Sarat Chandra Das (1849–1917) was an Indian scholar of Tibetan language and culture most noted for his two journeys to Tibet in 1879 and in 1881 - 1882
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Born in Chittagong, eastern Bengal to a Hindu family, Sarat Chandra Das attended Presidency College in Calcutta.In 1874 he was appointed headmaster of the Bhutia Boarding School at Darjeeling. In 1878, a Tibetan teacher, Lama Ugyen-gyatso arranged a passport for Sarat Chandra to go the monastery at Tashilhunpo. In June, 1879, Das and Ugyen-gyatso left Darjeeling for the first of two journeys to Tibet. They remained in Tibet for six months, returning to Darjeeling with a large collection of Tibetan and Sanskrit texts which would become the basis for his later scholarship. Sarat Chandra spent 1880 in Darjeeling pouring over the information he had obtained. In November 1881, Sarat Chandra and Ugyen-gyatso returned to Tibet for where they explored the Yarlung valley, returning to India in January 1883[1]
For a time, he worked as a spy for the British, going on expeditions into Tibet to gather information on the Tibetans, Russians and Chinese. After he left Tibet, the reasons for his visit were discovered and many of the Tibetans who had befriended him suffered severe reprisals. For the latter part of his life, Das settled in Darjeeling. He named his house "Lhasa Villa" and played host to many notable guests including Sir Charles Alfred Bell, Ekai Kawaguchi and Evans-Wentz. Johnson stated that, in 1882 Das met with Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, the two individuals notable for the founding of the Theosophy Society. Johnson argued that although she described it in some detail, Blavatsky had never set foot in Tibet and that she obtained her information regarding the Tashilunpo Monastery indirectly from Das, who had visited and was familiar with the place. Das compiled a large Tibetan-English dictionary, which was published in 1902.[2]
