George de Roerich
By the way, this talent is inborn, and he is very proud of his ancestor — field marshal of the Russian Empire Mikhail Kutuzov, the hero of Patriotic War of 1812.
"[1][2] By the time Roerich was 15, he had already begun studying Egyptology with Boris Turayev and Mongolian language and history with Andrei Dmitryevich Rudnyev.
After finishing his studies at Karl May School, he entered the Indian and Iranian department of Oriental Languages at London University in 1918.
He mastered Sanskrit during his time at Harvard under the direction of Professor Charles Rockwell Lanman, whose comparative grammar lessons made a lifelong impact on George's future studies.
Roerich also attended lectures by Professor Michael Rostovtzeff on Middle Asia influences in the art of southern Russia.
The purpose of this expedition was to visit ancient monuments and Buddhist monasteries as well as to record local legends, beliefs and artistic traditions.
It was a crucial time in George Roerich's career as a scientist, and he began his study of ancient pre-Buddhist doctrine of Bon and the translation of its manuscript.
Despite the difficulties of travel and political instability, Roerich managed to make several important discoveries during this expedition, including previously unknown materials about the Tibetan Epic of King Gesar.
[6] His study of the geography, archeology, ethnology, and linguistics during the expedition formed the basis of his work Trails to Inmost Asia, published in 1930.
This publication put the young orientalist on par with the famous researchers of Central Asia, such as Nikolay Przhevalsky, Grigory Potanin, Pyotr Kozlov, and Sven Hedin.
The third task was research of the languages and dialects of Central Asia, and gathering a big collection of objects, that depict spiritual culture of these nations.
"[5] The plethora of materials collected during the Central Asia Expedition became the foundation for the establishment of the Himalayan Research Institute named Urusvati in Darjeeling in 1928.
[7] In 1934–1935, Roerich undertook an expedition with his father to Manchuria and Inner Mongolia that was organized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the purpose of collecting seeds of drought resistant plants that would help prevent erosion of soils and the spreading of pests.
In addition to gaining purely scientific knowledge, this expedition also had a social and cultural aim: to create wider agricultural cooperation and public collaboration.
They gathered a collection of drought resistant plants, herbs, and soil as well as a valuable list of traditional medicinal treatments.
Together with Gendün Chöphel, he translated Blue Annals, the lengthy pioneering work on Tibetan history, published in two volumes by the Asiatic Society in 1949 and 1954.
[3] After spending almost 30 years in India, Roerich returned in 1957 to Soviet Russia, where he made efforts to revive the Russian School of Oriental Studies.
