Samuel Turner

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Samuel Turner ( April 19, 1759 - January 2, 1802 ) was an officer in the British East India Company . He became known through the report on his trip to Tibet in 1783/84, which he published in 1800 as Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet .

Life

Turner's father John was a dealer in Gloucester , his mother was Ann Warren, whose sister Hester was Warren Hastings ' mother . Hastings, the first Governor General of Bengal , was Turner's cousin.

Turner became a cadet in India in 1780, a lieutenant in 1781, a captain in 1796, and a regimental captain in 1799. With the exception of his trip to Tibet, he spent his entire military career in India. In 1798 he returned to England and retired in 1800.

After he published his travelogue, he received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University and became a member of the Royal Society in 1801 . Turner died after a short illness in 1802. His estate on the trip to Tibet and Bhutan is in the Oxford Bodleian Library .

Trip to Bhutan and Tibet

In 1783 Warren Hastings sent Turner to Tibet. Hastings wanted to build on the success of the first trip by a British envoy to Tibet, which George Bogle made in 1774/75. Both Bogle and his host, the third Panchen Lama Lobsang Palden Yeshe , had died in 1780/1. When Hastings learned in 1782 that the Panchen Lama had been reborn , he took the opportunity to get in personal contact with the Tibetans again. His goal was to trade in the Himalayas and possibly find an overland route to China .

Turner left Calcutta in January 1783, accompanied by Lieutenant Samuel Davis and the doctor Robert Saunders . They reached Bhutan in May and finally Tibet in September. In early 1784 they returned to Bengal.

Turner describes in his report how the travelers in Bhutan were received by the Daeb Raja , a kind of king. Samuel Davis was unable to continue traveling for health reasons. Saunders and Turner came to Teshoo Loomboo, often spelled Tashilhunpo, today Zhaxilhünbo , the monastery town of Teshoo or Panchen Lamas in the west of Samzhubzês . There they were received by the regent Soopoon Choomboo and - according to Turner - treated as guests with the utmost respect. Finally, Turner also managed to be received by the one and a half year old Panchen Lama Lobsang Tenpe Nyima and his parents.

Although the Turner and Hastings embassy was rated as successful, further contacts with Tibet were broken up by Hastings' recall to London in 1785 and the increasing influence of China over the Tibetan territories.

Travel report

Turner's travel report Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet was originally published in London in 1800. It has been translated into French, Dutch, German and Italian.

The text is almost 500 pages long and is supplemented by letters and other reports concerning Tibet. Turner not only describes his encounters with the rulers of Bhutan and Tibet, but also the landscape and animals, cultivation of culture, people, their customs and habits, religion and politics. The report was regarded as the current source for news about Tibet until the 1830s, as Bogle's report was not yet known at the time and was not published until 1875. A German translation of it did not appear until 1909.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Turner, Samuel: Ambassade Au Thibet Et Au Boutan, Contenant Des Détails très-curieux sur les Moeurs, la Religion [...], Paris 1800.
  2. ↑ Turner, Samuel Gezantschap naar Thibet en Boutan [...], Amsterdam 1,801th
  3. ^ Turner, Samuel: Legation trip to the court of the Teshoo Lama through Bootan and a part of Tibet, Hamburg 1801.
  4. ↑ Cf. Aris, Michael: Turner, Samuel in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 55 (2004), pp. 659–660, here 660.
  5. ↑ See e.g. B. Berghaus, Heinrich: Historical-geographical description of Assam and its neighboring countries, Gotha 1834.
  6. ↑ Markham, Clements R .: Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa. London 1876 (Reprint New Delhi 1971)
  7. ↑ George Bogle and Thomas Manning: From the Land of the Living Buddhas. The stories of George Bogle's mission to Tibet and Thomas Manning's trip to Lhasa (1774 and 1812). From the English by Mr. Clements R. Markham. Translated and edited by Wirkl. Go Councilor Max von Brandt . Hamburg 1909. New edition: George Bogle: In the land of the living Buddhas: Journey of discovery in closed Tibet, 1774–1775. With a contribution by Sven Hedin (on the murder of the Panchen Lama Lobsang Palden Yeshe in Jehol on behalf of the Chinese emperor). Edited by Wolf-Dieter Grün. Stuttgart 1984
personal data
SURNAME Turner, Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Diplomat and officer in the British East India Company
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1759
PLACE OF BIRTH Gloucester
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 1802
Place of death unsure: London