Sarat Chandra Das

• Name — Sarat Chandra Das শরৎচন্দ্র দাশ • Born — 18 July 1849 • Birthplace — Chittagong, Bengal, British India • Died — 5 January 1917 • Place of death — Chittagong, Bengal, British India • Occupation — Explorer, Scholar, Spy • Parents — Dindayal Dash

• Illustration — Gau art in detail, from the 1902 A Tibetan-English Dictionary with Sanskrit Synonyms Born in Chittagong, eastern Bengal to a Bengali Hindu Vaidya-Brahmin family, Sarat Chandra Das attended Presidency College, as a student of the University of Calcutta. In 1874 he was appointed headmaster of the Bhutia Boarding School at Darjeeling. In 1878, a Tibetan teacher, Lama Ugyen Gyatso arranged a passport for Sarat Chandra to go the monastery at Tashilhunpo. In June 1879, Das and Ugyen-gyatso left Darjeeling for the first of two journeys to Tibet. They remained in Tibet for six months, returning to Darjeeling with a large collection of Tibetan and Sanskrit texts which would become the basis for his later scholarship. Sarat Chandra spent 1880 in Darjeeling poring over the information he had obtained. In November 1881, Sarat Chandra and Ugyen-gyatso returned to Tibet, where they explored the Yarlung Valley, returning to India in January 1883. Along with Satish Chandra Vidyabhusan, he prepared Tibetan-English dictionary. Recent research, however, indicates that much of the dictionary was a result of collaborative ventures with local Tibetan and Sikkimese born individuals from the Darjeeling-Sikkim region. For a time, he worked as a spy for the British, accompanying Colman Macaulay on his 1884 expedition to Tibet to gather information on the Tibetans, Russians and Chinese. After he left Tibet, the reasons for his visit were discovered and many of the Tibetans who had befriended him suffered severe reprisals. For the latter part of his life, Das settled in Darjeeling. He named his house "Lhasa Villa" and played host to many notable guests including Sir Charles Alfred Bell and Ekai Kawaguchi. Johnson stated that, in 1885 and 1887 Das met with Henry Steel Olcott, co-founder and first President of the Theosophical Society.

The authorities additionally record the heading Sarat Chandra Dash. His recorded language was Bangla. His recorded confession was Hinduism.