geographi Minores. Prolegom.] Post Barim amnem in Aiorum regione est Elancon emporium, et Cottiara metropolis, ac Comaria promontorium; et oppidum in Periplo Erythrari [c] et [c], nunc servato nomine Comarin. Ab hoc promontorio sinus Colchicus incipit, cui Colchi, [x], emporium adjacens, nomen dederunt [Google translate: Next to the river Bari, in the region of the Aii, is Elancon, the commercial port. and Cottiara the metropolis, and Comaria the promontory; and a town in the Periplo of Erythrarus, now being maintained by the name of Comarin. From this promontory the bay of Colchicus begins to whom the Colchis, adjoining the bazaar, gave their name.]. The Periplus Maris Erythraei, here spoken of, is a most valuable and curious treatise, whoever may have been the author: and the passage chiefly referred to is that which follows: 85 [Arriani Peripl. Maris Erythraei, apud Geograph. Graecos Minores. v. i. P. 33. Dionysius calls this region [x] instead of [x]. [x]. Perieg. v. 1148. And others have supposed it was named Colis from Venus Colias. But what has any title of a Grecian Goddess to do with the geography of India? The region was styled both Colica, and Colchica. It is remarkable, that as there was a Caucasus and Regio Colica, as well as Colchica, in India: so the same names occur among the Cutheans upon the Pontus Euxinus. Here was Regio Colica, as well as Cholcica at the foot of Mount Caucasus. Pliny L. 6. c. 5. p. 305. They are the same name differently expressed.] [x]. "From Elabacara extends a mountain called Purrhos, and the coast styled Paralia" (or the pearl coast), "reaching down to the most southern point, where is the great fishery for pearl, which people dive for. It is under a king named Pandion; and the chief city is Colchi. There are two places; where they fish for this 86 [Paralia seems at first a Greek word; but is in reality a proper name in the language of the country. I make no doubt, but what we call Pearl was the Paral of the Amonians and Cuthites. Paralia is "the Land of Pearls." All the names of gems, as now in use, and of old, were from the Amonians: Adamant, Amethyst, Opal, Achates or Agate, Pyropus, Onyx, Sardonyx, AEtites, Alabaster, Beril, Coral, Cornelian. As this was the shore, where these gems were really found, we may conclude, that Paralia signified the Pearl Coast. There was pearl fishery in the Red Sea, and it continues to this day near the island Delaqua. Purchass. v. 5. p. 778. In these parts, the author of the Periplus mentions islands, which he styles [x], or Pearl Islands. See Geogr. Gr. Minores. Periplus. v. i. p. 9.] commodity: of which the first is Balita: here is a fort, and an harbour. In this place, many persons who have a mind to live an holy life, and to separate themselves from the world, come and bathe, and then enter into a state of celibacy. There are women, who do the same. For it is said that the place at particular seasons every month is frequented by the Deity of the country, a Goddess who comes and bathes in the waters. The coast, near which they fish for pearl, lies all along from Comari to Colchi. It is performed by persons, who have been guilty of some crime, and are compelled to this service. All this coast to the southward is under the aforementioned king Pandion. After this there proceeds another tract of coast, which forms a gulf."

The author then proceeds to describe the great trade, which was carried on by this people, and by those above, upon the Hypanis and Ganges: and mentions the fine linen, which was brought down from Scythia Limyrica, and from Comara, and other places. And if we compare the history, which he gives, with the modern accounts of this country, we shall find that the same rites and customs still prevail; the same manufactures are carried on: nor is the pearl fishery yet exhausted. And if any the least credit may be afforded to etymological elucidation, the names of places among the Cuthite nations are so similar in themselves, and in their purport, that we may prove the people to have been of the same family; and perceive among them the same religion and customs, however widely they were scattered. The mountains Caucasus and 87 [The mountain Pyrrhus, [x], was an eminence sacred to Ur, or Orus; who was also called Cham-Ur, and his priests Chamurin. The city Ur in Chaldea is called Chamurin by Eupolemus, who expresses it [x]. Euseb. Praep. Evang. L. 9. p. 418. Hence this promontory in Colchis Indica is rendered Comar by the author of the Periplus; and at this day it is called Comorin. The river Indus is said to run into a bay called Sinus Saronicus. Plutarch. de Flumin. Sar-On, Dominus Sol.] Pyrrhus, the rivers Hypanis, Baris, Chobar, Soana, Cophis, Phasis, Indus, of this country, are to be found among the Cuthite nations in the west. One of the chief cities in this country was Cottiara. This is no other than Aracotta reversed; and probably the same that is called Arcot at this day. The city Comara, and the promontory Comarine are of the same etymology as the city Ur in Chaldea; which was called Camar and Camarina from the priests and worship there established. The region termed Aia above Colchis was a name peculiarly given by the Amonians to the places, where they resided. Among the Greeks the word grew general; and Aia was made to signify any land: but among the Egyptians, at least among the Cuthites of that country, as well as among those of Colchis Pontica, it was used for a proper name of their country:

-- A New System, Or, An Analysis of Ancient Mythology: Wherein an Attempt is Made to Divest Tradition of Fable; and to Reduce the Truth to its Original Purity, by Jacob Bryant, 1775

Latin accounts

The Roman poet Virgil speaks of the valour of the Gangaridae in his Georgics (c. 29 BCE).

On the doors will I represent in gold and ivory the battle of the Gangaridae and the arms of our victorious Quirinius.

-- Virgil, "Georgics" (III, 27)

Quintus Curtius Rufus (possibly 1st century CE) noted the two nations Gangaridae and Prasii:

Next came the Ganges, the largest river in all India, the farther bank of which was inhabited by two nations, the Gangaridae and the Prasii, whose king Agrammes kept in field for guarding the approaches to his country 20,000 cavalry and 200,000 infantry, besides 2,000 four-horsed chariots, and, what was the most formidable of all, a troop of elephants which he said ran up to the number of 3,000.

-- Quintus Curtius Rufus[17]

Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) states:

... the last race situated on its [Ganges'] banks being that of the Gangarid Calingae: the city where their king lives is called Pertalis. This monarch has 60,000 infantry, 1000 cavalry and 700 elephants always equipped ready for active service. [...] But almost the whole of the peoples of India and not only those in this district are surpassed in power and glory by the Prasi, with their very large and wealthy city of Palibothra [Patna], from which some people give the name of Palibothri to the race itself, and indeed to the whole tract of country from the Ganges.

-- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 6.65-66. Translated by H. Rackham.[18][19]

Identification

The ancient Greek writers provide vague information about the centre of the Gangaridai power.[3] As a result, the later historians have put forward various theories about its location.

[T]he Gargaridae, who lived upon the Hypanis [Beas River], near Mount Hemodus, and are mentioned by the poet Dionysius.

He styles them from their worship and extraction "the servants of Dionusos." As there was a Caucasus in these parts, so was there also a region named Colchis; 83 [Colchis mentioned by AEthicus, and styled Colche: also by Ptolemy.] which appears to have been a very flourishing and powerful province. It was situated at the bottom of that large isthmus, which lies between the Indus and Ganges: and seems to have comprehended the kingdoms, which are styled Madura, Tranquebar, and Cochin. The Gargaridae, who lived above upon the Hypanis, used to bring down to the Colchians the gold of their country, which they bartered for other commodities. The place, where they principally traded, was the city Comar, or Comarin, at the extremity of the isthmus to the south. The Colchians had here the advantage of a pearl fishery, by which they must have been greatly enriched.

-- A New System, Or, An Analysis of Ancient Mythology: Wherein an Attempt is Made to Divest Tradition of Fable; and to Reduce the Truth to its Original Purity, by Jacob Bryant, 1775

Gangetic plains

Pliny (1st century CE) in his NH, terms the Gangaridai as the novisima gens (nearest people) of the Ganges river. It cannot be determined from his writings whether he means "nearest to the mouth" or "nearest to the headwaters". But the later writer Ptolemy (2nd century CE), in his Geography, explicitly locates the Gangaridai near the mouths of the Ganges.[15]

A. B. Bosworth notes that the ancient Latin writers almost always use the word "Gangaridae" to define the people, and associate them with the Prasii people. According to Megasthenes, who actually lived in India, the Prasii people lived near the Ganges. Besides, Pliny explicitly mentions that the Gangaridae lived beside the Ganges, naming their capital as Pertalis.[/b] All these evidences suggest that the Gangaridae lived in the Gangetic plains.[15]

37. The land of the Indians has also many large navigable rivers which have their sources in the mountains lying to the north and then flow through the level country; and not a few of these unite and empty into the river known as the Ganges. This river, which is thirty stades in width, flows from north to south and empties into the ocean, forming the boundary towards the east of the tribe of the Gandaridae, which possesses the greatest number of elephants and the largest in size. Consequently no foreign king has ever subdued this country, all alien nations being fearful of both the multitude and the strength of the beasts. In fact even Alexander of Macedon, although he had subdued all Asia, refrained from making war upon the Gandaridae alone of all peoples; for when he had arrived at the Ganges river with his entire army, after his conquest of the rest of the Indians, upon learning that the Gandaridae had four thousand elephants equipped for war he gave up his campaign against them.1 [A fuller account of this incident is given in Book 17. 93. But Alexander did not reach the river system of the Ganges, the error being due to a confusion of the Ganges with the Sutlej, a tributary of the Indus; cp. W. W. Tarn, “Alexander and the Ganges,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, 43 (1923), 93 ff.]

