Á. Birtalan (ed.).: Bálint of Szentkatolna, Gábor: A Romanized Grammar of the East- and West-Mongolian Languages (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 3.)

Introduction - Some significant events of Gábor Bálint's life

Publishing and introducing the unedited manuscripts of Gábor Bálint of Szentkatolna about the Mongolian languages and the comparative grammar of the Eastern and Western Mongolian languages to the scholarly and the wider learned public is an old debt of Hungarian Orientalists. It is known that some extreme ideas of Bálint, concerning the language affinity of Hungarian with other Asian languages, and some of his historical concepts elicited the animosity of his colleagues and narrowed the possibilities of his scholarly activity. However, his valuable manifold research in the fields of Mongolian languages, folklore and ethnography and his substantial Grammar, which can be compared to the other descriptive grammars of the 19

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h century (Zwick, Bobrovnikov, Kovalevskij, Popov, Schmidt, etc.),

6 will greatly contribute to the more correct evaluation of this part of his research. His unedited folklore and ethnographic collection will certainly become a source for researchers in the future similarly to the field materials of noted scholars like Pozdneev, Vladimircov, Ramstedt, Rudnev, Poppe. Rincen, Heissig etc. who collected folklore material, but were regrettably unfamiliar with Bálint's great achievements in this area. The Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences preserves the three unpublished manuscripts under the following titles and shelf numbers: 1. Nyugati mongol (Kálmik) szövegek. (184 pages), Nr.: M. Nyelvtud. 4/109; [Western Mongolian (Kalmyk) texts].

8 2. Bálint Gábor: Keleti mongol (khalkha) szövegek. (88 pages), Nr.: Msl379/2; [Bálint, Gábor: Eastern Mongolian (Khalkha) texts]. 3. A Romanized Grammar of the East- and West-Mongolian Languages, -with popular Chrestomatfhjies of both dialects. ... (222 pages), Nr.l: 81 szám, Nr.2: Ms 1379/1. SOME SIGNIFICANT EVENTS OF GÁBOR BÁLINT'S LIFE All the academic and popular publications devoted to any area of Bálint's researches touch upon his life.

9 Hereafter I provide only the most important data connected to his Mongolian field work. Gábor 6 The bibliographical items are listed in the references. 7 Only those scholars are listed here who lived and worked during Bálint's lifetime and in the first half of the 20

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h century. Their activity was followed by numerous (among others Hungarian) researchers later during the 20

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h and 21

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t centuries. 8 In listing the three manuscripts I follow the chronology of their recording and preparing. Here must be mentioned that Bálint used the ethnonym Kalmyk in various forms, as kálmik, kalmik, khalymik. 9 Kara, György (ed.): Bálint Gábor keleti levelei. Jelentése Oroszország- és Ázsiában tett utazásáról. Értekezése a mandsuk szertartásos könyvéről. Budapest, Körösi Csorna Társaság 1973. [Gábor Bálint's eastern letters. His report on his journey carried out in Russia and Asia and on his linguistic studies. His treatise on the Ritual book of the Manchus]; Nagy, Louis J.: G. Bálint's Journey to the Mongols and his Unedited Kalmuck Texts. In: Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae IX. (1959) pp. 311-327. on pp. 311-316; Kara, G.: O neizdannyh mongol'skih tekstah G. Balinta. In: Narody Azii i Afriki 1. (1962) pp. 161-164. on p. 161; Cydendambaev, C. B.: O mongolovedceskih rabotah vengerskogo ucjonogo G. Balinta. In: Trudy burjatskogo Instituta Obscestvennyh Nauk BF SO AN SSSR 10. (1968) pp. 4-8; Berta, Árpád: Wolgatatarische Dialektstudien. Textkritische Neuausgabe der Originalsammlung von G. Bálint 1875-76. (Keleti Tanulmányok - Oriental Studies 7.) Ed. Éva Apor. Budapest, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtára 1988. pp. 5—6; György, Lajos: Bálint Gábor emlékezete. In: Az Erdélyi Tudományos Intézet Évkönyve 1944. Kolozsvár 1945. pp. 82-110. [Remembering Gábor Bálint. In: Annals of the Transylvanian Academic Institute]; Borcsa, János: Elöljáróban. In: Szentkatolnai Bálint Gábor. (Erdélyi Tudományos Füzetek 220.) Kolozsvár, Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület Kiadása 1994. p. 5. [Introductory words. In: Gábor Bálint of Szentkatolna (Transylvanian Scholarly Brochures)]; Bodor, András: Szentkatolnai Bálint Gábor, a nyelvtudós. In: Szentkatolnai Bálint Gábor. (Erdélyi Tudományos Füzetek 220.) Kolozsvár, Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület Kiadása 1994. pp. 6-12. [Gábor Bálint of Szentkatolna, the linguist. In: Gábor Bálint of Szentkatolna (Transylvanian Scholarly Brochures)]; Birtalan, Ágnes: Bálint Gábor X