James Huston Edgar
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| Rev. James Huston Edgar FRGS | |||||||||
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| Born | 1872 | ||||||||
| Died | 1936 | ||||||||
| Residence |
China Inland Mission, Kwanhsien, West China China Inland Mission, 34 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia [1927] China Inland Mission, Tatsienlu Sze, China [1929] | ||||||||
| Occupation | church | ||||||||
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Contents
Notes
Office Notes
House Notes
1921.05.31 proposed by W.W. Ritchie, seconded by E.N. Fallaize
Notes From Elsewhere
a New Zealand missionary
Rev. James Huston Edgar Born 19 Jul 1872 in Clunie Estate, near Harrow , Victoria, Australia Ancestors
Son of Adam Edgar and [mother unknown] Brother of John Scott Edgar, Eliza (Edgar) Brownlie, Adam Scott Edgar, Margaret (Edgar) Clarke, Thomas Edgar and Isabella Edgar [spouse(s) unknown] Descendants Father of Chalmers Huston Edgar and Gordon Scott Edgar Died 23 Mar 1936 in Tatsienlua, West China
On James Huston Edgar (1872-1936), see, David Templeman, ‘J.H. Edgar an Australian Missionary in the Tibetan Marches’, Lungta 11, 1998, pp. 25-33; also see on both Edgar and Graham (see n.5), Jeff Kyong-McClain, ‘Missionary archaeology on Republican China's Southwestern frontier’, International Institute for Asian
Studies (Leiden) Newsletter, 65, Autumn 2013, p. 4.
James Huston Edgar (1872-1936) was born in Australia but moved to New Zealand at a young age. Edgar was endowed with a natural curiosity and delight in adventure, so much so that as a youth he ran away from home and joined a tribe of Maori (despite being “a blood relation of Thomas Carlyle,” his eulogist noted). In 1897, Edgar enrolled for a year of study at the Missionary Training Home in Adelaide, and upon graduation joined the China Inland Mission, with the understanding that he would eventually work at a mission station in western Sichuan, near Tibet, an area into which the mission was looking to expand. After four years learning Chinese in eastern China, Edgar arrived in Sichuan in 1902, where he remained until his death in 1936.2
Edgar had no training in archaeological theory or method, and was more a dabbler than a professional; but being so naturally curious about the history of the region, and being one of the few English-speaking residents in the borderlands, he accrued some level of authority on the subject. Edgar’s archaeology of the region took him in many directions, but his most persistent efforts were aimed toward collecting what he determined to be paleolithic and neolithic artifacts, such as chipped or polished stone tools and bones. The primary outlet for his archaeological research was the Journal of the West China Border Research Society. In his initial archaeological
offerings to the Journal, Edgar emphasized connections between stone implements of the frontier with China’s
Central Plains, so suggesting the notion, popular with Chinese nationalists at the time, that development had come to this peripheral region from the heart of China, and that there was, therefore, no independent civilization in the region in antiquity. However, the longer Edgar remained a resident of the Sino-Tibetan borderlands, the more he came to believe that the artifacts he collected indicated independent human development in the region, and he began referring to the stone tools’ creators as “pre-Tibetans”, discounting connections with China.3 Edgar became so convinced, in fact, that he was bothered by all the attention given to the “advanced character” of the stone tools attributed to Peking Man, advertised as the ancestor of the Chinese, once writing to his friend: “If our Tibetan ones [artifacts] are not of the same kind – perhaps even more ancient! – I shall spend some labor eating my hat.”4 Ultimately, however, except for a few missionary friends (and perhaps Swiss geologist Arnold Heim),
few were persuaded of this Tibet-centered archaeology
Publications
External Publications
English-Giarung vocabulary, 1934
The land of mystery, Tibet Unknown Binding – 1930
by James Huston Edgar (Author)
The land of the migrating blacks / by J.H. Edgar
Edgar, J. Huston
Exploration of the great reserves set apart for Aborigines in South and Central Australia / by J. Huston Edgar
The marches of the Mantze / by J.H. Edgar ; preface by Cecil Polhill
House Publications
Coiffure of the Litang women (Tibet) 1926
111. Tibet: Natural Stone Object with Phallic Suggestions; Man Vol. 33 (Jun., 1933), p. 106