-- Diodorus of Siciliy in Twelve Volumes, Volume I, Books II (continued) 35-IV, 58, with an English translation by C.H. Oldfather, Professor of Ancient History and Languages, The University of Nebraska, 1935 (p. 9-13)

Rarh region

Diodorus (1st century BCE) states that the Ganges river formed the eastern boundary of the Gangaridai. Based on Diodorus's writings and the identification of Ganges with Bhāgirathi-Hooghly (a western distributary of Ganges), Gangaridai can be identified with the Rarh region in West Bengal.[3]

Larger part of Bengal

The Rarh is located to the west of the Bhāgirathi-Hooghly (Ganges) river. However, Plutarch (1st century CE), Curtius (possibly 1st century CE) and Solinus (3rd century CE), suggest that Gangaridai was located on the eastern banks of the Gangaridai river.[3] Historian R. C. Majumdar theorized that the earlier historians like Diodorus used the word Ganga for the Padma River (an eastern distributary of Ganges).[3]

Pliny names five mouths of the Ganges river, and states that the Gangaridai occupied the entire region about these mouths. He names five mouths of Ganges as Kambyson, Mega, Kamberikon, Pseudostomon and Antebole. These exact present-day locations of these mouths cannot be determined with certainty because of the changing river courses. According to D. C. Sircar, the region encompassing these mouths appears to be the region lying between the Bhāgirathi-Hooghly River in the west and the Padma River in the east.[12] This suggests that the Gangaridai territory included the coastal region of present-day West Bengal and Bangladesh, up to the Padma river in the east.[20] Gaurishankar De and Subhradip De believe that the five mouths may refer to the Bidyadhari, Jamuna and other branches of Bhāgirathi-Hooghly at the entrance of Bay of Bengal.[21]

According to the archaeologist Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti, the centre of the Gangaridai power was located in vicinity of Adi Ganga (a now dried-up flow of the Hooghly river). Chakrabarti considers Chandraketugarh as the strongest candidate for the centre, followed by Mandirtala.[22] James Wise believed that Kotalipara in present-day Bangladesh was the capital of Gangaridai.[23] Archaeologist Habibullah Pathan identified the Wari-Bateshwar ruins as the Gangaridai territory.[24]

North-western India

William Woodthorpe Tarn (1948) identifies the "Gandaridae" mentioned by Diodorus with the people of Gandhara.[25] Historian T. R. Robinson (1993) locates the Gangaridai to the immediately east of the Beas River, in the Punjab region. According to him, the unnamed river described in Diodorus' Book 18 is Beas (Hyphasis); Diodorus misinterpreted his source, and incompetently combined it with other material from Megasthenes, erroneously naming the river as Ganges in Book 2.[26] Robinson identified the Gandaridae with the ancient Yaudheyas.[27]

Yaudheyas (in the north-west) and their contemporaries as part of the Gupta Empire around 375 CE

Yaudheya or Yoddheya Gana (Yoddheya Republic) was an ancient militant confederation. The word Yaudheya is a derivative of the word from yodha meaning warriors. They were principally kshatriya renowned for their skills in warfare, as inscribed in the Junagadh rock inscription of Rudradaman by the Indo-Scythian ruler Rudradaman of the Western Satraps. The Yaudheyas emerged in the 5th century BCE and governed independently until being incorporated into the Maurya Empire....The Yaudheya Republic reformed and flourished up to the middle to the 4th century when it was ultimately conquered by Samudragupta and incorporated into the Gupta Empire until being disestablished.

-- Yaudheya, by Wikipedia

A. B. Bosworth (1996) rejects this theory, pointing out that Diodorus describes the unnamed river in Book 18 as the greatest river in the region. But Beas is not the largest river in its region. Even if one excludes the territory captured by Alexander in "the region" (thus excluding the Indus River), the largest river in the region is Chenab (Acesines). Robison argues that Diodorus describes the unnamed river as "the greatest river in its own immediate area", but Bosworth believes that this interpretation is not supported by Diodorus's wording.[28] Bosworth also notes that Yaudheyas were an autonomous confederation, and do not match the ancient descriptions that describe Gandaridae as part of a strong kingdom.[27]

Other

According to Nitish K. Sengupta, it is possible that the term "Gangaridai" refers to the whole of northern India from the Beas River to the western part of Bengal.[3]

Pliny mentions the Gangaridae and the Calingae (Kalinga) together. One interpretation based on this reading suggests that Gangaridae and the Calingae were part of the Kalinga tribe, which spread into the Ganges delta.[29] N. K. Sahu of Utkal University identifies Gangaridae as the northern part of Kalinga.[30]

Political status

Diodorus mentions Gangaridai and Prasii as one nation, naming Xandramas as the king of this nation. Diodorus calls them "two nations under one king."[31] Historian A. B. Bosworth believes that this is a reference to the Nanda dynasty,[32] and the Nanda territory matches the ancient descriptions of kingdom in which the Gangaridae were located.[27]

According to Nitish K. Sengupta, it is possible that Gangaridai and Prasii are actually two different names of the same people, or closely allied people. However, this cannot be said with certainty.[31]

Historian Hemchandra Ray Chowdhury writes: "It may reasonably be inferred from the statements of the Greek and Latin writers that about the time of Alexander's invasion, the Gangaridai were a very powerful nation, and either formed a dual monarchy with the Pasioi [Prasii], or were closely associated with them on equal terms in a common cause against the foreign invader.[33]

References

Citations

1. A. B. Bosworth 1996, p. 75.
2. Dineschandra Sircar 1971, p. 171, 215.
3. Nitish K. Sengupta 2011, p. 28.
4. A. B. Bosworth 1996, pp. 188-189.
5. A. B. Bosworth 1996, p. 188.
6. A. B. Bosworth 1996, p. 189.
7. Diodorus Siculus (1940). The Library of History of Diodorus Siculus. Loeb Classical Library. II. Translated by Charles Henry Oldfather. Harvard University Press. OCLC 875854910.
8. Diodorus Siculus (1963). The Library of History of Diodorus Siculus. Loeb Classical Library. VIII. Translated by C. Bradford Welles. Harvard University Press. OCLC 473654910.
9. Diodorus Siculus (1947). The Library of History of Diodorus Siculus. Loeb Classical Library. IX. Translated by Russel M. Geer. Harvard University Press. OCLC 781220155.
10. J. W. McCrindle 1877, pp. 33-34.
11. R. C. Majumdar 1982, p. 198.
12. Dineschandra Sircar 1971, p. 172.
13. Dineschandra Sircar 1971, p. 171.
14. Wilfred H. Schoff (1912). The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea; Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean. Longmans, Green and Co. ISBN 978-1-296-00355-5.
15. A. B. Bosworth 1996, p. 192.
16. Carlos Parada (1993). Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology. Åström. p. 60. ISBN 978-91-7081-062-6.
17. R. C. Majumdar 1982, pp. 103-128.
18. Pliny (1967). Natural History. Loeb Classical Library. Translated by H. Rackham. Harvard University Press. OCLC 613102012.
19. R. C. Majumdar 1982, p. 341-343.
20. Ranabir Chakravarti 2001, p. 212.
21. Gourishankar De; Shubhradip De (2013). Prasaṅga, pratna-prāntara Candraketugaṛa. Scalāra. ISBN 978-93-82435-00-6.
22. Dilip K. Chakrabarti 2001, p. 154.
23. Jesmin Sultana 2003, p. 125.
24. Enamul Haque 2001, p. 13.
25. A. B. Bosworth 1996, p. 191.
26. A. B. Bosworth 1996, p. 190.
27. A. B. Bosworth 1996, p. 194.
28. A. B. Bosworth 1996, p. 193.
29. Biplab Dasgupta 2005, p. 339.
30. N. K. Sahu 1964, pp. 230-231.
31. Nitish K. Sengupta 2011, pp. 28-29.
32. A. B. Bosworth 1993, p. 132.
33. Chowdhury, The History of Bengal Volume I, p. 44.

Sources

• A. B. Bosworth (1993). Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great. Cambridge University Press. pp. 132–. ISBN 978-1-107-71725-1.
• A. B. Bosworth (1996). Alexander and the East. Clarendon. p. 192. ISBN 978-0-19-158945-4.
• Biplab Dasgupta (2005). European Trade and Colonial Conquest. Anthem Press. ISBN 978-1-84331-029-7.
• Dilip K. Chakrabarti (2001). Archaeological Geography of the Ganga Plain: The Lower and the Middle Ganga. Orient Blackswan. ISBN 978-81-7824-016-9.
• Dineschandra Sircar (1971). Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 978-81-208-0690-0.
• Enamul Haque (2001). Excavation at Wari-Bateshwar: A Preliminary Study. International Center for Study of Bengal Art. ISBN 978-984-8140-02-4.
• J. W. McCrindle (1877). Ancient India As Described By Megasthenes And Arrian. London: Trübner & Co.
• Jesmin Sultana (2003). Sirajul Islam; Ahmed A. Jamal (eds.). Banglapedia: Kotalipara. 6. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. ISBN 978-984-32-0581-0.
• N. K. Sahu (1964). History of Orissa from the Earliest Time Up to 500 A.D. Utkal University.
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• Ranabir Chakravarti (2001). Trade in Early India. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-564795-2.
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Alexander and the Ganges1 [This paper is the conclusion of a study dealing with Diod. 18. chs. l-6, of which the first part, relating to chs. 1-4, was published J.H.S. 1921. 1. These six chapters are important, as they professedly lie round about that point in the tradition where Ptolemy ends and Hieronymus begins.]
by William Woodthorpe Tarn
The Journal of Hellenic Studies
The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
Volume XLIII, p. 93
1923

47. The country inland from Barygaza is inhabited by numerous tribes, such as the Arattii, the Arachosii, the Gandaraei and the people of Poclais, in which is Bucephalus Alexandria. Above these is the very warlike nation of the Bactrians, who are under their own king. And Alexander, setting out from these parts, penetrated to the Ganges, leaving aside Damirica and the southern part of India; and to the present day ancient drachmae are current in Barygaza, coming from this country, bearing inscriptions in Greek letters, and the devices of those who reigned after Alexander, Apollodorus and Menander. [Librarian's Comment: A significant and presumably knowing omission from the Wikipedia article on the Periplus is paragraph 47, missing along with everything from 42-48, this extraordinary piece of testimony that cuts against the general trend of Indian pseudo-history that contends Alexander never reached the Ganges. Indeed, never crossed the Indus, spooked by Sandrocottus' herd of war elephants.]

-- The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century, Translated & edited by W.H. Schoff (London, Bombay & Calcutta 1912).

Maurya ... it seems that Chandragupta went by that name, particularly in the west; for he is known to Arabian writers by the name of Mur, according to the Nubian geographer, who says that he was defeated and killed by Alexander; for these authors supposed that this conqueror crossed the Ganges; and it is also the opinion of some ancient historians in the west.

-- Essay III. Of the Kings of Magadha; their Chronology, by Captain Wilford, Asiatic Researches, Volume 9, 1809. pgs. 94-100.

Highlights:

When Alexander turned back at the Hyphasis (Beas), how much did he know about what lay before him? And why, in the vulgate tradition, does he know of the distant Ganges and the distant kingdom of Magadha, but not of the next great river to the Beas, the Sutlej (a question often asked), or of anything else between the Beas and the Ganges?...

