Richard Carnac Temple

Sir Richard Carnac Temple, 2nd Baronet, (15 October 1850 – 3 March 1931) was an Indian-born British administrator and the Chief Commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and an anthropological writer.

Early years Richard Carnac Temple was born in Allahabad, India, on 15 October 1850. He was the eldest son of Sir Richard Temple (1826–1902), a baronet, and his first wife, Charlotte Frances (née Martindale, d. 1855). His father was from The Nash in Kempsey, Worcestershire and was at that time working as a civil servant in India. His father eventually served as Governor of Bombay 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.

Military and administrative career After education at Harrow School and, from 1868, at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Temple was commissioned in the Royal Scots Fusiliers in 1871. He was transferred to the British Indian Army in 1877, being mentioned in despatches while serving with the 38th Dogras in the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878–79.

Later career Temple had succeeded to the baronetcy created for his father on 15 March 1902 upon the death of his father. and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He served as a Justice of the Peace and as a Deputy-Lieutenant of Worcestershire. He assembled collections for the British Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford) and established a small museum in his home in Kempsey but sold much of this in 1921.

He was a member of the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the Philological Society, the Folklore Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute. In 1886, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society. He was a silver medalist of the Royal Society of Arts. He was sometime President of the Bombay Anthropological Society. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall in 1908

Writings Temple joined the Folklore Society in 1885 and among the papers he published in its journal was The science of folk-lore (1886). He wrote various works often dealing with the religions and geography of India. He believed that a knowledge of local folklore was useful both to ruler and ruled. He wrote in 1914:

He wrote The Andaman Language, published in conjunction with E. H. Man in 1887. Seven years later in collaboration with Flora Annie Steel, an Anglo-Indian novelist, he wrote Wideawake Stories, a collection of Indian folk-tales. Later, he was responsible for the production of Legends of the Punjab, in the vernacular with translation, in three volumes, which were published between 1883 and 1890, and The Thirty-Seven Nats, a study of animism in Burma, in 1906, a highly illustrated volume; edited Fallon's Devil-Worship of the Tuluvas in 1897.

For the Hakluyt Society, Temple was editor of two works of seventeenth-century travels: Thomas Bowrey's A Geographical Account of the Countries Round the Bay of Bengal, 1669-1679 (1905), and the manuscripts of Peter Mundy, titled The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608-1667 (1907–28). In addition, in 1911 he published The Diaries of Streynsham Master, 1675–1680. Anthropology as a Practical Science. G. Bell & Sons, London, 1914. Devil-Worship of the Tuluvas (editor, orig. Fallon) (Editor, originally by Thomas Bowrey)

An Appreciation of Drake's Achievement in

Foreword to