Sir Charles Alfred BellKCIECMG (October 31, 1870 – March 8, 1945) was the British Political Officer for Bhutan, Sikkim and Tibet. He was known as "British India's ambassador to Tibet" before retiring and becoming a noted tibetologist.[1]
He was educated at Winchester College,[2] and then at New College, Oxford, after which he joined the Indian Civil Service in 1891.[3][4] His English-Tibetan colloquial dictionary was first published in 1905 together with a grammar of colloquial Tibetan as Manual of Colloquial Tibetan.[5]
In 1908, he was appointed Political Officer in Sikkim. He soon became very influential in Sikkimese and Bhutanese politics, and in 1910 he met the 13th Dalai Lama, who had been forced into temporary exile by the Chinese. He got to know him quite well, and later wrote his biography (Portrait of the Dalai Lama, published in 1946[6]).[7]
In 1919 he resigned as Britain's political officer in Sikkim to devote himself full-time to his research. However, London sent him to Lhasa in 1920 as a special ambassador.[11]
After travelling through Tibet and visiting Lhasa in 1920, he retired to Oxford, where he wrote a series of books on the history, culture and religion of Tibet.[12] He was awarded a knighthood for his Lhasa Mission in 1922.[4]
Palhese, Bell's Tibetan friend and confidant travelled to England in 1927-28 to assist him in editing several of these books.[4]
He moved to Canada in his later years. The book Portrait of the Dalai Lama was completed only a few days before his death on 8 March 1945.[13] Some of the photographs that he took in Tibet can be found in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.[7] Some of these were included in the 1997 book Tibet: Caught in Time.[14]