Full Description
This book offers the first comprehensive study of Sarat Chandra Das (1849-1917), the Bengali explorer and scholar whose journeys to Tibet and scholarly contributions transformed the religious and intellectual landscape of colonial Bengal. Tracing Das's expeditions, his recovery of Sanskrit Buddhist texts, and the founding of the Buddhist Text Society of India, the book reveals how Tibet was reimagined as a sacred geography—central to the revival of Buddhism and the construction of new nationalist histories in early twentieth-century Bengal. By centering the theme of native agency and highlighting Das's collaborations with Tibetan and Sikkimese interlocutors, the book challenges dominant narratives of colonial knowledge-making. It shows how Buddhism, textual and visual discourses, and trans-Himalayan networks were mobilized in service of both historical recovery and regional self-fashioning of Bengal's past. Rich in historical detail and interpretive insight, the book significantly contributes to Buddhist studies, Tibetology, and South Asian intellectual history.
Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction: Biography as bricolage.- Chapter 2. Across the mountain passes: Babu Autumn's Moon on the roof of the world.- Chapter 3. Native scholarship, colonial censorship and authorship: The afterlives of Das's travelogues and works.- Chapter 4. Picturing Tibet: Sarat Chandra Das and the visual rendering of Tibet from Darjeeling.- Chapter 5. Collaborators and contested authorship: Das's trilingual dictionary.- Chapter 6. Tibet and a new Bengali nationalism: The multiple legacies of Sarat Chandra Das and the Buddhist Text Society of India.
