Overview
- Centering on the religious dimensions of Das’s work, the book reorients Tibet studies from the West towards Asia
- This is the first study on Sarat Chandra Das, and his contribution to the production of a whole corpus of knowledge
- The book raises several pertinent questions with regard to the issue of native agency and colonial knowledge production
Part of the book series: Postcolonialism and Religions (PCR)
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About this book
This book offers the first comprehensive study of Sarat Chandra Das (1849–1917), the Bengali explorer and scholar whose journeys to Tibet and scholarly contributions transformed the religious and intellectual landscape of colonial Bengal. Tracing Das’s expeditions, his recovery of Sanskrit Buddhist texts, and the founding of the Buddhist Text Society of India, the book reveals how Tibet was reimagined as a sacred geography—central to the revival of Buddhism and the construction of new nationalist histories in early twentieth-century Bengal. By centering the theme of native agency and highlighting Das’s collaborations with Tibetan and Sikkimese interlocutors, the book challenges dominant narratives of colonial knowledge-making. It shows how Buddhism, textual and visual discourses, and trans-Himalayan networks were mobilized in service of both historical recovery and regional self-fashioning of Bengal’s past. Rich in historical detail and interpretive insight, the book significantly contributes to Buddhist studies, Tibetology, and South Asian intellectual history.
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Authors and affiliations
About the author
Parjanya Sen is a historian and anthropologist working in the field of Himalayan Buddhism. He is a 2023 ACLS ‘Early-Career Research Fellow’ funded by The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies, and was Postdoctoral Visiting Scholar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford from January to October, 2024. He is presently working as Assistant Professor in English at Deshbandhu College for Girls, University of Calcutta. He has edited a book 'Death and Dying in Northeast India: Indigeneity and Afterlife' (Routledge, 2022) and has published on the theme of native agency and knowledge-production on Tibet in several international peer-reviewed journals.
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Bibliographic information
Book title: A Babu among the Lamas: Sarat Chandra Das and the Making of Tibet Studies in Colonial Bengal
Authors: Parjanya Sen
Series title: Postcolonialism and Religions
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-20033-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook packages: Philosophy and Religion, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-032-20032-7Published: 10 August 2026
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-032-20035-8Due: 24 August 2027
eBook ISBN: 978-3-032-20033-4Published: 09 August 2026
Series ISSN: 2946-2312
Series E-ISSN: 2946-2320
Edition number: 1
Number of pages: XXVI, 241
Number of illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 23 illustrations in colour
Topics: Comparative Religion, Religious Studies, general, Asian Culture