Laurence Austine Waddell
| Major Laurence Austine Waddell LLD, LA, CB, CIE | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Born | 1854 | ||||||||
| Died | 1938 | ||||||||
| Residence |
Medical Collage, Calcutta Bengal Medical Service, Darjeeling [1890] The Manse, Woodland's Road, Middlesboro' [1894] Darjeeling, Bengal [1897] 35 Dartmouth Park Road, Highgate Road, NW [1900] c/o R. Reeves, Esq., 2 Durham House, Dartmouth Park Hill, NW [1903] 61 Rissenden Mansions, Highgate Road, NW [1905] Kite's Nest, Hastings [1906] The Deodars, Park Drive, Hampstead, NW 33 The Park, North End Road, Hampstead, NW [1915] 5 Tanza Road, Hampstead, NW3 [1921] 55 Campbell Street, Greenock [1923] Ardsley, Craigmore, Rothesay [1933] | ||||||||
| Occupation |
medical armed services academic explorer | ||||||||
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Contents
Notes
Office Notes
AI Council 1914 Member
AI Council 1915 Member
AI Council 1916 Member
AI Council 1919 Member
AI Council 1920 Member
House Notes
proposed 9 Dec. 1890
Lt. Col. in 1901 list
death noted in Report of the Council 1938-1939
Notes From Elsewhere
Lieutenant Colonel Laurence Austine Waddell,[1] CB, CIE, F.L.S., L.L.D, M.Ch., I.M.S. RAI, F.R.A.S (1854–1938) was a British explorer, Professor of Tibetan, Professor of Chemistry and Pathology, Indian Army surgeon,[2] collector in Tibet, and amateur archaeologist. Waddell also studied Sumerian and Sanskrit; he made various translations of seals and other inscriptions. His reputation as a Assyriologist gained little to no academic recognition and his books on the history of civilization have caused controversy. Some of his book publications however were popular with the public, and he is regarded by some today to have been a real-life precursor of the fictitious character Indiana Jones.[3]
Laurence Waddell was born on 29 May 1854, and was the son of Rev. Thomas Clement Waddell, a Doctor of Divinity at Glasgow University and Jean Chapman, daughter of John Chapman of Banton, Stirlingshire.[4] Laurence Waddell obtained a Bachelor's degree in Medicine followed by a Master's degree in both Surgery and Chemistry at Glasgow University in 1878. His first job was as a resident surgeon near the university and was also the President of Glasgow University's Medical Society.[5] In 1880 Waddell joined the British Indian Army and served as a medical officer with the Indian Medical Service (I.M.S), subsequently he was stationed in India and the Far East (Tibet, China and Burma). The following year he became a Professor of Chemistry and Pathology at the Medical College of Kolkata, India. While working in India, Waddell also studied Sanskrit and edited the Indian Medical Gazette. He became Assistant Sanitary Commissioner under the government of India.[4]
After Waddell worked as a Professor of Chemistry and Pathology for 6 years, he became involved in military expeditions across Burma and Tibet.[6] Between 1885-1887 Waddell took part in the British expedition that annexed Upper Burma, which defeated Thibaw Min the last king of the Konbaung dynasty.[7] After his return from Burma Waddell was stationed in Darjeeling district, India, and was appointed Principal Medical Officer in 1888. In the 1890s Waddell, while in Patna, established that Agam Kuan was part of Ashoka's Hell.[8] His first publications were essays and articles on medicine and zoology, most notably "The Birds of Sikkim" (1893).[9] In 1895 he obtained a doctorate in law.[10]
Waddell traveled extensively in India throughout the 1890s (including Sikkim and areas on the borders of Nepal and Tibet) and wrote about the Tibetan Buddhist religious practices he observed there. Stationed with the British army in Darjeeling, Waddell learned the Tibetan language and even visited Tibet several times secretly, in disguise. He was the cultural consultant on the 1903-1904 British invasion of Tibet led by Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband, and was considered alongside Sir Charles Bell as one of the foremost authorities on Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. Waddell studied archaeology and ethnology in-between his military assignments across India and Tibet, and his exploits in the Himalayas were published in his highly successful book Among the Himalayas (1899). Various archaeological excavations were also carried out and supervised by Waddell across India, including Pataliputra, of which he did not receive recognition of discovery until long after his death, in 1982, by the government of Bengal. His discoveries at Pataliputra were published in an official report in 1892.[4]
During the 1890s Waddell specialised in Buddhist antiquities and became a collector, between 1895-97 he published "Reports on collections of Indo-Scythian Buddhist Sculptures from the Swat Valley", in 1893 he also read a paper to the International Congress of Orientalists: "On some newly found Indo-Grecian Buddhistic Sculptures from the Swat Valley".[4] In 1895 Waddell published his book Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism, which was one of the first works published in the west on Buddhism. As a collector, Waddell had come across many Tibetan manuscripts and maps, but was disappointed to not find a single reference to a lost ancient civilization, which he had hoped to discover.
