Körösi Csoma Sándor, aka Alexander Csoma de Koros, is well known for several reasons of which, to mention a few, his contribution to Tibetan studies, his frugal and punishing lifestyle, humility, patience, uncompromising sense of purpose and an indefatigable strength and determination to pursue the purpose shine particularly bright in his brilliant and pioneering life as a scholar in Asia. Much has been written and spoken about his accomplishments and sufferings and at the clear risk of repeating I would like to quote W. W. Hunter, the scholar-statistician’s words which in a great measure summarize the life of this great Hungarian pilgrim scholar: “The poor scholar…one of the great original workers of our century…had vowed …to penetrate Central Asia in search of the origin of his nation. The first thirty-five years of his life were passed in self-preparation in Europe for the task. The next twelve he spent as a humble foot traveller through Asia, or in studying amid cold, privation, and solitude, with Buddhist priests in 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 Hodgson, 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 commentaries on Csoma constitute a cosmos and deservedly so. Consequently, the purpose of this paper in not to analyze or comment on his works for such an elevated job is best left to scholars and definitely not me, a little known physician living in an obscure part of this planet. My purpose and intent is to simply note some of the events in the scholar’s life which might not just be called unusual but something very much out of the ordinary. What initially drew my attention to him were three personal points, unimportant as they might be, because they were the driving factors that made me accept the request to submit a paper on the colossus called Alexander Csoma de Koros. Csoma had drawn my attention many years ago because he had died in Darjeeling and that was the place where I was born. Then his biography was written by a doctor and as coincidence might have it I too am a doctor. Finally I had a major surprise in discovering that Csoma had spent three unsuccessful months in Jalpaiguri (West Bengal) trying to study the Bengali language and again coincidentally I have been working in this same district for the last three decades with a modest amount of success. Now when the offer to contribute a small paper came my way the combination of the above odd coincidences rushed to my mind bringing with it the notion that this extraordinary man could possibly have some extraordinary events associated with his life. It is an honour for a man from Darjeeling, a place where he rested his unrelenting search, to write a short piece for a journal from Ladakh, the place where the greater bulk of his search was centered.

The first thing that struck me was the scholar’s brilliance to produce a Tibetan-English dictionary along with a grammar. English and Tibetan was never a part of his basic language education. We know that Csoma’s command over English was rudimentary for when he met William Moorcroft in July 1822 the two of them conversed in Latin. Tibetan at that time was, to borrow from a cliché, Greek to him and one can hazard a guess that the first formal introduction to that language was when Moorcroft presented him with Alphabetum Tibetanum compiled a good sixty years ago by Father Agustini Antonii Giorgi. Moorcroft persuaded Csoma to study Tibetan and English and compile a Tibetan-English dictionary along with a Grammar and by 1832 ‘besides the Dictionary and the Grammar, a translation of the Tibetan vocabulary, containing “a summary of the Buddha system,” were ready for publication…’ Unbelievable as it may appear the pilgrim scholar had done the Tibetan-English dictionary, a grammar, and some things else in a mere span of ten years. 

The herculean task and the speed at which it was achieved must be evaluated in the light of similar works done by others. We shall look at the immediate three major dictionaries that followed Csoma’s volume. Let us commence with Kazi Dawa Samdup, a great Tibetan teacher and scholar, Tibetan tutor to several European administrators and the Chief Tibetan Translator for the Rajshai Division of Bengal. His job was relatively easy because he was already proficient in English and Tibetan and more so because his product was not from Tibetan to English but a reverse dictionary. He unabashedly mentions concise Oxford Dictionary indirectly admitting its use and this would have meant that all he had to do was chose the words in the English dictionary and render the meanings in English. As simple as that! Nevertheless, it took him 17 years (1902-1919) to get the job done. A Tibetan-English Dictionary by Sarat Chandra Das is another major work. Like Dousamdup, Das was proficient in English and the school to which he was the Headmaster, Bhutia Boarding School (Darjeeling), had a Tibetan language department and it is difficult to imagine that he derived no assistance from the masters from that department. Das had to his advantage four classical dictionaries,Csoma’s dictionary and certainly Jäschke’s voluminous lexicon. He also had the added advantage of having two Revisors (Graham Sandberg & A. William Heyde). He was of course not doing a Grammar but despite that his work which commenced in 1889 was completed only in 1902, three years short of Csoma’s record. Finally, Jäschke’s A Tibetan-English Dictionary which was published in 1881. It will be unfair to discount the deficiencies he faced in comparison to Dousamdup and Das but he did have Csoma’s lexicon as a base to build and reconstruct from, he was conversant in English and unlike the solitary Csoma he had a team of colleagues helping him to collect words. Even then it took the good old missionary a total of 24 years (1857-1881) to get his book to the press. But going back to Csoma, it is said that he went into Tibet twice in connection with his dictionary and Grammar. The statistician-scholar W.W. Hunter wrote, “In June 1825 Csoma started on foot on his second ascent into Tibet.” This is corroborated in the biography where the first section of Chapter IV is titled as “Second journey into Tibet” and that is followed up in the text with “Csoma de Körös left Sabathú in June on his second visit to Tibet…” However, nowhere do we find evidence of him ever crossing over to the great Tibetan plateau and therein, the failure to penetrate Tibet, lies the extraordinary success of the man for he compiled a dictionary, wrote a grammar, did numerous translations, delved into history, religion etc and etc without ever putting a foot into Tibet. It was an extraordinarily successful failure.