We possess one contemporary document bearing on the matter which has escaped notice, a satrapy-list or gazetteer of ‘Asia,' i.e. Alexander's empire, [‘Asia’ or ’all Asia’ means, in the later part of the fourth century, the Persian Empire which Alexander claimed to rule...]... We can date this document with certainty. It includes the Indian provinces, and so is later than Alexander's return from India. The ‘Hyrcanian sea’ (not Caspian) is still a lake, so it is earlier than Patrocles. Chandragupta is unknown, so it is certainly earlier than Megasthenes and probably earlier than circ. 302. Porus is still alive, so it is earlier than 317. Susiana ‘happens to be' part of Persis, i.e. it was under the same satrap, which can only have happened at one point in the story: the satrap is Peucestas... Media is still undivided; so the document is earlier than the partition of Babylon in 323, when Media was divided between Peithon and Atropates. Lastly, Armenia still appears as a satrapy of the empire, whereas the fiction of an Armenian satrapy was abandoned at the partition of Babylon, and this is decisive. The gazetteer then dates between spring 324 and June-July 323...

It begins in 18, 6. 1 on the southern provinces, working from east to west; India therefore comes first. What it says about India, in Diodorus’ version, is this: India lies along the Caucasus, and is a large kingdom of several peoples, the greatest of them being the Tyndaridae (or Gandaridae), whom Alexander did not attack because of their elephants. A river, the greatest in that district, 30 stades broad, divides this country from the India that comes next, i.e. further westward. Bordering on this country is the rest of India which Alexander conquered, through the middle of which runs the Indus... Note especially that the gazetteer, like the sources used by Arrian in his narrative, does not mention the two names which play such a part in the vulgate tradition, the Ganges and the Prasii: and, looking at what the gazetteer does say about India, this shows conclusively that neither was known to its author, that is, to those about Alexander in 324/3. Alexander then can have known nothing of the Ganges or of Magadha, but it remains to see how the vulgate tradition arose...

The first Greek to visit and describe the Ganges and the Prasii was Megasthenes...The Prasii are his name for Magadha, as is shown by Pataliputra being their capital...Magadha in actual fact lay on this side of (i.e. south and west of) the Ganges, and its empire (before Chandragupta) lay further west still...

Cleitarchus, who fixed the vulgate tradition about Alexander, did not accompany Alexander to Asia and was not with him in India; he was not one of the contemporary historians of the expedition, and is not a primary source, but was a literary compiler belonging to a later generation. It is certain now that he cannot have written earlier than the decade 280-270; and there are grounds, though not conclusive grounds, for putting his book even later, after 260....The points proven are that Cleitarchus used Berossos, Patrocles, and Timaeus, and had never himself seen Babylon...he wrote much later than Megasthenes....

in the vulgate, Alexander, when he reaches the Beas, hears of the Ganges and the Prasii, whom he desires to conquer; the story is given by both Diodorus and Curtius, and is our only professed account of what he knew when he turned back, though the good tradition, as we shall see, has a very different account of what the army believed....Diodorus, Book 17, primarily represents Cleitarchus... Diodorus and Curtius agree here, among other things, in one most extraordinary perversion, which therefore goes back to Cleitarchus also, and which is the key of the whole matter; the Prasii are beyond the Ganges. This strange mistake also occurs in Plut. Alex. 62, where the Prasii hold the further bank...

Cleitarchus must have had before him, among the other documents which we know he used, the two we have here noticed, the gazetteer of 324/3, and Megasthenes.... In the first he found an unnamed river, called the greatest in the district, and a named kingdom beyond it. In the second he found the greatest river in India, the Ganges, and a kingdom whose capital stood on its bank, though in fact the kingdom stretched out westward. Like Fischer in his edition of Diodorus, he identified the two rivers and called the unnamed river the Ganges; and the kingdom of the Tyndaridae or Gandaridae, beyond the unnamed river, he then naturally identified with that of the Prasii, which he then necessarily placed beyond the Ganges; hence in the Cleitarchean vulgate this kingdom regularly appears as ‘the Gandaridae (or Gangaridae) and Prasii.' Starting from this identification, he then wrote up Alexander in his usual fashion, not knowing that he had left out most of Northern India....he was a very bad geographer in any case, and the man who could confuse two such well-known rivers as the Hydaspes and the Acesines would have had no difficulty in confusing the unnamed river and the Ganges....

Fortunately he left untouched an easy means of checking his mistake: the breadths of the rivers. The unnamed river of the gazetteer is 30 stades broad. Megasthenes' Ganges is not less than 100 stades broad.... The breadth alone then is sufficient proof that the ‘Ganges’ of Cleitarchus-Diodorus is only the unnamed river of the gazetteer....

On the other hand, Diod. 17, 108, 3 — the Macedonians refuse to cross the Ganges — has nothing directly to do with this identification: it is a reference, not part of the narrative, and is therefore not Cleitarchus; it belongs to a later legend...As 2, 37, 2 represents the gazetteer, it is interesting to note that it gives one detail not given in 18, 6, 1: the river in question, the unnamed river, runs from north to south. It was well enough known since Megasthenes that all the middle Ganges, above Pataliputra, ran roughly west and east....

Before leaving Cleitarchus, one other point may be noticed. His story about the Ganges and the Prasii is told to Alexander by a rajah on the Beas named Phegeus, who begins by saying that across the river is a desert of eleven (Curtius) or twelve (Diodorus) days’ journey. No Indian living on the upper Beas could have said this. If Phegeus, who is unknown to the good tradition, ever existed, he lived much further south, near the Rajputana desert; but he may be as mythical as some other characters in the vulgate. That Cleitarchus put his Ganges story in the mouth of a man who begins by placing the great desert on the east bank of the upper Beas is itself a good test of what that story is worth...

The statement that Alexander turned back from fear of the elephants is a late legend inserted by Diodorus himself...

Strictly construed, the gazetteer imports that Alexander claimed India up to the Sutlej; and it is possible enough that he did. Across the Beas, says Arr. 5, 25, 1, was a people aristocratically governed (i.e. an Aratta people) with many elephants. [Amplified in Strabo, 15, 702: a ruling oligarchy of 5000, each of whom gave an elephant to the State!] This can hardly go back to the Journal, from its form; probably it is Aristobulas repeating camp gossip, for the Aratta known to us had no elephants... we get some support for the suggestion that the rule of Darius I. had ended at the Beas, where Alexander's men refused to go on...

The conclusion then is that Alexander, when he turned back, knew of the Sutlej, and vaguely of some kingdom beyond it, with which the name Gandaridae or Tyndaridae was connected. He never knew of the Ganges or of Magadha, any more than he ever knew of the vast Middle Country between the Sutlej and the Ganges. What he did know was not of a nature to shake his conviction, based primarily on the Aristotelian geography, that Ocean lay at quite a short distance in front of him, as is proved by his desire still to advance in spite of the great reduction in his small striking force by troops left on communications... The story that he knew of the Ganges and Magadha, which is unknown to the good tradition, has been written into the vulgate from Megasthenes through a mistake which I have traced; and by means of this story the vulgate has attributed to Alexander a scheme of conquest [The vulgate's idea that Alexander meant to cross the Ganges, involving a conflict with Magadha, would almost arise naturally from its substitution of the Ganges for the Sutlej] which has no basis in fact, because he knew nothing of the existence of the place whose conquest was the object of the scheme. The legend of the plan to conquer Magadha, however, matured much faster than the parallel legend of the plan to conquer Carthage and the Mediterranean, whose growth I have previously traced; for while the latter was not actually accomplished till the Romance, Alexander conquered Magadha long before that. The first step was that someone forged a letter from Craterus to his mother (Strabo 15, 702) in which Alexander reaches the Ganges. Then follow two stories; in the one, preserved by Diodorus, 2, 37, 3, Alexander reaches the Ganges but dare not attack the Gandaridae (sic) because of their 4000 elephants; in the other, given in Plut. Alex. 62 and alluded to in Diodorus 17, 108, 3, he reaches the Ganges and desires to cross, but the army refuses. (As in Plutarch the ‘Gandaritae and Prasii hold the further bank, which represents the blunder made by Cleitarchus which this paper has been tracing, we have here an excellent instance of later legend springing from the Cleitarchean vulgate; it is illuminating for Plutarch's indiscriminate use of material.) Finally, in Justin 12, 8, 9, Alexander does conquer Magadha: Praesios, Gangaridas, caesis eorum exercitibus expugnat. The statement in Diodorus' version of the gazetteer, 18, 6, 1, that Alexander did not attack the Gandaridae because of their elephants, is then a mere remark of Diodorus' own, quoted from his own version of the legend in 2, 37, 3. Like many legends, it possesses a minute substratum of fact; the report about the elephants across the Beas. Arr. 5, 25, 1, was one of the causes which decided Alexander's army to go no further.

-- Alexander and the Ganges, by William Woodthorpe Tarn

When Alexander turned back at the Hyphasis (Beas), how much did he know about what lay before him? And why, in the vulgate tradition, does he know of the distant Ganges and the distant kingdom of Magadha, but not of the next great river to the Beas, the Sutlej (a question often asked), or of anything else between the Beas and the Ganges? The answer is not difficult, once the elements of our tradition are sorted out chronologically; that, as in so many questions, is the real problem.

