[Rarebooks] fa: [TIBET & BHUTAN] Samuel Turner: EMBASSY TO THE COURT OF THE TESHOO LAMA - 1800

[ArCh]

Auction ending Sunday, October 23. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/mr33vxca

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Samuel Turner: An Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama, in Tibet; containing a Narrative of a Journey through Bootan, and part of Tibet. By Captain Samuel Turner. To which are added, views taken on the spot, by Lieutenant Samuel Davis; and observations botanical, mineralogical, and medical, by Mr. Robert Saunders. London: Printed by W. Bulmer and Co. Cleveland Row, St. James's; and sold by Messrs. G. and W. Nicol, Booksellers To His Majesty, Pall-Mall, 1800. First edition. Tall 4to (29 cm) in modern quarter calf and silk-covered boards, new endpapers; xxviii + 473 + [1] pp.; with an in-text woodcut, 13 engraved plates (one double-page) with tissue guards, and an engraved folding map (complete). ESTC T136507.

The first published account of Tibet in the English language. Offsetting and browning from the plates as usual, occasional spotting and marginal damp-staining, one plate trimmed a bit close just touching the top of the image, two marginal tears to the folding map, else clean and sound, firmly bound. Lord Beresford's copy, inscribed on the title-page: "This Book belongs to Lord Beresford's Library at Bedgebury Park." William Carr Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford, 1st Marquis de Campo Maior (1768-1854), was commander in chief of the Portuguese forces fighting under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular War of 1808-14. Bedgebury Park was his estate near Goudhurst in Kent.

"The only published account of a journey to Great Tibet written by an Englishman until [George] Bogle and [Thomas] Manning's narratives were printed in 1875. News having reached Calcutta, in February 1782, of the reincarnation of the Tashi-lhunpo grand lama of Tibet in the person of a child, Warren Hastings proposed the despatch of a mission to Tibet to congratulate the lamaist regency on the event... With the assent of the court of directors, Turner was appointed on 9 Jan. 1783 chief of the mission. Leaving Calcutta shortly afterwards,... Turner reached the summer palace of the Deb Raja of Bhutan early in June 1783, stayed till 8 Sept. in this country, and then proceeded... to Tashi-lhunpo, a monastery in the neighbourhood of Shigatze, arriving there on 22 Sept. 1783. On 4 Dec. at Ter-pa-ling, he had an audience of the infant Tashi lama, who, he was told, could understand what was said to him... The Teshoo Lama was at this time eighteen months old. Returning to India by the same route, Turner joined the governor-general's camp at Patna in March 1784, and at once proceeded to submit a report of his mission, which was afterwards reprinted in the appendix to [t]his larger work." (DNB)

The plates include views after drawings by Turner and Samuel Davis, the expedition's surveyor, and an image of a Bhutanese yak (after George Stubbs) that Turner successfully shipped alive back to Hastings. In addition to Turner's narrative of the journey, the contents include the above-mentioned Report delivered to the Hon. William Hastings, Esq. Governor General of Bengal; Some Account of the Vegetable and Mineral Productions of Bootan and Tibet; A List of the Usual Articles of Commerce between Tibet and the surrounding Countries; Some Account of the Situation of Affairs in Tibet from 1785 to 1793; the Translation of a Letter from Kienlong, Emperor of Chine, to Dalai Lama, the Grand Lama of Tibet; etc.