Tibet's Part in the 'Great Game'
Why did the visit of a Buddhist holy man to Lhasa at the turn of the century throw the British Foreign Office into a state of paranoia? Helen Hundley explores the life and times of Agvan Dorjiev and the part he played in the Asian rivalry of Britain and Russia.
St Peterburgskiia vedomosti
2/15 October 1900.
'Ahambra-Agvan-Dorjiew' - official of the Government of the Dalai Lama met with the Tsar at the Livadia Palace.
This announcement of the activities of a 'certain official', clipped in St Petersburg by the British Charge d'Affaires, Charles Hardinge, and sent to the Foreign Office in London, introduced the British to a citizen of the Russian empire, the Buriat lama, doctor of Buddhist theology, Agvan Dorjiev (1853 - 1938). In the summers of 1900 and 1901 Dorjiev led embassies from the Dalai Lama to Russia expressing official greetings. His presence at the embassies was to spark a particularly interesting example of 'The Great Game' between Great Britain and Russia. British perceptions of Dorjiev's role and connections to the Russian government eventually led to the British invasion of Tibet, the Younghusband Mission of 1904.
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