Description
The journey that the author AH Franke, a member of the Moravian Misson, undertook in 1909 was on the beheest of the British Indian Government for carrying out an archaeological survey of the districts that comprised of Indian Tibet (now the regions of Lahul and Spiti in state of Himachal Pradesh, and Ladakh in the state of Jammu and Kashmir). These areas had never been explored and Franke was best suited for this purpose, given his knowledge of local history and antiquities and fluency in the Tibetan language. Starting from Shimla on the 14th of June 1909 he traveled upto the Satluj Valley through the hill state of Rampur Bashahr he reached Spiti.Crossing the Parungla pass he continued through Rubshu and the Tso Moriri Lake in South Eastern Ladakh and then to Leh, the capital of Ladakh. After a brief stay at Leh he crossed the Zoji pass to reach Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. The second volumes give the Tibetan text and English translation of the chronicles of Zangskar, Baltistan, Lahul along with the genealogies of the chiefs of these areas. It contains rare maps of the Lahul, Spiti, Rubshu, Kinnaur areas. About the book:- August Hermann Francke (5 November 1870 in Gnadenfrei, Silesia ? 16 February 1930 in Berlin) was a German Tibetologist. He worked in Ladakh and Lahul from 1896 to 1908 and published the Ladakh chronicles (La dvags rgyal rabs) with an English translation. He served as the first professor of Tibetan at the Berlin University. He was Christian Friedrich Francke, a descendant of the 18th-century theologian August Hermann Francke (1663?1727), after whom August was named. He married Anna Theodora Weize (b. 1875 Silo, South Africa) whom he met in Kleinwelka, Saxony. Before they married she went to Amritsar for a year to improve her English as a teacher. August Hermann joined her in India and married her there in 1897. He served as a Moravian Church missionary in Ladakh, a major region of Jammu and Kashmir Province in the Himalayas
