Richard Carnac Temple was born inAllahabad, India, on 15 October 1850. He was the eldest son ofSir Richard Temple (1826–1902), abaronet, and his first wife, Charlotte Frances (née Martindale, d. 1855). His father was from The Nash inKempsey, Worcestershire and was at that time working as a civil servant in India.[1][2] His father eventually served asGovernor ofBombay Presidency (1877–80), a position that had also been held by Richard Carnac Temple's great-grandfather,Sir James Rivett Carnac between 1838 and 1841.[3]
Temple was then transferred to the1st Gurkha Regiment and appointed acantonmentmagistrate in 1879 inPunjab Province. It was now that he began to take what became his abiding interest in the folklore, history and ethnology of India.[2] Promoted tocaptain in 1881,[4] he served in theThird Burmese War from 1885 and as a consequence, in 1887, was given charge ofMandalay following the removal of kingThibaw.[2]
Temple became amajor in 1891[4] and was appointed President of theRangoon municipality and also its Port-Commissioner. While based there he established various volunteer forces, including theRangoon Naval Volunteers. Subsequently, from 1895 until his retirement in 1904, he was Chief Commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. He was also Superintendent of the penal settlement atPort Blair. His final promotion was in 1897, when he attained the rank oflieutenant-colonel.[2][4][5]
Temple had succeeded to thebaronetcy created for his father on 15 March 1902 upon the death of his father.[4] It was after this and during his retirement that he dedicated himself to writing. He lived at The Nash from 1904 and continued writing after 1921, when ill-health and domestic circumstances forced him to move away from Britain to spend much of his time living in hotels aroundTerritet inVaud, Switzerland. The lavish lifestyle of his son and the high taxation introduced during the First World War caused him such financial difficulties that he sold The Nash in 1926.[2][3]
He was chairman of theStanding Council of the Baronetage[4] and was appointed a member of the Home Departmental Committee to enquire into the Status of Baronets, was Deputy Chairman of the Military Home Hospital Reserve,[citation needed] Chairman of the St. John Ambulance Association, and Chairman of the Worcester County Association under the new Territorial Forces Act.[3]
Temple was an amateur anthropologist.[8] He assembled collections for theBritish Museum and thePitt Rivers Museum (Oxford) and established a small museum in his home in Kempsey but sold much of this in 1921.[9]
Temple joined theFolklore Society in 1885 and among the papers he published in its journal wasThe science of folk-lore (1886).[11] He wrote various works often dealing with thereligions andgeography of India. He believed that a knowledge of local folklore was useful both to ruler and ruled. He wrote in 1914:
The practices and beliefs included under the general head of Folk-lore make up the daily life of the natives of our great dependency, control their feelings, and underlie many of their actions. We foreigners cannot hope to understand them rightly unless we deeply study them, and it must be remembered that close acquaintance and a right understanding begets sympathy, and sympathy begets good government.[12]
He wroteThe Andaman Language, published in conjunction with E. H. Man in 1887. Seven years later in collaboration withFlora Annie Steel, an Anglo-Indian novelist, he wroteWideawake Stories, a collection of Indian folk-tales. Later, he was responsible for the production ofLegends of the Punjab, in thevernacular with translation, in three volumes, which were published between 1883 and 1890, andThe Thirty-Seven Nats, a study ofanimism in Burma, in 1906, a highly illustrated volume; edited Fallon'sDevil-Worship of the Tuluvas in 1897.
For the Hakluyt Society,[citation needed] Temple was editor of two works of seventeenth-century travels:Thomas Bowrey'sA Geographical Account of the Countries Round the Bay of Bengal, 1669-1679 (1905), and the manuscripts ofPeter Mundy, titledThe Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608-1667 (1907–28). In addition, in 1911 he publishedThe Diaries of Streynsham Master, 1675–1680.[2] He was also editor and proprietor of theIndian Antiquary since 1884.[clarification needed] He founded and editedPanjab Notes and Queries from 1883 until 1887.