We possess one contemporary document bearing on the matter which has escaped notice, a satrapy-list or gazetteer of ‘Asia,' i.e. Alexander's empire,2 [‘Asia’ or ’all Asia’ means, in the later part of the fourth century, the Persian Empire which Alexander claimed to rule; so used both by Alexander himself (Arr. 2, 14, 8, in 333; Lindian Chron. c. 103. in 330; and Nearchus ap. Arr. Ind. 35, 8, in 32.5) and in common parlance (e.g. Syll.3 326, in 307 '6).] dating from the last year of his life; very possibly Hieronymus used it by way of introduction to his history of the Successors, and it now forms the basis of Diodorus 18, 5 and 6.3 [I called attention briefly to this document in J.H.S. 1921, p. 8, n. 36a. As to Hieronymus, see Reuss’ acute suggestion, Rh. Mus, 57, 1902, p. 586, n. 1. If so, Diodorus got it from Hieronymus.] We can date this document with certainty. It includes the Indian provinces, and so is later than Alexander's return from India. The ‘Hyrcanian sea’ (not Caspian) is still a lake, so it is earlier than Patrocles. Chandragupta is unknown, so it is certainly earlier than Megasthenes and probably earlier than circ. 302. Porus is still alive, so it is earlier than 317. Susiana ‘happens to be' part of Persis.4 [18, 6, 3; Persis [x].] i.e. it was under the same satrap, which can only have happened at one point in the story: the satrap is Peucestas,5 [Dexippus fr. 1 (on the partition of Babylon), with von Gutschmid's emendation of [x]; Sogdiana has already been mentioned, so the corruption is certain, and the emendation is certain also on geographical grounds, the order being Carmania, Persis [x], Babylonia, Mesopotamia. What Dexippos says is this: — as to the Susians, after death overtook 'Oropios’ (name admittedly corrupt) for rebellion, 'then he had the authority over them jointly with‘ something, [x]. The subject of [x], whether [x] has fallen out before [x] or not, is the person last mentioned before 'Oropios,’ i.e. Peucestas, satrap of Persis; and [x] means ‘as well as over Persis.' The fact that, at the time of the partition of Babylon, Susiana was reckoned part of Persis explains the omission of Susiana from all our lists (except Justin’s) of the satrapies dealt with at that partition, the lists being otherwise complete (see the table of lists in Beloch 3. 2. 240). Justin 13, 4, 14 does give gens Susiana Coeno, but 'Coeno' is merely a corruption of [x] and not vice versa, as Beloch, 3, 2, 242 curiously suggested (repeated by Lehmann-Haupt. art. Satrap in Pauly- Wissowa): Coenus was dead (Arr. 6. 2, 1), and no one else of the name is known, and one cannot suppose that Coenus left a younger son of the same name who became a satrap and is never otherwise heard of, seeing that his heir Perdiccas (Syll.3 332), i.e. his eldest or only son, never held any office. Justin's version of the list contains other blunders, and Droysen (Kl. Schr. 2 201) saw long ago that Coeno must be corrupt, though he did not see the solution.] and the date must therefore be before the partition of Triparadeisos in 321, when Susiana was given to Antigenes. The Hyrcanian sea ‘happens to be embraced by‘ Parthia;6 [8, 5, 4. [x]. Fischer's addition of [x] in his text is as indefensible as his insertion of [x] in 18, 6, 2.] that is, Parthia and Hyrcania are still one satrapy, as they were under Phrataphernes, an arrangement which terminated in 321, when Philippus received Parthia alone. Media is still undivided; so the document is earlier than the partition of Babylon in 323, when Media was divided between Peithon and Atropates. Lastly, Armenia still appears as a satrapy of the empire, whereas the fiction of an Armenian satrapy was abandoned at the partition of Babylon,7 [Details collected in Beloch 3. 2. 245.] and this is decisive. The gazetteer then dates between spring 324 and June-July 323. It may or may not be official.

This document divides the empire into north and south of the Taurus-'Caucasus‘ line.8 [Eratosthenes took his similar division from this document, and not vice versa; apart from the date, which is certain, it contains no trace of the real characteristic of his geographical scheme, the [x].] After dealing with the northern provinces, it begins in 18, 6. 1 on the southern provinces, working from east to west; India therefore comes first. What it says about India, in Diodorus’ version, is this: India lies along ([x]) the Caucasus, and is a large kingdom of several peoples, the greatest of them being the Tyndaridae (or Gandaridae), whom Alexander did not attack because of their elephants. A river, the greatest in that district ([x]), 30 stades broad, divides ([x]) this country ([x]) — I think this means the India already described, but it might mean the Tyndaridae — from the India that comes next, i.e. further westward ([x]). Bordering on this country ([x]) — i.e. either on the India already described or on the Tyndaridae — is the rest of India which Alexander conquered ([x] above), through the middle of which runs the Indus. That is to say, Alexander's conquests are divided from the rest of India by an unnamed river: independent India beyond this river is a single kingdom, associated with a name. Note especially that the gazetteer, like the sources used by Arrian in his narrative, does not mention the two names which play such a part in the vulgate tradition, the Ganges and the Prasii: and, looking at what the gazetteer does say about India, this shows conclusively that neither was known to its author, that is, to those about Alexander in 324/3. Alexander then can have known nothing of the Ganges or of Magadha; but it remains to see how the vulgate tradition arose.

The first Greek to visit and describe the Ganges and the Prasii was Megasthenes, who left India for the last time not later than Chandragupta's death, circ. 297, and must have written at latest soon after that date, while he may have written earlier. The Prasii are his name for Magadha, as is shown by Pataliputra being their capital.9 [Strabo, 15, 702; Arr. Ind. 10, 5; both explicitly from Megasthenes.] Magadha in actual fact lay on this side of (i.e. south and west of) the Ganges, and its empire (before Chandragupta) lay further west still, occupying part of the vast district of Northern India known as the Middle Country.10 [See Cambridge History of India. Vol. I. (1922), Map no. 5.]

1. The Greek scholars recorded the names of kings of India as Xandrames, and Sandrocottus. Western historians deliberately identified these names with those of Mahapadmananda or Dhanananda and Chandragupta Maurya. Xandrames was said to be the father of Sandrocottus. According to John W. McCrindle, Diodorus distorted the name "Sandrocottus" into Xandrames and this again is distorted by Curtius into Agrammes. It is totally absurd to link Xandrames with Mahapadmananda and Sandrocottus with Chandragupta Maurya. Most probably, Greeks called Chandra (Chandragupta) as Xandrames and Samudragupta as Sandrocottus. Moreover, the description given by the Greek scholars about Sandrocottus his father Xandrames are quite inapplicable to Chandragupta Maurya and could only apply to Samudragupta too. According to Greeks, Xandrames was the king of Gangaridai and Prasii whereas Dhanananda was the ruler of entire Northwest, central and eastern India. It is also said that Sandrocottus (Samudragupta) killed his father Xandrames (Chandragupta). This fact has been wilfully ignored by the biased western historians and their followers.

2. All Greek writers mentioned that Sandrocottus, the king of Prasii, whose capital was Palibothra i.e. Pataliputra. Megasthenes, Deimachos and other Greek ambassadors of Seleucus Nikator were sent in the court of Samudragupta and Chandragupta II at Palibothra. Pataliputra became the capital of Magadha Empire only during the reign of Chandragupta I around 335 BCE. According to Puranas, Girivraja or Rajagriha (Rajgir) was the capital city of Magadha during the reign of Nandas and Mauryas. Thus, Pataliputra was not the capital city of Chandragupta Maurya. From 3rd century BCE onwards, the city of Pataliputra became famous as the capital of Magadha....

3. According to Megasthenes, Sakas or Scythians were living in the northern side of India. "India, which is in shape quadrilateral, has its eastern as well as its western side bounded by the great sea, but on the northern side it is divided by Mount Hemodos from that part of Scythia which is inhabited by those Scythians who are called the OEakai, while the fourth or western side is bounded by the river called the Indus, which is perhaps the largest of all rivers in the world after the Nile." Many other Greek scholars also wrote about Scythians. Thus, it seems that Northern Saka Ksatrapas were ruling in the North-western frontier region during the time of Megasthenes. It is well known that Saka Ksatrapas were contemporaries of Guptas not Mauryas. Asoka inscriptions mention about only Yavana kings named Antikina, Alikasundara, Maga, Turamaya and Gongakena (not Greeks but indigenous Yavana kings of Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan) ruling in the western frontier regions. Western historians speculated about these kings to be Antiochus Theos II of Syria, Alexander of Epirus, Magas of Cyrene, Ptolemy II Philadelphos of Egypt and Antigonus Gonatus of Macedonia. These baseless speculations are simply based on the resemblance of names without any direct or indirect evidence. The references of Yavana kings in Asoka inscriptions indicate that Yavanas were the rulers in the western frontier regions not Sakas. There is no reference of Saka Ksatrapas in the entire account of Mauryan history. Therefore, Sandrocottus can only be Samudragupta who was the contemporary of Saka Ksatrapas not Chandragupta Maurya.

4. Seleucus Nikator also sent Deimachos on an embassy to Allitrocades or Amitrocades, the son of Sandrocottus. Western historians identified Allitrocades or Amitrocades to be Bindusara, the son of Chandragupta and concocted that Bindusara was also known as "Amitraghata". None of the Indian sources ever referred Bindusara as Amitraghata. Western historians deliberately created the word "Amitraghata" with some sort of resemblance. According to Puranas, Samudragupta was also known as "Asokaditya" and Chandragupta II was also known as "Vikramaditya". Probably, Allitrocades or Amitrocades referred to "Vikramaditya", the son of Sandrocottus (Samudragupta).

5. Megasthenes described the system of city administration of Pataliputra but there is no similarity between the system described by Megasthenes and the system of city administration given in Kautilya Arthasastra. Megasthenes also stated that there was no slavery in India but Kautilya Arthasastra's Chapter 65 named "Dasakalpa" is solely devoted to the status of slaves among the Aryans and the Mlecchas. Probably, the slavery system that existed during Mauryan era has gradually declined by Gupta era. Thus, Megasthenes cannot be contemporary to Chandragupta Maurya.

6. Megasthenes not only often visited Palibothra but also stayed in the court of Sandrocottus for a few years. But he did not even mention about Kautilya or Chanakya who was the real kingmaker and also the patron of Chandragupta. No Greek scholar ever mentioned about Kautilya. Therefore, Megasthenes cannot be the contemporary to Chandragupta Maurya.

7. Greek scholars often mentioned that Sandrocottus was the king of the country called as Prasii (Prachi or Prachya). Pracha or Prachi means eastern country. During the Nanda and Mauryan era, Magadha kings were ruling almost entire India. Mauryan Empire was never referred in Indian sources as only Prachya desa or eastern country. Prachya desa was generally referred to Gupta Empire because Northern Saka Ksatrapas and Western Saka Ksatrapas were well established in North and West India. Megasthenes mentioned that Sandrocottus is the greatest king of the Indians and Poros is still greater than Sandrocottus which means a kingdom in the North-western region is still independent and enjoying at least equal status with the kingdom of Sandrocottus. Chandragupta Maurya and his successors were the most powerful kings of India. It was impossible for any other Indian king to enjoy equal status with Mauryan kings because Mauryans inherited a strongest and vast empire from Nandas. Therefore, Sandrocottus, the king of Prasii can only be Samudragupta not Chandragupta Maurya.

8. The Greek historian Plutarch mentioned that Androkottus (Sandrocottus) marched over the whole of India with an army of 600 thousand men. Chandragupta Maurya defeated Nandas under the leadership of Chanakya. There was no need for him to go on such expedition to conquer the whole of India because he has already inherited the Magadha kingdom of Nandas covering entire India. Actually, it was Samudragupta who overran the whole of India as details given in Allahabad pillar inscription.

9. According to Greek historians like Justinus, Appianus etc., Seleukos made friendship with Sandrocottus and entered into relations of marriage with him. Allahabad pillar inscription tells us that Samudragupta was offered their daughters in marriage (Kanyopayanadana ... ) by the kings in the North-west region. There is nothing in Indian sources to prove this fact with reference to Chandragupta Maurya.

