Laurence Waddell
[7] Between 1885 and 1887 Waddell took part in the British expedition that annexed Upper Burma, which defeated Thibaw Min the last king of the Konbaung dynasty.
[11] Waddell traveled extensively in India throughout the 1890s (including Sikkim and areas on the borders of Nepal and Tibet) and wrote about the Tibetan Buddhist religious practices he observed there.
Stationed with the British army in Darjeeling, Waddell learned the Tibetan language and even visited Tibet several times secretly, in disguise.
Various archaeological excavations were also carried out and supervised by Waddell across India, including Pataliputra, of which he did not receive recognition of discovery until long after his death, in 1982, by the government of Bengal.
As a collector, Waddell had come across many Tibetan manuscripts and maps, but was disappointed to not find a single reference to a lost ancient civilization, which he had hoped to discover.
He was in Malakand in 1902 and took part in the Tibet Mission to Lhasa 1903–04, for which he was again mentioned in despatches, received a medal with clasp and was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB).
They were searching for the birthplace by taking into account the topographical and geographical hints left by the ancient Chinese travellers, Fa Hien and Hiuen Tsiang.
; but at the last moment, when due to adverse circumstances prevented him from proceeding, and Mr. Führer was sent to carry out the exploration arranged by him, he found the Lumbini grove, etc., with their inscriptions at the very spots pointed out by him.
London, 1895) is an early work that was very influential in forming Western ideas of Tibet and its Buddhist traditions, especially in the non-scholarly Anglophone world.
His translation is as follows: "This Sun-Cross (Swastika) was raised to Bil (or Bel, the God of Sun-Fire) by the Kassi (or Cassi-bel[-an]) of Kast of the Siluyr (sub-clan) of the "Khilani" (or Hittite-palace-dwellers), the Phoenician (named) Ikar of Cilicia, the Prwt (or Prat, that is 'Barat' or 'Brihat' or Brit-on).
was probably associated with, and enforced by, not merely the loss of Troy, but also by the massacring invasion of Hittite Asia Minor, Cilicia and the Syria-Phoenician coast of the Mediterranean by the Assyrian King Tiglath Pileser I. about 1107 B.C.
[20] It has also been pointed out that Waddell took the Historia Regum Britanniae to be literal history which is why he was almost asking to be ridiculed by historians: "Contrary to the general opinion of historians, he [Waddell] accepts as authentic the chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and regards as historical the legend of King Brut of Troy having reached Britain with his followers about the year 1103 BC, founded London a few years later, and spread through the land Phoenician culture, religion and art [...] His views indeed are so unorthodox that he is no doubt prepared for strong criticism, and even ridicule.
Fleet, prompting an excavation campaign under Sir John Hubert Marshall in 1921–22, resulting in the discovery of the ancient civilization at Harappa (later including Mohenjo-daro).
[23][24][25][26] Two notable supporters of Waddell included John Marshall, the Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India until 1928, and Stephen Herbert Langdon.
"[28]The non-Semitic source of the Sumerian language was established in the late 19th century by Julius Oppert and Henry Rawlinson from which many different theories were proposed as to its origin.
For Waddell, the earliest ancient rulers or mythological kings of Sumer, Egypt, Crete and the Indus Valley civilizations were all identical Aryan personages.
The Makers of Civilization was panned in a review by Harry L. Shapiro: "The reader does not need to peruse this work very far to become aware of its distinct bias and unscientific method.
[34] R. Sawyer (1985) points out that Waddell "was of the eccentric opinion that Western, Indian and ancient Egyptian culture derived from a common Sumerian ancestry" and that his ideas were far-fetched to untenable.
[35] Gabriel Moshenska of the UCL Institute of Archaeology has noted: "Waddell's hopes of rewriting the story of civilization with the Aryan race as the first and only protagonist rapidly faded as his works and ideas remained restricted to, if well rooted in, the ultra right wing fringes of society and scholarship.
Today Waddell's works are read and referenced most commonly by white supremacists, esoteric scholars and conspiracy theorists such as David Icke (1999).
The fish Gymnocypris waddellii Regan, 1905 was named in honor of Waddell, who preserved the type specimens in salt before presenting them to the British Museum (Natural History).
