É. Apor (ed.): Jubilee Volume of the Oriental Collection, 1951–1976. Papers Presented on the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
L. BESE: On the Mongolian and Manchu Collections in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
44 Mongolian words are written in Arabic characters. The composer's name is not recorded. Undated. ) How and when this copied MS came to be acquired is not yet known. But the second phase saw a great expansion of the collection. In this period the collection of Mongolian MSS and xylographs was established, thanks to the efforts of Prof. Lajos Ligeti, who contributed 122 MSS and xylographs to the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The value of this part of the collection is enhached by the many old and unique MSS it contains. Since about 1956 the Oriental Collection of the Library has acquired again Mongolian MSS and xylographs and this can be said to be the third period of the accumulation of the Mongolian collection. This part of the collection consists of donations and occasional purchases from private persons. Although there has not been a consistent policy behind the acquisition of items, it would be unjust to say that the 164 new items represent a quantitative growth only. By lucky accident the Library has acquired many valuable MSS and xylographs. 2. The present stock of the Mongolian collection consists of 285 items. This is, naturally, less than that of the Ulan-Bator or Leningrad collections (about which we have no exact data anyway), or even the Copenhagen collection (with its 560 items). (I shall not mention here the 12 German collections which contain 672 items. ) But the collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is larger than that of the Toyo Bunko (Tokyo) with 230, the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris) with 165, the East Asiatic Library (Berkeley, Calif. ) with 133 (my catalogue of this collection is to appear in Acta Orient. Hung. 31(1977)) or the British Museum (London) with 105 items, etc. (For the relevant data see Walther HEISSIG, Catalogue of Mongol Books, Manuscripts and Xylographs [The Royal Library, Copenhagen] , Copenhagen 1971, pp. XIX-XX. ) In terms of quantity the Mongolian collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences can be described as a medium-sized collection. Mongolian collections cannot be compared however, simply in terms of size. An evaluation can be made from several points of view, such as the number and proportion of MSS in each collection. Out of the 285 Mongolian MSS and xylographs in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 178 are MSS (of which 25 are Oirat MSS). The proportion of MSS to printed works is, when compared toother medium-sized Mongolian collections containing almost no MSS, fairly good. For the scholar this is of immense value even if many of the Mongolian M SS are fragmentary of difficult to interpret or identify. 3. In the following we list the items in the Mongolian collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences grouped according to literary genres and formal characteristics. For the sake of simplicity groups and sub-groups are presented alphabetically. The catalogue number and volume of each item is also indicated.