10. The Jain work "Harivamsa" written by Jinasena gives the names of dynasties and kings and the duration of their rule after the nirvana of Mahavira. Jinasena mentions nothing about Mauryas but he tells us that Gupta kings ruled for 231 years. Western historians fixed the date of Mahavira-nirvana in 527 BCE which means Mauryas ruled after Mahavira-nirvana but Jaina Puranas and Jaina Pattavalis had no knowledge of Mauryas after Mahavira-nirvana. Thus, Mauryas ruled prior to Mahavira-nirvana. Therefore, Sandrocottus can only be identified with Samudragupta.

11. If Sandrocottus was indeed Chandragupta Maurya, why do none of the Greek sources mentioned about Asoka, the most illustrious and greatest of Mauryan kings? It is evident that Greek sources had no knowledge of Asoka. Therefore, the ancient Greeks were contemporaries to Gupta kings not Mauryas.

-- Who was Sandrocottus: Samudragupta or Chandragupta Maurya? The Chronology of Ancient India, Victim of Concoctions and Distortions, by Vedveer Arya

Now Cleitarchus, who fixed the vulgate tradition about Alexander, did not accompany Alexander to Asia and was not with him in India; he was not one of the contemporary historians of the expedition, and is not a primary source, but was a literary compiler belonging to a later generation. It is certain now that he cannot have written earlier than the decade 280-270; and there are grounds, though not conclusive grounds, for putting his book even later, after 260.11 [ F. Reuss. Rh. Mus. 57 (1902), 581 and 63 (1909) 58: P. Schnabel, Berossos und Kleitarchos, 1912. Cf. Th. Lenschau, Berucht uber grich. Geschichte, 1907-1914. p. 191, in Bursian's Jahresbericht, 1919; R. V. Pohlmann, Griech, Gesch.5 1914, p. 287, (in Muller's Handbuch): C. F. Lehmann-Haupt, Klio, 15, 1918, 255, n. 3. I do not agree with Reuss and Schnabel on all their points; but I regard their main position, that Cleitarchus was not a primary source, as conclusively established. (The latest exposition of the traditional view that Cleitarchus was a contemporary and companion of Alexander is F. Jacoby's article Kleitarchos in Pauly-Wissowa, 1921 (very full); a careful perusal will show that there is no single one among the suppositions urged in support of the traditional view that is a valid or compelling argument.) The points proven are that Cleitarchus used Berossos, Patrocles, and Timaeus, and had never himself seen Babylon; add perhaps that he used the name Galatai, unknown before 279. Make every deduction you please: say that he might have used Timaeus' chronology before Timaeus had finished his history (though we do not know that it was published in sections), that [x] in Diod. 17, 113, 2 may be a later addition (which I myself find incredible), and that the argument from the first official use of the name Soter in Egypt (on which and on Timaeus Niese's date of ’after 260’ depends) is uncertain: there still remains three things that cannot be explained away: two of these are Berossos and Babylon, and the third is that a named fragment of Cleitarchus (Pliny. N.H. 6. 36) quotes a named fragment of Patrocles (Strabo 11, 508, and that on a matter (the size of the Caspian) as to which no writer before Patrocles could even have attempted a guess.] But in any case, and this is what matters here, he wrote much later than Megasthenes.

The Beas River (Sanskrit: Vipāśā; Hyphasis in Ancient Greek) is a river in north India. The river rises in the Himalayas in central Himachal Pradesh, India, and flows for some 470 kilometres (290 mi) to the Sutlej River in the Indian state of Punjab. Its total length is 470 kilometres (290 mi) and its drainage basin is 20,303 square kilometres (7,839 sq mi) large.

-- Beas River [Hyphasis], by Wikipedia

Now in the vulgate, Alexander, when he reaches the Beas, hears of the Ganges and the Prasii, whom he desires to conquer; the story is given by both Diodorus and Curtius, and is our only professed account of what he knew when he turned back, though the good tradition, as we shall see, has a very different account of what the army believed. The sections of Diodorus (17. 93. 1-3 inclusive) and Curtius (9. 1. 36-2. 7 inclusive) which are material here agree so very closely that their derivation from a common original is certain; and as it is equally certain that Diodorus, Book 17, primarily represents Cleitarchus, that common original can only be Cleitarchus; no one, I think, now doubts this. But Diodorus and Curtius agree here, among other things, in one most extraordinary perversion, which therefore goes back to Cleitarchus also, and which is the key of the whole matter; the Prasii are beyond the Ganges.12 [[x] (Diod.); ulteriorem ripaim colere (Curt.).] This strange mistake also occurs in Plut. Alex. 62 (see post), where the Prasii hold the further bank.

What led Cleitarchus to displace Megasthenes' Prasii in this way, and put them beyond the Ganges? There can only be one explanation. Cleitarchus must have had before him, among the other documents which we know he used, the two we have here noticed, the gazetteer of 324/3, and Megasthenes. (He need not necessarily have used the gazetteer directly.) In the first he found an unnamed river, called the greatest in the district, and a named kingdom beyond it. In the second he found the greatest river in India, the Ganges, and a kingdom whose capital stood on its bank, though in fact the kingdom stretched out westward. Like Fischer in his edition of Diodorus, he identified the two rivers and called the unnamed river the Ganges (see post on Diod. 2. 37, 1); and the kingdom of the Tyndaridae or Gandaridae, beyond the unnamed river, he then naturally identified with that of the Prasii, which he then necessarily placed beyond the Ganges; hence in the Cleitarchean vulgate this kingdom regularly appears as ‘the Gandaridae (or Gangaridae) and Prasii.'13 [Diod. 17, 93, 2; Curt. 9. 2, 3; Just. 12, 8. 9; Plut. Alex. 62.] Starting from this identification, he then wrote up Alexander in his usual fashion, not knowing that he had left out most of Northern India. Whether the mistake was an honest muddle, or a deliberate attempt at panegyric [a public speech or published text in praise of someone or something], is immaterial; probably the former, for he was a very bad geographer in any case, and the man who could confuse two such well-known rivers as the Hydaspes and the Acesines would have had no difficulty in confusing the unnamed river and the Ganges.14 [On the confusion of Hydaspes and Acesines cf. Diod. 17, 89, 4 with 95. 3 (see Arr. 6, 1, 1). On Cleitarchus as a geographer see Jacoby op. cit., who gives instances.]

The Jhelum River is a river that flows from the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, through the Pakistani-administered territory of Azad Kashmir, and into Pakistani Punjab. It is the westernmost of the five rivers of the Punjab region, and passes through the Kashmir Valley. It is a tributary of the Chenab River and has a total length of about 725 kilometres (450 mi).

-- Jhelum River [Hydaspes], by Wikipedia

Fortunately he left untouched an easy means of checking his mistake: the breadths of the rivers. (I refer, of course, to the conventional breadths.) The unnamed river of the gazetteer is 30 stades broad. Megasthenes' Ganges is not less than 100 stades broad.15 [Arr. Ind 4. 7; Strabo, 15, 702, [x]. (Both Megasthenes.)] But the ‘Ganges’ in Diodorus is 30 stades broad (2. 37. 2) or 32 stades (17. 93. 2): 32 also in Plut. Alex. 62. from the same source ultimately as Diod. 17. 93. That 32 is merely an (old) error for 30 is certain: partly because it is 30 in Diod. 2. 37. 2: partly because Strabo 15. 702. after giving Megasthenes’ figure, adds that some called it 30, and we know of nothing to which this can refer except Diodorus' source (Cleitarchus):16 [The other figures we have all give a very different breadth from 30 stades. Mela 3, 68, 10, ten Roman miles (= 100 stades); Pliny. N. H. 6, 65, on a moderate estimate 100 stades, on the lowest 7 miles (= 70 stades); Solinus 52, 7, minimum 80 stades, maximum 200; Aelian, [x] 12, 41, minimum 80, maximum 400. Mela and Pliny of course reproduce the 100 of Megasthenes; I do not know what the other figures represent.] partly because these big rivers were naturally always given in round figures.17 [E.g. the Indus: Ctes, ap. Arr. 5. 4. 2. 100 stades to 40; Strabo, 15, 700, either 100 or 50; Arr. 6. 14, 5, perhaps 100 at Patala; Pliny. N.H. 6. 71, fifty. For the Ganges see n. 16.] (I have only found one other case of a river in India 30 stades broad: Arr. Ind. 3. 10 suggests that the Acesines (Chenab), after receiving the other rivers, is 30 stades broad when it joins the Indus: but obviously the Chenab is not the unnamed river of the gazetteer.) The breadth alone then is sufficient proof that the ‘Ganges’ of Cleitarchus-Diodorus is only the unnamed river of the gazetteer.

And in fact we can probably trace the actual process of identifying this river with the Ganges. In 2, 37, 2 Diodorus gives by anticipation18 [Such anticipations are common enough in Diodorus; e.g. 17, 23. 2 (Agathocles), 17, 57, 2 (the Argyraspids); 18, 4, 1 compared with 18, 12, 1; 18, 4, 8 compared with 18, 7. 1 seq.] a bit of his own version of the gazetteer which he was to give in its place in 18, 6, 1: — a river 30 stades broad, with the Gandaridae (not Prasii) to the east of it; but in 2, 37, 1 he calls this 30-stade river the Ganges, just as Cleitarchus does in 17, 93, 2; this shows that 2, 37, 1 is from Cleitarchus also, and it seems that here we have reproduced the actual identification by Cleitarchus.19 [This identification is clearly seen again in the late rhetorical composition which figured as Alexander’s speech at the Beas; Arr. 5, 26, [x], so markedly inconsistent with what follows in 5, 26, 3, — between the Beas and the eastern sea are many war-like nations. On the other hand, Diod. 17, 108, 3 — the Macedonians refuse to cross the Ganges — has nothing directly to do with this identification: it is a reference, not part of the narrative, and is therefore not Cleitarchus; it belongs to a later legend, see post. — That Diodorus did use Cleitarchus in Book 2 is shown by the reference to him in 2, 7, 3.] As 2, 37, 2 represents the gazetteer, it is interesting to note that it gives one detail not given in 18, 6, 1: the river in question, the unnamed river, runs from north to south. It was well enough known since Megasthenes that all the middle Ganges, above Pataliputra, ran roughly west and east;20 [Strabo 13, 690 and 719. It is to be remembered that, for a long period subsequent to Megasthenes, the Ganges to Greeks meant primarily the Ganges at Pataliputra (Patna).] the remark should therefore be older than Megasthenes, and probably belongs to the original gazetteer.

