Richard Carnac Temple

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Sir Richard Carnac Temple CIE (1850–1931) was a writer in the nineteenth century. Educated at Oxford University he served in the army (Royal Scots Fusiliers), the colonial service and was an amateur anthropologist^[1]

Temple served in India and in Burma and, in 1894, became Chief Commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1897, he retired in 1904. He assembled collections for the British Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford) and established a small museum in his home in Kempsey, Worcestershire, but sold much of this on in 1921^[2]

His works include:

Wide-awake Stories (Punjab Folk Tales) (1884), with Mrs. F.A. Steel
Legends of the Punjab (1883-90), ed.
The Thirty Seven Nats, a Phase of Spirit Worship Prevailing in Burma, London, W. Griggs (1906)

and various works dealing with the religions and geography of India, etc.^[3]

[edit] Biography

Sir Richard Carnac Temple was born in Allahabad, India on October 15, 1850. He went to school at Harrow and, after graduating from Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1871, he joined the Army, serving first in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, and then in the Third Burmese War. ^[4] Immediately after the war, he was appointed as an Assistant-Commissioner in Burma and a Cantonment Magistrate in the newly conquered city of Mandalay and was promoted to Deputy-Commissioner in 1888. ^[5]