From Publishers Weekly
In 1774 Warren Hastings, the head of the British East India Company in India, received a letter from the Panchen Lama, the revered head of the Tibetan government, and immediately saw a new and rich market and, more importantly, a possible "entrance for British goods into the immense Chinese market." And British writer Teltscher (
India Inscribed) wonderfully tells the journey of Hastings's Scottish envoy, George Bogle, to Tibet to meet with the Lama, and the Lama's subsequent journey to China to meet with Emperor Qianlong. Mixing quotations from Bogle's journals with lively prose, she creates an academic yet dynamic account of two cultures meeting for the first time. While working to persuade the Lama to trade with the British, Bogle became captivated by Tibet, finding the simple mountain culture similar to his Highland life. In the Lama he finds a genuine friend with a hungry mind willing to discuss "world politics and geography, European science, technology and culture about stars and watches and crocodiles." While presenting a bittersweet tale of friendship between two strong yet completely different souls, Teltscher also manages to pull the veil back on the historical connection between Tibet and China that remains noteworthy to the present day. Illus. throughout.
(Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The journey that Teltscher recounts in this beguiling history signified Britain's East India Company's attempt to open trade with the Chinese empire in the 1770s. A marvelous opportunity appeared to the company's governor general, Warren Hastings, in the form of a letter from the Panchen Lama of Tibet. Here was a back door to China, decided Hastings, who sent George Bogle to visit the lama. Bogle proved to be a resourceful and observant ambassador, and Teltscher recasts his vividly expressive record of the two-year-long odyssey into an alluring narrative. Briskly dispatching its road-trip elements, replete with potentates placated and rivers forded, Teltscher's tale lingers over the rapport Bogle established with the Panchen Lama while he wintered at the latter's monastery. "It still seems delightfully incongruous that the young Glaswegian should have struck up a friendship with the incarnation of Amitabha, the Buddha of Boundless Light," writes the author, whose own pleasure in rediscovering Bogle's adventure will be readily shared by her readers, especially those interested in exploration or background history to the plight of modern Tibet.
Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