The Ganges River

Before leaving Cleitarchus, one other point may be noticed. His story about the Ganges and the Prasii is told to Alexander by a rajah on the Beas named Phegeus, who begins by saying that across the river is a desert of eleven (Curtius) or twelve (Diodorus) days’ journey. No Indian living on the upper Beas could have said this. If Phegeus, who is unknown to the good tradition, ever existed, he lived much further south, near the Rajputana desert; but he may be as mythical as some other characters in the vulgate.21 [For example, the eunuch Bagoas, who was merely part of the revenge which the Peripatetics took on Alexander for Callisthenes’ death; see Dicaearchus. fr. 19 - Athen. 13, 603 b.] That Cleitarchus put his Ganges story in the mouth of a man who begins by placing the great desert on the east bank of the upper Beas is itself a good test of what that story is worth.

Rajputana: An area northwest of the Arāvalli Range including part of the Great Indian (Thar) Desert, with characteristics of being sandy and unproductive.

To return to the gazetteer. The unnamed river, 30 stades broad, running north and south, and separating Alexander's India from what lay beyond, cannot be the well-known Beas (which, incidentally, Diodorus, 17, 93, 1, calls 7 stades broad), and must therefore be the Sutlej, which very likely did not then join the Beas at all, but flowed down the Hakra channel and was one constituent of the ‘lost river.’

Sutlej River

Now was the kingdom of the Tyndaridae or Gandaridae, which lay across (east of) the Sutlej and ‘along the Caucasus,' an old tradition? In the gazetteer, Diod. 18, 6, 1, the MSS. have [x], in the parallel passage, Diod. 2, 37, 2, it is [x], with MS, variants [x] and [x]. In the Cleitarchus passage, Diod, 17, 93, 2, we have [x], and, in the parallel passages. Gangaridas in Curt. 9, 2, 3 (so in Just. 12. 8, 9), and [x] (an obvious confusion with Gandhara) in Plut. Alex. 62. Now Gangaridas and [x] are from Megasthenes' Gangaridae in lower Bengal; is the name Gandaridae then merely a mistake of Diodorus', and is the whole thing taken from Megasthenes? I think not. In Diod. 17, 91. 1 the bad Porus flies [x]; while Strabo 15, 699 has a version that Gandaris was his country. Now Porus really did fly eastward before Alexander across the Ravi (Arr. 5. 21, 4), and as Alexander never caught him he must have gone further east than Alexander ever went, i.e. across the Beas, or further; and whatever the confusion in Strabo, I think these passages make it difficult to say that Diodorus' version of the gazetteer is wrong, and that there was not across the Sutlej a real people called Gandaridae or Tyndaridae, or however their name got transcribed.22 [Kiessling, s.v. Gandaridai in Pauly-Wissowa, makes the people of Gandhara, the Gandaridae, and the Gangaridae, three sections of one tribe, which had moved across India leaving parts of itself behind.] Whether they were part of a confederacy, or whether the mention of a confederacy got written into the gazetteer later, must remain uncertain...

Beyond the Hydaspes was the powerful kingdom of Porus, who held sway as far as the Acesines, which we know as the Chenab, the next of the "Five Rivers." East of the Chenab, in the lands of the Ravee and the Beas, were other small principalities, and also free "kingless" peoples, who owned no master.



-- Chapter XVIII: The Conquest of the Far East, Excerpt from "History of Greece for Beginners", by J. B. Bury, M.A.

...but the part of the gazetteer given in Diod. 18, 6. 1 seems to be given with substantial accuracy, subject, of course, to this, that the statement that Alexander turned back from fear of the elephants is a late legend inserted by Diodorus himself; I shall return to this.

Strictly construed, the gazetteer imports that Alexander claimed India up to the Sutlej; and it is possible enough that he did. Across the Beas, says Arr. 5, 25, 1, was a people aristocratically governed (i.e. an Aratta people) with many elephants.23 [Amplified in Strabo, 15, 702: a ruling oligarchy of 5000, each of whom gave an elephant to the State!] This can hardly go back to the Journal, from its form; probably it is Aristobulas repeating camp gossip, for the Aratta known to us had no elephants. But there may really have been an Aratta people there, and a great one, the Oxydracae, whom the late V. A. Smith did for other reasons place along the Beas.24 [J.R.A.S. 1903, 685. — Arr. 5, 22. 1. [x] may mean that it was the Oxydracae who adjoined the Cathaeans.] (The maps in the Cambridge History of India put them east of the lower Ravi; but Arrian shows that this was Malli country.) It is probably impossible to ascertain for certain where the Oxydracae really lived, though Arrian 6. 11. 3 implies that their centre was some distance away from that of the Malli; but if they did stretch north between Sutlej and Beas we can understand Arr. 5. 25, 1, and also justify the gazetteer's claim (if it be one) of the country up to the Sutlej; for the Oxydracae submitted and were (nominally) placed under a satrap. It leads also to a most interesting hypothesis. Strabo. 15, 687 ( ? from Megasthenes), says that the Persians got mercenaries from the [x]. If this, as I suppose, means the Oxydracae (Kshudraka),25 [So Muller in F.H.G. n. p. 415, where the numerous variants of the name are collected.] why did any Achaemenid go to so distant a people for mercenaries? Clearly because the nearer peoples were his subjects; i.e. we get some support for the suggestion26 [By A. V. Williams-Jackson in Camb. Hist. India, i, 341.] that the rule of Darius I. had ended at the Beas, where Alexander's men refused to go on.

This finishes the deductions to be drawn from the gazetteer; but it remains to notice two possible objections to the conclusion that Alexander never knew of the Ganges. One is the suggestion27 [Kiessling, Ganges in Pauly-Wissowa.] that Aristotle (and therefore presumably Alexander) knew of it, because it is the ‘fluvius alter' of the Liber de inundacione Nili.28 [Rose,3 fr. 248; a Latin summary of Aristotle's lost [x]. For its genuineness, see Partsch. Abhandlungen d. k. sachsischen Ges. d. Wiss., Ph. -h. Kl., 27, 1909, p, 551; it dates from before Alexander's expedition, Bolchert, Neue Jahrb. 27, 1911, 150.] A perusal of the Liber disposes of this idea at once. Aristotle is considering whether the Erythrean sea be a lake or part of the circumfluent ocean. Artaxerxes Ochus, he says, thought that it was a lake [that India joined Ethiopia], and that the Indus was the upper Nile; some Indians, however, told him that the Indus flowed into the Erythrean sea, but that there was a second river, fluvius alter, rising in the same mountain as the Indus, and flowing into (or through) the same parts of India, ad illas partes Indie fluens, which did flow round the Erythrean lake, circumfluere exterius rubrum mare (as Ochus had supposed the Indus to do). It is clear, therefore, that the ‘fluvius alter' was in the same part of India as the Indus, quite apart from the fact that ‘India’ meant to Aristotle only the country of the Indus and the Punjab; and if this river has any real meaning,— and one must bear in mind the darkness in which, for Western men, 'India' had become enshrouded during the fourth century, — it is one of the Punjab rivers, possibly enough the river of the gazetteer, the Sutlej-Hakra: for the Sutlej alone of the Punjab rivers rises, like the Indus, beyond the Himalaya and bursts through. However, I am only concerned here with what the ‘fluvius alter' was not.

The other objection is an a priori argument: traders and students from the east came to Taxila, and therefore Alexander must have heard of the Ganges and its kingdoms. It is not much good setting up an a priori argument against the evidence of a contemporary (and perhaps official) document like the gazetteer of 321/3; but, apart from that, one may well ask what sort of information Alexander would really have got from a trader, after it had trickled through two different interpreters, via Persian. The way to answer that question is to look (say) at the sort of information the early Spanish voyagers got in America, and the queer manner in which it sometimes fitted in with their preconceived notions. If the Staff did question some trader, or even Taxiles, we may be sure that the answer did not fit in badly with Alexander's Aristotelian geography, because the same thing had actually happened elsewhere; Pharasmanes of Khiva knew the Aral well enough, but what he tried to tell Alexander merely confirmed Aristotle. [v]It is, too, possible that we do possess an earlier piece of trade information of the sort here suggested, the river Hypobaros in Ctesias (Plin. N.H. 37, 39). What river the name ‘bringer of good things’ suggests no man can say; the Ganges is periodically suggested,29 [Most recently by Kiessling, s.v. Ganges and Hypobaros in Pauly-Wissowa.] in spite of Ctesias’ statement that the river was ‘not large,’ and one can only say what Lassen said seventy years ago, — it may be, but it is extremely doubtful. Essentially, the river is the Greek fairy river, the Eridanos, transferred to the east.30 [Kiessling, Hypoboros, above.] But what Ctesias has to say about the gum suggests that so much of the story as he did not invent is a trade story, i.e. came to Persia with the gum; and what one can say for certain about it is, that if Ctesias really got hold of a Persian translation of an epithet, unknown in Sanskrit, which belonged to the Ganges, he did not with the epithet get the faintest notion of where the Ganges was or what it was like. That Alexander also heard some ‘travellers’ tales is possible enough; but that has nothing to do with any real information about the real Ganges.

The conclusion then is that Alexander, when he turned back, knew of the Sutlej, and vaguely of some kingdom beyond it, with which the name Gandaridae or Tyndaridae was connected. He never knew of the Ganges or of Magadha, any more than he ever knew of the vast Middle Country between the Sutlej and the Ganges. What he did know was not of a nature to shake his conviction, based primarily on the Aristotelian geography, that Ocean lay at quite a short distance in front of him, as is proved by his desire still to advance in spite of the great reduction in his small striking force by troops left on communications.31 [We have not the context of Nearchus’ obscure statement (Strabo 15, 689) that the [x] took four months; but it cannot have anything to do with the real size of India, and must relate in some way to Alexander’s march.] The story that he knew of the Ganges and Magadha, which is unknown to the good tradition, has been written into the vulgate from Megasthenes through a mistake which I have traced; and by means of this story the vulgate has attributed to Alexander a scheme of conquest32 [The vulgate's idea that Alexander meant to cross the Ganges, involving a conflict with Magadha, would almost arise naturally from its substitution of the Ganges for the Sutlej.] which has no basis in fact, because he knew nothing of the existence of the place whose conquest was the object of the scheme. The legend of the plan to conquer Magadha, however, matured much faster than the parallel legend of the plan to conquer Carthage and the Mediterranean, whose growth I have previously traced;33 [J.H.S. 1921, 1.] for while the latter was not actually accomplished till the Romance, Alexander conquered Magadha long before that. The first step was that someone forged a letter from Craterus to his mother (Strabo 15, 702) in which Alexander reaches the Ganges. Then follow two stories; in the one, preserved by Diodorus, 2, 37, 3, Alexander reaches the Ganges but dare not attack the Gandaridae (sic) because of their 4000 elephants; in the other, given in Plut. Alex. 62 and alluded to in Diodorus 17, 108, 3, he reaches the Ganges and desires to cross, but the army refuses. (As in Plutarch the ‘Gandaritae and Prasii hold the further bank, which represents the blunder made by Cleitarchus which this paper has been tracing, we have here an excellent instance of later legend springing from the Cleitarchean vulgate; it is illuminating for Plutarch's indiscriminate use of material.) Finally, in Justin 12, 8, 9, Alexander does conquer Magadha: Praesios, Gangaridas, caesis eorum exercitibus expugnat. The statement in Diodorus' version of the gazetteer, 18, 6, 1, that Alexander did not attack the Gandaridae because of their elephants, is then a mere remark of Diodorus' own,34 [Diodorus' habit of occasionally interpolating remarks or quotations of his own is now well established, anyhow for the later books; for instances see Jacoby, Hieronymos in Pauly-Wissowa: Schubert Die Quellen zur Geschicte der Diadochenzeit, passim.] quoted from his own version of the legend in 2, 37, 3. Like many legends, it possesses a minute substratum of fact; the report about the elephants across the Beas. Arr. 5, 25, 1, was one of the causes which decided Alexander's army to go no further.

