By all accounts Alexander Csoma de Kőrös (1784-1842) was a most unusual man. Named the heir to a small estate not far from the boundaries of the Ottoman empire, he left his ancestral lands to pursue a scholarly vocation. Self-effacing in his humility, utterly one-pointed in his work, he was to become the founder of modern Tibetan Studies and, by virtue of his passionate dedication to the discovery of his own nation’s origins, something of a Hungarian national hero. It is therefore fitting that the Hungarian Academy of Sciences should honour Csoma’s bicentennial by issuing the first complete edition of his collected works in conjunction with the international memorial symposium held in Budapest in September 1984.

The present publication is introduced with the brief biography of Csoma by the editor, József Terjék, who has previous published three collections of documents relating to his subject. [These are: Csoma de Kőrös documents in the collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest, 1976, in Hungarian); Tibetan compendia written for Csoma de Kőrös by the Lamas of Zans-dkar (New Delhi, 1976); and Memories of Csoma de Kőrös (Budapest, 1984, in Hungarian).] Terjék’s study provides us with a useful account of Csoma’s education, travels and achievements, but, significantly, it also describes the historical conditions which made him, uniquely among Orientalists, an object of national esteem. As Csoma’s writings make abundantly clear, that veneration would have been merited even if national sentiments had not played any role.

A.N. Whitehead said of Plato that the entire course of Western philosophy might be seen as a series of annotations on his work. A corresponding assertion concerning the relationship between Csoma and later Tibetan Studies would be truer still: Csoma, in venturing to survey for the first time the terra incognita that was the Tibetan language and its literature, recognised precisely the requirements of this new field of study, and, with the collaboration of the learned Lama Sangs-rgyas Phun-tshogs of Zangs-dkar, directed his efforts to meet them systematically. The first important fruits of these researches were published at the Baptist Mission Press of Calcutta in 1834. These were the Essay towards a dictionary, Tibetan and English (Volume I of the present Collected works, previously reprinted by Bibliotheca Himalayica, New Delhi, 1973) and the Grammar of the Tibetan language (here Volume II, previously reprinted by Altai Press, New York, ca. 1971). To appreciate the achievement these two books represent, we must recall that Csoma’s work was entirely without precedent—Giorgi’s AlphabetumTibetanum was of little scientific value and the so-called “Serampore Dictionary” was not available to him until his own research had already been completed. The Essay towards a dictionary, whose greatest shortcoming was its alphabetical arrangement (which runs counter to normal Tibetan practice of grouping syllables according to the initials instead of the radicals, e.g., dbyings will be found under the da-s instead of the ba-s), provided the first accurate guide to the lexical stock of Classical Tibetan, and contains some 24,000 entries. The Grammar, besides being the first scientific work of its kind, includes five appendices (pp. 147-204) which give calendrical cycles, specimens of literary works, “colloquial phrases” (many of which, however, are too archaic to be used in actual speech), chronological tables (which unfortunately err by two years in converting the Tibetan calendar to the Christian era, 1025 being given for 1027, etc.), and the various calculations by Tibetan authorities of the year of Sākyamuni’s decease.  Forty supplementary pages supply very fine examples of the various styles of Tibetan calligraphy.

The third volume consists of Csoma’s edition and translation of the great Sanskrit-Tibetan Buddhist lexicon, the Mahāvyutpatti. This was published long after Csoma’s passing, Parts I (1910) and II (1916), being edited by E. Denison Ross and S.C. Vidyābhūsana, and Part III (1944!) by D.C. Chatterjee. By that time it had already been superseded, from the perspective of Buddhist Studies, by the edition of the same text prepared by R. Sakaki (Kyoto, 1916-1925; reprinted Tokyo, 1965). Csoma’s version is of interest at present primarily for the evidence it provides of his insight into the requirements of Buddhist philology.

The final volume of these Collected works probably gives the best indication of the range of its author’s interests. Reproduced here is E. Denison Ross’s 1912 edition of Csoma’s collected articles, which had originally appeared in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal between 1832 and 1855. Not all of these 19 pieces can be mentioned in this short review, but most represent the first scholarly discussions of subjects that remain prominent in contemporary Tibetology: Tantric Buddhism (no. III, and pp. 487-552); Tibetan medicine (no. VIII); Tibetan custom and folklore (nos. X and XIII); aphoristic verse (no. XIV); Indian literature in Tibetan (no. V, and pp. 175-585). Included in the latter are Csoma’s analyses of the contents of the great Tibetan canonical collections, the Kanjur (bka’-gyur and Tanjur(bstan-‘gyur).

The reader of these four volumes cannot but be profoundly impressed by Csoma’s entirely comprehensive vision of the discipline he founded. There is, in addition, one further aspect of Csoma’s genius that deserves mention here: he strikes one always as a profoundly open-minded and tolerant student of Tibetan civilization, and so stands in stark and welcome contrast to the ideologically-motivated writers who played leading roles in the late-19^th and early-20^th century Tibetology. A good illustration is Csoma’s attitude to Buddhist tantricism, which the missionary Jaschke and the British military doctor Waddell would later dismiss as “necromancy.” Describing the Guhyasamāja and Caṇḍamahārosaṇa Tantra-s, Csoma writes:

Modern students of Buddhism might fault Csoma for introducing theological terms in this context, but we own him a debt for insisting on the value of the Vajrayāna tradition, whose riches are only now beginning to unfold.

The Collected Works of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös represents one of the finest flowers of early-19^th century oriental studies. Professor Terjék and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences are to be congratulated for preparing this excellent complete edition.