Kinthup, a Lepcha man from

Sikkim Sikkim ( ; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in northeastern India. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north and northeast, Bhutan in the east, Koshi Province of Nepal in the west, and West Bengal in the ...

, was an explorer in the area of

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...

in the 1880s. He is best known for his impressive devotion to duty in surveying a previously unknown area of Tibet.

Laurence Waddell Lieutenant Colonel Laurence Austine Waddell, CB, CIE, F.L.S., L.L.D, M.Ch., I.M.S. RAI, F.R.A.S (29 May 1854 – 19 September 1938) was a Scottish explorer, Professor of Tibetan, Professor of Chemistry and Pathology, Indian Army surgeon ...

, who met Kinthup in 1892, described him as follows:

Biography

In the 1870s, the destination of the

Tsangpo River The Yarlung Tsangpo, also called Yarlung Zangbo () and Yalu Zangbu River () is a river that flows through the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and Arunachal Pradesh of India. It is the longest river of Tibet and the fifth longest in China. The u ...

(sometimes spelled "Sanpo") was unknown. Some hypothesized that it was the same river that flowed into the

Bay of Bengal The Bay of Bengal is the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. Geographically it is positioned between the Indian subcontinent and the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese peninsula, located below the Bengal region. Many South Asian and Southe ...

under the name of

Brahmaputra The Brahmaputra is a trans-boundary river which flows through Southwestern China, Northeastern India, and Bangladesh. It is known as Brahmaputra or Luit in Assamese, Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibetan, the Siang/Dihang River in Arunachali, and ...

(also known as "Dihang"). To solve this mystery,

Henry John Harman Henry John Harman (13 May 1850 – 14 April 1883) was a Royal Engineers officer who was involved in surveys in the Himalayas of northeastern India as part of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. He was involved in recruiting and organizing "pandit" exp ...

of the

Great Trigonometrical Survey The Great Trigonometrical Survey of India was a project that aimed to carry out a survey across the Indian subcontinent with scientific precision. It was begun in 1802 by the British infantry officer William Lambton, under the auspices of t ...

sent a pundit explorer, Nem Singh (known as "G. M. N.") to follow the Tsangpo and determine its ultimate destination. G. M. N. was accompanied by his assistant, a Lepcha man from Sikkim named Kinthup. After surveying a good portion of the river, the pair returned to India. In 1880, a Chinese

lama Lama () is a title bestowed to a realized practitioner of the Dharma in Tibetan Buddhism. Not all monks are lamas, while nuns and female practitioners can be recognized and entitled as lamas. The Tibetan word ''la-ma'' means "high mother", ...

was employed to continue G. M. N.'s work, and Kinthup was again hired to accompany him. In 1880 Kinthup was sent back with the task of testing the Brahmaputra theory by releasing 500 specially marked logs into the river at a prearranged time at which Captain Harman, posted men on the Dihang-Brahmaputra to watch for their arrival. However, in May 1881 near Tongyuk Dzong, the Chinese lama sold Kinthup to a regional lord to become his slave. Kinthup's surveying equipment and notebooks were confiscated and he remained a slave until March 1882, when he finally managed to escape. Resuming his survey of the river, he followed the gorge southward until he was captured by servants of his former master and again sold into slavery to the head abbot of a monastery. He was well-treated by his new master, and was granted several leaves of absence under the guise of making religious

pilgrimage A pilgrimage is a travel, journey to a holy place, which can lead to a personal transformation, after which the pilgrim returns to their daily life. A pilgrim (from the Latin ''peregrinus'') is a traveler (literally one who has come from afar) w ...

s. This gave him the opportunity to prepare 500 logs and send a letter to Harman from Lhasa announcing his new intended schedule. He also made several long treks recording the extent of the Tsangpo and surrounding region, and determined that the two rivers were indeed one and the same. After fifteen months of servitude at the monastery, he was granted his freedom by the abbot, and was finally able to launch the logs. However, Harman had died in the interim and Kinthup's letter went unread, so nobody checked for the appearance of the logs. Kinthup returned to India in November 1884, four years after he had left. It was not until two years later that his account was even recorded, and even then his extraordinary accounts were doubted by some geographers. "His accomplishment was not acknowledged until 1913, when F. M. Bailey and

Henry Morshead Henry Treise Morshead (23 November 1882 – 17 May 1931) was an English surveyor, explorer and mountaineer. He is remembered for several achievements – with Frederick Marshman Bailey, Frederick Bailey he explored the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Ca ...

validated his claims." Captain Hugh Trenchard said, "his account has been confirmed in the most remarkable manner, and we are now able to establish Kinthup's claim to honorable record in the annals of the Survey of India, which he served with such zeal and devotion to duty." It was only some 30 years later that the

Bailey–Morshead exploration of Tsangpo Gorge The Bailey–Morshead exploration of the Tsangpo Gorge was an unauthorised expedition by Frederick Bailey and Henry Morshead in 1913 which for the first time established the definite route by which the Tsangpo River reaches the sea from no ...

conclusively confirmed his discovery.

References

External links

Discoverers Web: The Pundits
{{Authority control Tibet Explorers of Asia Lepcha people