É. Apor (ed.): Codex Cumanicus. Ed. by Géza Kuun with a Prolegomena to the Codex Cumanicus by Lajos Ligeti. (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 1.)

L. Ligeti: Prolegomena to the Codex Cumanicus

PROLEGOMENA TO THE CODEX CUMANICUS BY LOUIS LIGETI It has been over a hundred years now since Géza Kuun published the complete text of the Codex Cumanieus, together with a lengthy introduction, ample footnotes, several indices, and even an «Addenda et Corrigenda». Géza Kuun addressed non-Hungarian readers in Latin because in those days the Hungarian Academy did not publish foreign language works. Latin, of course, did not number among foreign tongues, since it had been the official language of the country for centuries. Few books have had such a lasting and profound influence. Several academic generations considered and reconsidered the problems raised by the Codex, criticized and disputed Géza Kuun's views, accepted many of his assertions, and repeated them without mentioning his name. Each succeeding generation contributed valuable partial monographs, yet there remains a lot to be explored. Some details have been superficially handled, if not completely neglected. A reprint edition of Géza Kuun's Codex Cumanieus will soon appear in a series of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Csoina de Kőrös Society (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Series B 1). This gave me the opportunity to make a few remarks concerning the general problems of the Codex hitherto explained in an unsatisfactory way and to comment on some of the details connected with these problems. The results of my research are put forward in the present study. Count Géza Kuun was born in Nagyszeben (Hermannstadt. Sibiu) in Transylvania, in 1838, and died in Budapest in 1905. He was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1867 and filled the post of vice president of the Academy between 1901 and 1904. He studied classical philology and Semitic languages at the University of Pest, and later he improved his knowledge of the latter in Göttingen. With a firm knowledge of Hebrew and Svriac. he next took up the study of Arabic, Persian and the Turkic languages. Oriental studies were, however, only a part of his wide range of interests. Since he was not a linguist

. he relied on the metho-