It surprises me to no end that despite being Hungarian Csoma was destined to be more connected to England and the Englishmen than with Hungary or the Hungarians. This highly uncommon connection is best represented in the words of an Englishman: “The fame of Csoma de Koros should be dear to the English nation; he was never 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. Even 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.” (all emphasis added) It might be appropriate to add that it was an Englishman, Moorcroft, who steered Csoma away from his original ambition, which eventually brought eternal fame and gave Hungary a national hero. I shudder to think if that chance meeting with the Englishman had not taken place what Csoma or the world would have gained.

Strange and unlikely events followed the scholar even after his death. The Asiatic Society of Bengal wanted to erect a suitable monument over Csoma’s tomb with an epitaph inscribed on it. The committee for the job approved the text for the epitaph and the Secretary, Mr. H. Torrens, read it out to the members in a meeting in February 1845. The epitaph’s content is reproduced below:

H.J.

ALEXANDER CSOMA DE KÖROSI

A Native of Hungary,

Who, to follow out Philological Researches,

Resorted to the East;

And after years passed under privations,

Such as have been seldom endured,

And patient labour in the cause of Science,

Compiled a Dictionary and Grammar

Of the Tibetan Language,

His best and real monument.

_____

on his road to H’Lassa,

To resume his labours,

He died at this place,

On the IIth April 1842,

Aged 44 years.

______

His fellow-labourers,

The Asiatic Society of Bengal,

Inscribe this tablet to his memory.

______

REQUIESCAT IN PACE

Duka points out an error saying that the “full name in Hungarian is Körösi Csoma Sándor” meaning Alexander Csoma of Körös. In the Hungarian grammar if Körösi is used after Alexander then Csoma has to be omitted i.e. it is either Körösi Csoma Sándor or Alexander Körösi. The Asiatic Society had blundered in the very in the very first line of the epitaph. The biographer points out another mischief in the same line stating that the terminal “I” in Körösi stands for “of” and so either “i” or “de” has to be used but never both. Then there is another very avoidable error. The inscription gives the age of Csoma as 44 years and considering he was born in 1874 (died 1842) he would have been 58 years old. One might simply want to wish away these mistakes as stupid errors but because it is so stupid it inspires annoyance. The Asiatic Society is one of the largest repository knowledge in the world and its members were and are some of the best brains in the country and elsewhere and such glaring mistakes, from the hallowed Society, is undesirable to say the least. Besides the bizarre mess with the epitaph another unusual episode was to follow Csoma’s death. While he was alive and wandering through Asia Csoma he was not entirely unknown in Hungary but he was also never a hero in the scale he is and was admired and adored later on. In fact there was no biography of Csoma till the hundred years of his birth (43 years of his death). A man who opened a whole new world of learning and enriched the collections of societies and libraries of several countries lay almost consigned to obscurity. The answer perhaps is to be found in the words of his biographer who lamented: “…since Csoma’s decease Tibetan learning in India seems to have received no special interest.” The English edition had little impact but the Hungarian translation was well received and the wheels in the making of a national hero gradually began to grind. Csoma had to wait all of 68 years after his death to rise as a national hero. Matters changed dramatically after Sir E. Denison read a paper on Csoma in the Asiatic Society of Bengal on 5 January 1910. The Hungarian’s connection with the Society was reported in the local dailies (The Statesman & The Empress) and was subsequently picked up by the dailies in Hungary.Csoma was no more confined to rarefied debates, discussions and proceedings of the academics. Truth becomes stranger than fiction here because it was again an Englishman that lit the fire of fame. What followed is for all to see and read. Suffice it to say that the elevation did not come in the systemic manner it ought to have but with Csoma, as it so often happened, events came about in a completely unexpected manner and the post mortem events were no exceptions.