Waddell continued his military service with the Indian Medical Service. He was in China during the Boxer Rebellion (1898-1901), including the Relief of Peking in August 1900, for which he was mentioned in despatches, received the China War Medal (1900) with clasp, and was in 1901 appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE).[11] By late 1901 he had moved to North-West Frontier Province and was present during the Mahsud-Waziri Blockade, 1901–02. He was in Malakand in 1902 and took part in the PMO Tibet Mission to Lhasa 1903–04, for which he was again mentioned in despatches, received a medal with clasp and was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB). Waddell then returned to England where he briefly became Professor of Tibetan at the University College of London (1906–1908).
In 1908, Waddell began to learn Sumerian.[12] Thus in his later career he turned to studying the ancient near east, especially Sumeria and dedicated his time to deciphering or translating ancient cuneiform tablets or seals, most notably including the Scheil dynastic tablet. In 1911, Waddell published two entries in the Encyclopædia Britannica.[13] By 1917, Waddell was fully retired and first started exclusively writing on Aryans, beginning in an article published in the Asiatic Review entitled "Aryan Origin of the World's Civilization".[4] From the 1920s Waddell published several works which attempted to prove an Aryan (i.e., Indo-European) origin of the alphabet and the appearance of Indo-European myth figures in ancient Near Eastern mythologies (e.g., Hittite, Sumerian, Babylonian). The foundation of his argument is what he saw as a persistence of cult practices, religious symbols, mythological stories and figures, and god and hero names throughout Western and Near Eastern civilizations, but also based his arguments on his deciphered Sumerian and Indus-Valley seals, and other archaeological findings.
Waddell died in 1938. That same year, he had completed writing Trojan Origin of World Civilization. The book was never published.[14]
He is commemorated in the Giant babax (Babax waddelli). The University of Glasgow holds Waddell's papers and manuscript collection.
Waddell's voluminious writings after his retirement were based on an attempt to prove the Sumerians (who he identified as Aryans) as the progenitors of other ancient civilizations, such as the Indus Valley Civilization and ancient Egyptians to "the classic Greeks and Romans and Ancient Britons, to whom they [the Sumerians] passed on from hand to hand down the ages the torch of civilization".[15] He is perhaps most remembered for his controversial translations; the Scheil dynastic tablet, the Bowl of Utu and Newton Stone, as well as his British Edda.
Born Cumbernauld, Dunbartonshire; died Craigmore, Rothesay. Served in Indian Medical Service 1880-1905. Saw service in India, Burma and China. A member of the 1904 expedition to Tibet. Professor of Chemistry and Pathology, Calcutta Medical College 1896-1902. Professor of Tibetan, UCL 1906-8. Numerous publications on Tibet, Buddhism, and later on Mesopotamia. Honorary degree from Glasgow. CIE 1901, CB 1904. At some point changed his name from Augustine to Austine.
Publications
External Publications
Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism, With Its Mystic Cults, Symbolism and Mythology and in Its Relation to Indian Buddhism (1895)[33] Among the Himalayas (1899)[34]
The Tribes of the Brahmaputra valley (1901) Lhasa and Its Mysteries - With a Record of the British Tibetan Expedition of 1903-1904 (1905)[35]
The "Dhāranī" cult in Buddhism: its origin, deified literature and images (1912)
Phoenician Origin of the Britons, Scots, and Anglo-Saxons (1924, 2nd ed. 1925)
Indo-Sumerian Seals Deciphered discovering Sumerians of Indus Valley as Phoenicians, Barats, Goths & famous Vedic Aryans 3100-2300 B.C. (1925)
Sumer-Aryan Dictionary. An Etymological Lexicon of the English and other Aryan Languages Ancient and Modern and the Sumerian Origin of Egyptian and its Hieroglyphs (1927)
Aryan Origin of the Alphabet (1927) Questionary on the Sumerian markings upon prehistoric pottery found in the Danube & associated valleys of Middle Europe (1928, small booklet)
Makers of Civilization in Race and History (1929)
Egyptian Civilization Its Sumerian Origin and Real Chronology (1930)
The British Edda (1930) [36]
House Publications
Related Material Details
RAI Material
photos
Other Material
The University of Glasgow holds Waddell's papers and manuscript collection.
PRM field collector