Page:Narratives of the mission of George Bogle to Tibet.djvu/10

 PREFACE.

It has long been known that the first British mission to Tibet was sent by Warren Hastings in 1774 under Mr. George Bogle, B.C.S., that a great friendship was formed between Mr. Bogle and the Teshu Lama, and that intercourse was then established between the Governments of British India and Tibet. But up to the present time no full account of this important mission has been given to the world. All attempts to find adequate materials among the records at Calcutta, or at the India Office, have failed.

It is less generally known that the only Englishman who ever visited Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and saw the Dalai Lama, was Mr. Thomas Manning, an adventurous traveller who performed that extraordinary feat in 1811. No account has hitherto been published of Mr. Manning's remarkable journey. These two gaps in the history of intercourse between India and Tibet have now been filled up.

The whole of Mr. Bogle's journals, memoranda, official and private correspondence, have been carefully preserved by his family in Scotland. Through the kindness and public spirit of Miss Brown of Lanfine, in Ayrshire, the representative of the Bogle family, these valuable manuscripts, after having been judiciously arranged by Mr. Gairdner of Kilmarnock, were placed in the hands of the present editor. They were contained in a large box, and consisted of journals, memoranda of various kinds, and on many subjects; numerous bundles of private letters, including correspondence wilh Warren Hastings, Sir Elijah Impey, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Mrs. Morehead, Dr. Hamilton, and the members of Mr. Bogle's family; appoint-