Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen

English geologist, topographer and surveyor

Date of Birth: 06-Jul-1834

Place of Birth: Teignmouth, England, United Kingdom

Date of Death: 02-Dec-1923

Profession: zoologist, geologist, geographer, ornithologist, malacologist

Zodiac Sign: Cancer


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About Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen

  • Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen FRS FZS FRGS MBOU (6 July 1834 – 2 December 1923), known until 1854 as Henry Haversham Austen, was an English topographer, geologist, naturalist and surveyor. He explored the mountains in the Himalayas and surveyed the glaciers at the base of K2, also known as Mount Godwin-Austen, and the geographer Kenneth Mason called Godwin-Austen "probably the greatest mountaineer of his day".Family tradition holds that Haversham Godwin-Austen was a convert to the Buddhist faith (post a self-attested period as an at least nominal Muslim in the middle to late 1850s), and as such he may be the first known British adherent to Buddhism.
  • His small, Burmese style, Buddhist shrine at Nore, Hascombe, Surrey, is likely to have been erected there around 1901 (although a later date of c.
  • 1920 is possible), perhaps after being situated at each of Godwin-Austen's successive main residences from 1877 onwards, post his return to England after 25 years in Asia.
  • Accordingly, the shrine probably constitutes the first ever ‘custom built’ physical structure raised for Buddhist devotional purposes in Britain.
  • It was forgotten and lost to view under brambles after Godwin-Austen's time, prior to rediscovery in 1962 by a new owner of Nore, actor Dirk Bogarde.Godwin-Austen's conversion – and possibly his shrine – therefore predates the earliest formal Buddhist missions to Britain: namely those of the Japanese-sponsored ‘Buddhist Propagation Society’, led by Irish born Captain Charles J.
  • W.
  • Pfoundes in 1889, and that of English convert Charles Henry Alan Bennett a.k.a.
  • ‘Ananda Metteyya’ in 1908.
  • ‘The Buddhist Society of Great Britain & Ireland’ was formed in 1907.

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