On 18 March 1880, Temple married Agnes Fanny Searle while based at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands. They had two daughters and a son, Sir Richard Durand Temple (1880–1962). He died on 3 March 1931 atTerritet, Switzerland, and his wife died in 1943. His son succeeded him as the third baronet.[2]
The Travels of Peter Mundy, 1608-67. Vol. 3. Hakluyt Society. 1919.[14]
The Word of Lalla the Prophetess. Cambridge University Press. 1924.[15]
The Travels of Peter Mundy, 1608-67. Vol. 4. Hakluyt Society. 1925.[16]
An Appreciation of Drake's Achievement inPenzer, N. M., ed. (1926).The World Encompassed, and Analogous Contemporary Documents concerning Sir Francis Drake's Circumnavigation of the World. Argonaut Press.[17]
The Papers of Thomas Bowrey, 1669-1713. Hakluyt Press. 1927.[18]
Foreword toPanikkar, K. M. (1929).Malabar and the Portuguese; Being a History of the Relations of the Portuguese with Malabar from 1500 to 1663. Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala Sons & Co.[19]
^Petch, Alison."Richard Carnac Temple".England: the other within. Pitt Rivers Museum. Archived fromthe original on 17 July 2009. Retrieved30 July 2014.
^Dorson, Richard M. 1968The British Folklorists: A History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cited inRaheja, Gloria Goodwin (August 1996). "Caste, Colonialism, and the Speech of the Colonized: Entextualization and Disciplinary Control in India".American Ethnologist.23 (3):494–513.doi:10.1525/ae.1996.23.3.02a00030.JSTOR646349.(subscription required)
^Porritt, Edward (December 1915). "Sir Francis Sharp Powell. by Henry L. P. Hulbert; Letters and Character Sketches from the House of Commons".Political Science Quarterly.30 (4):696–698.doi:10.2307/2141557.JSTOR2141557.(subscription required)
^Charpentier, Jarl (July 1925). "The Word of Lalla the Prophetess by Richard Carnac Temple".The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.57 (3):566–567.doi:10.1017/S0035869X00055398.JSTOR25220803.S2CID250346343.(subscription required)
^E. L. (February 1926). "Hakluyt Society's Publications, Series II. Vol. 53. The Life of the Icelander Jón Ólafsson, Traveller to India by Jon Olafsson; Bertha S. Philpotts; Hakluyt Society's Publications, Series II. Vol. 1. Life and Travels: Iceland, England, Denmark, White Sea, Faroes, Spitzbergen, Norway, 1593-1622 by Bertha S. Philpotts; Hakluyt Society's Publications, Series II. Vol. 55. The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608-1667. Vol. 4. Travels in Europe, 1639-1647 by Peter Mundy; Richard Carnac Temple".The Geographical Journal.67 (2):179–181.doi:10.2307/1783163.JSTOR1783163.(subscription required)
^F. P. S. (March 1927). "A Selection of the Principal Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation by Richard Hakluyt; The World Encompassed, and Analogous Contemporary Documents concerning Sir Francis Drake's Circumnavigation of the World by Richard Carnac Temple; N. M. Penzer".The Geographical Journal.69 (3):275–276.doi:10.2307/1782053.JSTOR1782053.(subscription required)
^S. E. W. (September 1927). "The Papers of Thomas Bowrey, 1669-1713 by Richard Carnac Temple".The Geographical Journal.70 (3): 09.doi:10.2307/1781967.JSTOR1781967.(subscription required)
^W. F. (March 1930). "Malabar and the Portuguese; Being a History of the Relations of the Portuguese with Malabar from 1500 to 1663 by K. M. Panikkar".The Geographical Journal.75 (3):277–278.doi:10.2307/1784025.JSTOR1784025.(subscription required)
Anon (27 March 1931). "Obituary".Journal of the Royal Society of Arts.79 (4088):464–466.JSTOR41358746.(subscription required)
Dudley, Sandra (October 1996). "Burmese Collections in the Pitt Rivers Museum: An Introduction".Journal of Museum Ethnography (5):57–64.JSTOR40795048.(subscription required)
Naithani, Sadhana (January–April 1997). "The Colonizer-Folklorist".Journal of Folklore Research.34 (1):1–14.JSTOR3814697.(subscription required)
Naithani, Sadhana (2010).The Story-Time of the British Empire: Colonial and Postcolonial Folkloristics. University Press of Mississippi.
R. E. E. (July 1931). "Sir Richard Temple, Bart".The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (3):725–728.JSTOR25194345.(subscription required)
Wintle, Claire (March 2008). "Objects, Images, Imaginings: New Perspectives on the Material and Visual Culture of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands".Journal of Museum Ethnography (20):145–152.JSTOR40793877.(subscription required)
Van Der Beek, Zita; Vellinga, Marcel (March 2008). "Temple, Man and Tuson: Collecting the Andaman & Nicobar Islands".Journal of Museum Ethnography (20):159–162.JSTOR40793879.(subscription required)
