WALSH, Ernest Herbert Cooper. Derbyshire 7.3.1865 — ?.3.1952 (when 87). British Civil Servant in India, Numismatist and Tibetan Scholar. Son of a Wesleyan minister, Thomas Harris Walsh, and Catherine Jane Tull. Educated at Trent College. Studied law at University College, London. In 1884 joined I.C.S. From 1901 Deputy Commissioner of Darjeeling, in 1903-04 participated in Younghusband’s expedition to Lhasa. Retired in 1919 and returned to England. Lecturer in Tibetan at S.O.A.S., in 1920-21 also Lecturer in Bengali at Oxford. C.S.I. 1911. From 1901 member of A.S.B., in 1919 President of B.O.R.S. Married 1892 Beatrice Ivy Huntingdon (d. 1943), two daughters.

Walsh was a Tibetan scholar, also well acquainted with Bengali and Oriya. During his stay in Lhasa he collected inscriptions, which he then started to publish. As a numismatist he was mainly interested in the punch-marked coins.

Publications: A Vocabulary of the Tromova dialect of Tibetan spoken in the Chumbi Valley. Calcutta 1905; Examples of Tibetan Letters. A Collection of 8 Letters Received from Officers of His Holiness the Tashi Lama and 2 Orders of the Tibetan Gov’t at Lhasa. Calcutta 1913.

– An Old Form of Elective Government in the Chumbi Valley. 308 p. 1906.

– “The Coinage of Tibet”, MASB 2:2, 1907, 11-23, 2 pl.

– Articles in JASB, JBORS, and JRAS, e.g. “The Tibetan Language and Recent Dictionaries”, JASB 72:1, 1903, 65-86; “A list of Tibetan books brought from Lhasa by the Japanese monk, Mr. Ekai Kawa Guchi”, JASB 73, 1904, 118-177; “The Coinage of Nepal”, JRAS 1908, 669-759, 1132-1136, 7 pl.; “Tibetan anatomical system”, JRAS 1910, 1215-1245; “Examples of Tibetan Seals”, JRAS 1915, 1-15, 465-470; “Lhasa”, JRAS 1946, 23-31, 2 pl.; reviews in JRAS.

– Punch-marked Coins from Taxila. 4+164 p. 48 pl. M.A.S.I. 59. Delhi 1939.

Sources: F. W. Thomas, JRAS 1952, 182-184; parents named in https://mccollierheritage.wordpress.com/2015/01/27/clergymen-in-the-johnstone-family/.