W. W. Tarn.  

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Part 1 of 2

VII. On Some Brahmi Inscriptions in the Lucknow Provincial Museum
by Professor H. Luders
Excerpt from The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
Pp. 153-179
1912

-- The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland for 1912

H. Luders, ‘On Some Brahmi Inscriptions in the Lucknow Museum’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (UK) 1912, fn., p. 167. Fuhrer was then Assistant Editor (to Burgess) on the Epigraphia Indica...

Luders neglects to mention that Fuhrer had supplied Buhler with the details of these and other inscriptions – almost 400 in all – for Buhler’s assessment in the Epigraphia Indica, and epigraphists will now have the unenviable task of establishing the authenticity of these items. Immediately following Fuhrer’s exposure in 1898, Buhler drowned in Lake Constance in mysterious circumstances, and since he had enthusiastically endorsed all of Fuhrer’s supposed discoveries, one cannot help but wonder whether this tragedy was accidental.

-- Lumbini On Trial: The Untold Story. Lumbini Is An Astonishing Fraud Begun in 1896, by T. A. Phelps

-- The Piprahwa Deceptions: Set-ups and Showdown, by T.A. Phelps
-- The Buddha and Dr. Fuhrer: An Archaeological Scandal, by Charles Allen -- Alois Anton Führer, by Wikipedia -- Georg Bühler, by Wikipedia -- Epigraphia Indica, by Wikipedia
-- Monograph On Buddha Shakyamuni's Birth-Place: The Nepalese Tarai, by Alois Anton Fuhrer

VII. On Some Brahmi Inscriptions in the Lucknow Provincial Museum

by Professor H. Luders

In a recent number of the Ep. Ind., vol. x, p. 106 ff., Mr. R. D. Banerji has edited twenty-one Brahmi inscriptions of the “Scythian” period, of which nine had been already published by him, under the name of R. D. Bandhyopadhyaya, in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society, N.S., vol. v, pp. 243 f., 271 ff. We certainly owe a great debt of gratitude to him for making these records accessible, although the way in which he has acquitted himself of his task cannot meet with unreserved praise. I do not undervalue the difficulties which beset these inscriptions. I know that it cannot be expected that the first reading and interpretation of an inscription of this class should be always final. But what may be reasonably expected, and what, I am sorry to say, is wanting in Mr. Banerji’s paper, is that carefulness and accuracy that have hitherto been a characteristic feature of the publications in the Epigraphia Indica. It would be a tedious and wearisome business to correct almost line for line mistakes that might have been easily avoided with a little more attention. The following pages will show that this complaint is not unjustified.

All the twenty-one inscriptions are in the Provincial Museum of Lucknow. Of eight of them the find-place is unknown; nine are, or are said to be, from Mathura; while four are assigned by Mr. Banerji with more or less confidence to Ramnagar. Among the Mathura inscriptions there are three, No. 7 = B, 42;1 [B refers to my “List of Brahmi Inscriptions” in Ep. Ind., vol. x, appendix, where the full bibliography is given.] No. 10 = B, 66; No. 11 = B, 75, which were previously edited by Buhler. As far as the dates are concerned, Mr. Banerji's readings are undoubtedly an improvement on those of his predecessor (astapana instead of 40 4 hana in No. 7, hamava 1 instead of hana va 1 in No. 10, sam 90 9 and di 10 6 instead of sam 90 5 and di 10 8 in No. 11). But the rest of his new readings seems to me only partly correct. I will quote here only one point which is linguistically interesting. In No. 11 the name of the nun at whose request the gift was made, read Dhama[tha]ye by Buhler, is read Dhama[si]r[ i]ye by Mr. Banerji, who adds that the reading of the third syllable is certain though the crossbar of the sa is not distinct in the impression. Mr. Venkayya has already remarked in a note that in the plate the reading appears to be Dhamadharaye. The impression before me leaves no doubt that it really is Dharmadharaye. This is a new instance of the lengthening of an a before r + consonant in the Mathura dialect, on which I have commented, Bruchstucke Buddhistischer Dramen, p. 31.

Of the rest of the Mathura inscriptions, No. 2 = B, 88, and No. 6 = B, 52, were brought to notice by Growse, and No. 13 = B, 140, by Dowson; No. 14 = B, 109, was read by Mr. V. A. Smith; No. 18 was mentioned by Buhler, Ep, Ind., vol. ii, p. 311. I will pass over Nos. 2, 6, and 18, as I have no impressions of them. But of the very interesting inscription No. 13, which is engraved on a large slab of red sandstone, there is an impression among the materials collected by Dr. Hoernle for the intended second volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum. It is not a very good one, but it is nevertheless very valuable as it was taken at a time when the inscription was in a more complete state than at present. I read it: —

1. . . .apavane1 Srikunde2 svake3 vihare Kakatikanam pacanah niyatakah4 nanatra vastussi5 samkkalayitavyah sanghaprakitehi vyavaharihi upathapito yesam ni[pa]6.

2. . . [ya]7 -- Sthavarajatra— B[u]d[dh]araksita— Jivasiri — Buddhadasa — Sangharaksita

3. — Dhammavarmma8 — Buddhadeva — Akhila9

1. Bn. navan[e]. As to the first letters, the impression entirely differs from the collotype. The impression reads as above, but the vowel of the lost aksara may have been an o of which only the right half is preserved. Above the last aksara there is a short stroke which I should take to be meant for the anusvara if this were not grammatically impossible.

2. Bn. reads Srikande, adding that ‘‘the word may he taken to be kanthe". This, of course, is impossible as the nde is just as distinct as the u of ku.

3. Bn. reads stake, adding that the word may be read as svaka. The reading svake is beyond doubt.

4. On this word Bn. makes a note which really seems to apply to the ya. However, it is superfluous as there is no e-stroke at the top of the ya. The two large horizontal strokes left unnoticed by Bn. I take to be the anusvara, though they are rather below the line.

5. Bn. has wrongly separated these words. Perhaps the true reading is vastussi.

6. The last aksara is uncertain. It may have been also ha or la.

7. The ya is mutilated and uncertain.

8. Bn. Dharmma°, but the a-stroke is distinct; cf. above, p. 154.

9. Bn. su[kha]la. The vowel-sign of the kha undoubtedly is i.

Mr. Banerji has not translated this inscription, because "it contains some peculiar words''. I venture to offer a translation, although owing to the mutilated state of the inscription the connexion between the first and the second line is not clear, and moreover the exact meaning of some terms cannot yet be settled —

"The fixed cooking-place of the Kakatikas, not to be put up in any other house, . . . in the grove ... at Srikunda (Srikunda), in their own Vihara, has been set up by the merchants entrusted with (taking care of) the Order, whose . . . Sthavarajatra, Buddharaksita, Jivasiri (Jivasri), Buddhadasa, Sangharaksita, Dharmmavarmma (Dharmavarman), Buddhadeva, Akhila . . . "

The pacana which forms the object of the donation apparently is the slab itself, and I do not see how the word can have any other meaning but ''cooking-place", although the Sanskrit dictionaries assign that meaning only to pacana as a neuter. The words nanatra vastussi samkkalayitavyah, which apparently stand in contrast to niyatakah, seem to represent Sanskrit nanyatra vastuni samkalayitavyah, but I am by no means sure that in translating them I have hit the right meaning. The term occurs several times in the Buddhist inscriptions of Mathura edited by Dr. Vogel in the Catalogue of the Archaeological Museum at Mathura.

Probably the names in lines 2 and 3 are the names of these sanghaprakrtas. It is more dificult to say who is meant by Kakatikanam. I take this to be a proper name, and as a cooking-place in a Vihara can hardly be intended for anybody but the monks living there, Kakatika would seem to be the name of those monks, though I cannot say why they were called so. Srikunda, where the Vihara was situated, is mentioned as the name of a tirtha in the Mahabharata (iii, 5028), but, of course, it does not follow that the two localities are identical.

No. 14, incised on the waistband of a female figure, was read by Mr. Banerji: —

1. Pusabalaye dane Dhama-

2. vadhakasa [bha]yaye

But in the impression as well as in the plate the first word is clearly Pusabalaye (= Pusyabalayah) and the last bharyaya.

We next turn to the inscriptions of unknown origin. Nos, 3, 5, 12, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21. In No. 3, incised on the base of a Jaina image, the arrangement of the lines is irregular. It seems that it was intended at first to record only the gift and that the statement about the nivartana was added afterwards to the left.  I read the inscription from an impression: —

1. siddham sam 9 he 3 di 10 Grahamitrasya dhitu Avasirisya1 vadhue Kalalasya2

2. kutubiniye3

3. Grahapalaye4 dati — 5

4. Koleyato6 ganato7

5. Thaniyato kulato Vairato8 [sakha]to

6. Arya-Taraka[s]ya9

7. [n]iva[r]tana

1. Bn. reads Sivasirisya and adds that “the first syllable of the word Sivasiri may also be read as Avasiri" [sic!]. The first syllable of the word is undoubtedly a.

2. Bn. reads vadhu Ekradalasya and remarks that the last word may also be Ekradalasya, There is certainly no subscript ra, but there is a small horizontal stroke which makes the ka almost look like kka. As, however, the word cannot begin with a double consonant, it is apparently accidental. The second letter of the word is la; see my paper on the lingual la in the Northern Brahmi script, above 1911, pp. 1081 ff.

