Life and Works of Alexander Csoma de Körös

278 Pages·1972·10.332 MB·English

by  Theodore Duka

Life And W orks O f
A lexander C so m a D e
K oros (1885)
Theodore Duka
BIBLIOTHECA HIMALAYICA
SERIES II VOLUME 2
Edited by
H. K. KULÖY
PUBLISHED BY VIRENDRA KUMAR FOR MANJUSRl PUBLISHING HOUSE
KUMAR GALLERY SUNDERNAGAR MARKET NEW DELHI-11 INDIA
LIFE AND WORKS
OF
ALEXANDER CSOMA DE KÖRÖS
BY
THEODORE DUKA, M.D.
M A N J U S R Ï
PUBLISHING HOUSE
NEW DELHI- 1972
THEODORE DUKA:
LIFE AND WORKS OF ALEXANDER CSOMA DE KOROS
First Published 1885
Reprinted 1972
THE PURPOSE OF
BIBLIOTHECA HIMALAYICA
IS TO MAKE AVAILABLE WORKS
ON THE CIVILIZATIONS AND NATURE
OF CENTRAL ASIA AND THE HIMALAYAS
BIBLIOTHECA HIMALAYICA
© H. K. Kuloy
Printed In India at TAJ OFFSET PRESS. Delhi-8
THIS IS A LIMITED EDITION
OF 1000 COPIES
DE LUXE EDITION : 200
LIBRARY EDITION : 800
THE PRESENT COPY IS

EDITOR’S NOTE
The Hungarian Alexander Csoma de Koras (1784-1842) ranks
among the world’s first and foremost scholars of the Tibetan
language and religion. One of the first scholars to resider within a
Tibetan Buddhist monastery to study better the Tibetan culture, he
not only achieved fluency in the language but also acquired a
profound and refined insight into Lamaist theology.
Spending two years walking on foot from Hungary to India, then
subsisting for years on 15-20 rupees a month in a windswept
monastery at an altitude of 10,000 feet, this quiet and modest man
of letters puts the twentieth century jet-set scholars to shame.
His lonely years in the Himalayas were spent in surveying the
entire domain of Tibetan-religious literature and in collecting the
corpus of his two classics, the Tibetan dictionary and the
grammar.
The present biography of Csoma de Karas was first published in
1885 and represents his only reasonably comprehensive biography
in English. In order to compliment Duka’s work, a short but
informative and eloquent essay by W. W. Hunter has been added
as an introduction.
To the list of works by Alexander Csoma de Karas on pages 169
and 170, the following may be added :
—Analysis of a Tibetan Medical Work (Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal, IV 1815, pp. 1-20.)
—A Brief Notice of the Subhashita Ratna Nidhi ofSaskya Pandita ,
with extracts and translations (JASB, XXIV, 1855, pp. 141-165 and
JASB, XXV, 1856, pp. 257-294.)
—SANSCRIT-TIBETAN-ENGLISH VOCABULARY: Being an
Edition and Translation of the Mahavyutpatti. (Memoirs of the
Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. IV. Part I, 1910, pp. ix and 127.
Part 2, 1916, pp. 129-151. Part 3, 1944, pp. vii and 151-390.)
—TIBETAN STUDIES: Being a Reprint of the Articles
Contributed to the JASB. Edited by E. D. Ross. [JASB, VII
(Extra Number), 1911, pp. 1-172.]
—THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF BUDDHA (Susil Gupta,
Calcutta 1957.) contains two of Csoma de Koras’ articles from
Volume 20 of Asiatic Researches. These are: Analysis of the
Duha, and Notices of the Life of the Sakya Extracted from the
Tibetan Authorities.
New Delhi, May 1970. H.K.K.

CSOMA DE KOROS: A PILGRIM SCHOLAR*
By W. W. Hunter
I
THE START
In November 1824 a European descended from the inner
Himalayas to the British outpost at Sabathu. He was poorly
clad in a native dress, ‘the coarse blanket of the country.’
But he declared himself to be an Austrian subject; a student
of languages who had spent the past five years in making his
way, chiefly on foot, from Hungary to Central Asia. He
desired the protection of the British Government to enable
him to proceed into the unknown regions of Tibet; and he
produced a letter of recommendation from the English ex­
plorer, Moorcroft, with whom he had passed five months in
Kashmir.
Captain Kennedy, afterwards the chief founder of Simla,
was then the political officer in charge of the Himalayan
frontier Station. He civilly detained the stranger, half as
prisoner, half as guest, until he could receive the orders of
the Governor-General regarding him. After some charac­
teristic caution, Lord Amherst granted the protection solicit­
ed and supported it by a stipend, modest in amount, but
sufficient for the still more modest wants of the traveller.
Armed with letters to the Himalayan Chiefs, and with a few
hundred rupees in his scrip, the stranger re-entered the
mountains. The next six years he spent, with an interval of
some months, in exploring the archives of Buddhist monas­
teries in Tibet.
The poor scholar was Csoma de Koros, one of the great
original workers of our century. As a Hungarian student,
before entering the University, he had vowed, together with
two fellow-pupils, to penetrate Central Asia in search of the
origin of his nation. Alone of the three, Csoma kept his
word. The first thirty-five years of his life were passed in
self-preparation in Europe for the task. The next twelve he
spent as an humble foot traveller through Asia, or in study­
ing amid cold, privation, and solitude, with-Buddhist priests in
* In The Pioneer3 Allahabad, 1885.
Tibet. His remaining eleven years he devoted in India to
publishing a part of the materials he had collected and to
constantly adding to them, with an unslakable thirst for
learning.
The result of his life was to open up a vast new field .to
human inquiry. Csoma, single-handed, did more than the
armies of Ochterlony, and not less than the diplomacy of
Hogdson, to pierce the Himalayas, and to reveal to Europe
what lay behind the mountain wall. He has suffered the fate
allotted in this world to the pioneers of knowledge. Other
men have entered on his labours. They have built their easy
edifices from the materials which he with a life’s toil amassed:
the meaner translating sort, as usual, not fearing to patronise
the dead master.
The fame of a solitary worker like Csoma de Koros is. in
truth, a plant which grows not on mortal soil nor in broad
rumour lies. A hundred years had elapsed from his birth
before he found a biographer. To the scholars of this
generation he has been a dim Transylvanian figure, lean and
homeless among the Himalayas, but projecting a giant shadow
from their heights across Central Asia. Last year, the cente­
nary of his birth, his life was at length worthily written.
Dr. Duka has brought to his task the enthusiasm of a com­
patriot, and loving reverence which in this iron age of bio­
graphy may well excuse some slightness in Oriental research.
We purpose very briefly to sketch the life of noble self-devo­
tion which Dr. Duka has so tenderly portrayed, to throw side­
lights on certain episodes which he has left obscure, and to
indicate Csoma’s true position in Tibetan scholarship. The
fame of Csoma de Koros should bé dear to the English
nation; for he was iiever tired of acknowledging that to
English generosity he had owed the means of doing his life’s
work. It was an old Hungarian fund subscribed in London
during the reign of Queen Anne that defrayed his university
education at Gottingen. It was English liberality in Persia
and Ladakh which enabled him to prosecute his journey
across Asia. During his long monastic studies in Tibet, and
throughout his eleven years in India, he was supported by
grants from the British Government. In the English
language the grateful Hungarian published his works. He
rests from his labours, on a spur of his beloved Himalayas, in
an English graveyard.
Alexander Csoma was born in the picturesque village
iv