Hamilton Bower

Major-General Sir Hamilton Bower KCB (1858–1940) was a British Army intelligence officer who wrote about his travels through Chinese Turkestan and Tibet.

Sanskrit medical manuscript
In 1889-1890 Lieutenant Hamilton Bower travelled through Chinese Turkestan, where in the city of Kucha he purchased a Sanskrit-language manuscript written in the Brahmi alphabet. The medical manuscript, which later became known as the Bower Manuscript, sent a shock-wave through the world of Indian scholarship, especially Indology, pointing to the existence of a forgotten Buddhist civilization in Chinese Turkestan.

During his time in Turkestan, Bower, who was then a British intelligence officer on a Government mission, attempted to track down the killer of Andrew Dalgleish, a Scottish trader murdered on the road from Leh to Yarkand in 1888.

In the 1890s Bower travelled to Tibet and wrote a memoir of his experiences entitled Diary of a Journey across Tibet. In 1894 he received the Royal Geographical Society's Gold Medal "for his remarkable journey across Tibet, from west to east".

List of publications

 * Some notes on Tibetan affairs. Calcutta : Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1893.
 * Diary of a journey across Tibet. London: Rivington, Percival and Co., 1894.
 * The Bower Manuscript : facsimile leaves, Nagari transcript, romanised transliteration and English trans. with notes. Calcutta : Off. of the Superintendent of Govt. Printing, 1894. co-authored with A. F. Rudolf Hoernle
 * "A trip to Turkistan". Geographical Journal. 1895. 241-257
 * "The Abor Expedition: Geographical Results: Discussion". Geographical Journal, Feb., 1913, vol. 41, no. 2, p. 109-114. co-authored with L A Bethell and Thomas Holdich