3. Bn. kutu[m]biniye, but there is no trace of the anusvara.

4. Bn. Gahapalaye. The subscript ra is quite distinct, but there is no a-stroke attached to the la.

5. Bn. does not take any notice of the sign of punctuation.

6. Bn. Kottiyato. Cf. note 2 above.

7. Bn. ganato. There is no trace of the a-stroke.

8. Bn. Thaniyato kulato Vair[a]to. There is not the slightest trace of an a-stroke in the three words.

9. Bn. Tar[ i]ka[s]ya. The i-sign is not visible in the impression.

“Hail! In the year 9, in the 3rd month of winter, on the 10th day, the gift of Grahapala (Grahapala), the daughter of Grahamitra, the daughter-in-law of Avasiri (Avasri), the wife of Kalala, at the request of the venerable Taraka out of the Koleya gana, the Thaniya (Sthaniya) kula, the Vaira (Vajra) sakha."

Of the short inscription between the feet of the statue I have no impression. It seems to refer to Grahapala and to characterize her as the pupil of some Jaina monk.

No. 5 is engraved on the pedestal of a Jaina statue. I read it from an impression: —

1. maharajasya Huveksasya1 savacara2 40 8 va 2 d[ i] 10 7 etasya puvayam K[o]l[ i]ye gana3 Bama4 . .

2. [si]ye k[u]le5 Pacanagariya6 sakhaya7 Dhanavalasya8 sisiniya9 Dhanasiriya10 nivatana

3. Budhikasya11 vadhuye12 Savatratapotriya13 Yasaya14 dana15 Sa[m]b]havasya prodima pra-

4. t[ i]stapita17

1. Bn. Huvaksasya, but the e-stroke is quite distinct.

2. Bn. sa[m]vacar[e]. There is no trace of the anusvara in the impression, and the last letter is distinctly ra.

3. Bn. K[otti]ye [gane]. Regarding the first word see note 2 on p. 157. The last letter is clearly na, not ne, though gane, of course, would be the correct form. Above the line, between the ye and the ga, there is a small ta. Perhaps the engraver intended to correct Koliye gana into the ordinary Koliyato ganato, but gave the task up again.

4. The ma is missing in the impression, but distinct on the plate. Read Bamada.

5. The ku is very small and has been inserted afterwards.

6. Bn. °nagariye, but there is no trace whatever of the e-stroke. Read Ucanagariya.

7. Bn. sakaya. This certainly was the original reading, but the ka has been altered afterwards to kha.

8. Bn. Dhujhavalas[yal The second letter is as clearly as possible na, and there can be only a doubt whether the small stroke at the top is to be read as a or not. The first letter may be dhu, but as the prolongation of the vertical line in the dha occurs again in Budhikasya, where it cannot denote u, and as Dhunavalasya would be an etymologically unaccountable form, I am convinced that it is dha.

9. Bn. sisin[ i]y[e], but the e-stroke is quite improbable.

10. Bn. Dh[ujhas]iriy[e]. The remarks on the first two aksaras of Dhanavalasya apply also to the first two aksaras of this word. There is no e-stroke on the ya.

11. Bn. [Bu]dhukasya. See note 8; the i-stroke is distinct.

12. Bn. vadhuye. The a-stroke of va is perfectly clear.

13. Bn. Savatrana(?)potr[ i]y[e]. The a-stroke of tra is distinct. The fourth aksara is clearly ta; cf. e.g. the word nivatana. There is no e-stroke on the ya.

14. Bn. Yasay[e]. There is no e-stroke on the ya.

15. Bn. dana. The a-stroke is distinct.

16. Bn. protima, but the second aksara is undoubtedly di; pro, of course, is a mistake for pra.

17. Bn. °ta(ti)stape(pi)ta. The i-stroke of ti is rather indistinct.

"In the year 48, in the 2nd month of the rainy season, on the 17th day, of maharaja Huveksa, on that (date specified as) above, at the request of Dhanasiri (Dhanayasri), the female pupil of Dhanavala (Dhanyavala) in the Koliya gana, the Bama[da*]siya (Brahmadasika) kula, the Pacanagari (Uccanagari) sakha, an image of Sambhava was set up as the gift of Yasa, the daughter-in-law of Budhika, the granddaughter of Savatrata (Sivatrata ?)."

Mr. Banerji takes Pacanagari as a Prakrit form of Vajranagari. Leaving aside the phonetical difficulties, this interpretation is impossible as the Vajranagari, or rather Varjanagari, sakha is a subdivision of the Varana gana, not of the Koliya gana. There can be no doubt that Pacanagariya is a mistake of the engraver for Ucanagariya.

The remaining inscriptions of unknown origin are but small fragments. No. 12, which consists of but two words and a half, is correctly read. No. 15, incised on the fragment of a slab, is read by Mr. Banerji: —

Gosalasya dhita Mitraye [danam*]

Linguistically and palaeographically the form Gosalasya is striking. In sa, ta, tra, the a is expressed by a long slanting line, whereas in sya the sign would seem to consist of a short and perfectly vertical stroke. Now, on the reverse of the two impressions before me just this stroke is entirely invisible, whereas the rest of the inscription is quite distinct. I have therefore no doubt that it is only an accidental scratch. Why, at the end, danam should be supplied instead of danam, is unintelligible to me. I read: —

Gosalasya dhita Mitraye ...

"[The gift] of Mitra, the daughter of Gosala.’’

Of Nos. 17, 19, 20, and 21, I have no impressions. But in the case of No. 19 even the collotype is sufficient to show that Mr. Banerji’s readings are incorrect. He reads: —

1. . . . sya [v]rta Ku[tu]kasya ku[tu][mbini*] . . .

2. . . . na putrehi dhitihi natti pau[ttrehi*] . . .

The collotype shows: —

1. . . . sya . rtakundakasya kutu ...

2. . . . na putrehi dhitihi nattipau ...

"... of the wife of [Gh]rtakundaka, . . . sons, daughters, daughter’s sons (or great-grandsons ?) and son’s sons ...”

It is extremely unlikely that the second aksara of the first line should have been vr, as the base of the letter is far too long for a va. Nor will it appear likely to anybody familiar with these inscriptions that the husband of the donatrix should bear the epithet "the chosen” as supposed by Mr. Banerji. I would restore the name to Ghrtakundaka.

On No. 20 Mr. Banerji remarks— "The inscription is of some interest as it contains the number 800 expressed both in words and by numerical symbols, viz. by the symbols for 8 and 100 [sic!]." This statement refers to the second line of the fragment, which runs —

. . . n = astasata 100 8 gandhi . . .

The two symbols are not joined in any way, and it therefore appears to me impossible that they should represent 800. The term astasata is ambiguous. It certainly may mean 800, but just as well it may mean 108, as proved by the passages quoted in the PW. sub voce astan. Under these circumstances I cannot admit that we have here an instance of the symbol for 800.

***

The most important inscriptions, from an historical point of view, would seem to be that group which is supposed to come from Ramnagar. Before we can discuss them, it will be necessary to enter into the history of the Ramnagar excavations, though I do so reluctantly. It certainly is an unpleasant task, but it must be performed as we cannot allow science to be led astray by statements which apparently are not true.

In the Progress Report of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh for 1891-2, Epigraphical Section, Dr. Fuhrer gives a short account of the excavations at Ramnagar in the Bareli District. He first describes the remains of two Saiva temples. With these we are not concerned here, as no inscriptions were found in them. He then speaks of the excavation of a mound which "brought to light the foundation of a brick temple, dedicated to Parsvanatha, . . . dating from the Indo-Scythic period”. These statements rest on epigraphical finds about which Fuhrer says — During the course of the excavations a great number of fragments of naked Jaina statues were exhumed, of which several are inscribed, bearing dates ranging from Samvat 18 to Samvat 74, or A.D. 96 to 152. An inscription on the base of a sitting statue of Neminatha records the following: — 'Success! The year 50, second month of winter, first day, at that moment, a statue of divine Neminatha was set up in the temple of the divine lord Parsvanatha as a gift of the illustrious Indrapala for the worship of the Arhats and for the welfare and happiness of the donor's parents and of all creatures.”'

In my opinion there can be no doubt that this inscription has been invented by the author of the Report. The date has been copied from the Mathura inscription Ep. Ind., vol. ii, p. 209, No. 36, which is dated [sam.] 50 he 2 di 1 asya purvvaya. The name of the donor and the phrase “for the worship of the Arhats” have been taken from the Mathura inscription, Ep. Ind., vol, ii, p. 201, No. 9, which records the gift of Idrapala (Indrapala), the son of a Goti (Gaupti), for the worship of the Arhats. And the phrase “for the welfare and happiness of the donor's parents and of all creatures" has probably been taken from the Buddhist Kaman inscription, Ep. Ind., vol. ii. p. 212, No. 42, which ends: matapitrnam sarvvasa[ta]na ca hitasukharttha, “for the welfare and happiness of (the donors) parents and of all creatures" (Buhler's translation).

The account of the excavation of the Jaina mound is followed by the description of “another extensive mound, . . . which on exploration was found to hide the remains of a very large Buddhist monastery, called Mihiravihara, and dating from the middle of the first century A.D. . . . Externally the temple was decorated with elaborate brick carvings and numerous figures of terra-cotta, representing scenes from the life of Buddha, some of which bear short inscriptions and masons' marks. . . . An inscription on the base of a terra-cotta statue of Buddha records the following: — ‘Success! In the year 31 (A.D. 109), in the first month of the rainy season, on the tenth day, at that moment, a statue of divine Sakyamuni was set up within the precincts of the Mihiravihara as a gift of the monk Nagadatta, for the acceptance of the Sarvastivadin teachers, for the welfare and happiness of the donor’s parents and of all creatures.'"

In this case, also, the document supposed to give evidence for the name and the date of the building has been manufactured by Fuhrer. The date comes from the Mathura inscription, Ep. Ind,, vol. ii, pp. 202 f., No. 15, which is dated sa 30 1 va 1 di 10. The rest, with the exception of the name of the donor, is an almost literal copy of the Kaman inscription just mentioned, or rather of Buhler's translation of that inscription: “ . . . at that moment, a statue of divine Sakyamuni (Sakyamuni, was set up as) the gift of the monk Nandika in the Mihiravihara, for the acceptance of the Sarvastivadi (Sarvastivadin) teachers, for the welfare and happiness of (the donor's) parents and of all creatures."