Maurice Vidal Portman was an English Jewish orientalist and politician who in 1876 was in close contact with Lord Lytton, then Viceroy of India, the author of the well known occult novel Zanoni. In 1882 he founded the Grand Lamaistic Order of Light (Fratres Lucis). See chapter 101 of Lady Queenborough (Edith Starr Miller), Occult Theocrasy, I.S. Susenberg (New York City 1931?). At time of writing the headquarters was in Bradford, Yorkshire.
Through an internet search, I could discover that he was active in the Andaman Islands in the 1890's (appointed to his colonialist task there in 1889) and died in 1935. He handed his masonic or occult order over to John Yarker in 1890, and it survived, apparently.
