Waddell, Laurence Austine

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Lieutenant Colonel Laurence Austine Waddell^[1] F.L.S., M.Ch., I.M.S. (1854–1938) was a British explorer, British army surgeon,^[2] collector in Tibet, and author.

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.

He is commemorated in the Giant Babax Babax waddelli.

In his later works he tries to synthesize Western and Near Eastern cultures, proposing among other things an Aryan (i.e., Indo-European) origin of the alphabet and the appearance of Indo-European myth figures in ancient Near Eastern mythologies. The foundation of his argument is what he sees as a persistence of cult practices, religious symbols, mythological stories and figures, and god and hero names (based on etymology) throughout Western and Near Eastern civilizations. He thought that Egyptian civilization had an Aryan origin and that Pharaoh Menes' dynasty was "identical with the whole imperial dynasty of Manis-Tusu, the son of Sargon of Mesopotamia...".^[3]

[edit] Published works

• Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism, With Its Mystic Cults, Symbolism and Mythology and in Its Relation to Indian Buddhism (1895) is Waddell's best-known work, and was one of the first books published in the west to offer such extensive observations of Buddhism, ranging from metaphysics to practical magic. Waddell explains the whole Tibetan pantheon, including transcriptions of hundreds of charms and mantras and detailed coverage of the doctrine of incarnation and reincarnation.
• Among the Himalayas (1899) is an engaging journal of fourteen years of travel. In Waddell's own words, "During the past fourteen years I have traversed portions of the borderlands of Sikkim nearly every year, sketching, shooting, collecting, and especially exploring the customs of the people on the frontiers of Tibet, and of Nepal. This illustrated narrative of my journeyings I hope may reflect, in some measure, the keen enjoyment of travel in these regions, may awaken further interest in a fascinating though little known land, may assist in guiding the traveler to those features that are of greatest general interest, and bring home to the reader a whiff of the bracing breezes of the Himalayas."
• Lhasa and Its Mysteries-With a Record of the British Tibetan Expedition of 1903-1904 (1905) Documents the people and religion of the Tibetan capital, including British-Tibetan military clashes and peace negotiations.
• The Birds of Sikkim (1893)
• Aryan Origin of the Alphabet (1927)
• Indo-Sumerian Seals Deciphered discovering Sumerians of Indus Valley as Phoenicians, Barats, Goths & famous Vedic Aryans 3100-2300 B.C. (1925)
• The Makers of Civilization (1929)
• Phoenician Origin of the Britons, Scots, and Anglo-Saxons (2nd ed. 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)
• The British Edda (1930) in which Waddell reconstructs the Old Icelandic Poetic Edda under the notion that the text is very ancient and actually "British." His pursuit is apparent the subtitle: "The great epic poem of the ancient Britons of the exploits of King Thor, Arthur, or Adam and his knights in establishing civilization reforming Eden & capturing the Holy Grail about 3380-3350 B.C." For this he uses the language and art of Indo-European and Semitic peoples, and draws lines through mythologies connecting ancient gods and stories to those in the medieval manuscripts of the Edda.

[edit] References