Samuel Turner was an East India Company officer and diplomat. In 1783, he was commissioned by his cousin Warren Hastings to embark on a diplomatic mission to Bhutan and Tibet. The mission, the second to Tibet and fourth to Bhutan, was made in response to news that a reincarnation of the Panchen Lama had been found, the previous Lama having died in Beijing in 1780. The event also provided Hastings with an opportunity to further British interests in the Himalayas and to understand better the culture of the region.
Much of Tibet was inaccessible to European travellers, Chinese authorities having occupied the capital Lhasa. However, the residence of the Panchen Lama, Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, at Shigatse was more welcoming.
Turner travelled through Bhutan to Shigatse and had an audience with the eighteen-month-old Panchen Lama on 4 December 1783. The infant could not yet talk but Turner wrote in his account that he looked ‘stedfastly [sic] towards me, with the appearance of much attention while I spoke, and nodded with repeated but slow movements of the head, as though he understood and approved every word, but could not reply’ adding ‘though he was unable to speak a word, he made the most expressive signs, and conducted himself with astonishing dignity and decorum.’
Turner published his account of the mission in 1800. It was the first account of Bhutan and Tibet to be published in English. It would remain the most important account of the region to be printed in English until the 1870s.