Terjék József: Collection of Tibetan MSS and Xylographs of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös.
Catalogue
44 author cannot be identified on the basis of this text. Only Csoma's letter of 5th May, 1825 (published by T. Duka, Life and Works, p. 46) offers sume clue: "... the five small ones of the lesser class, as snan-nag, sdeb-sbyor, mnon-rtogs, zlos-gur and skar-rcis (rhetoric, poesy, lexicography, dance music and astronomy). The same person, at my request, wrote me a short account on grammar, and on the five sciences mentioned in the last place". As the latter and the contents of the book agree in every respect, there is little doubt that the author of this work can only be "the Lama", that is Sans-rgyas phun-chogs. Like the other authors of the Alexander-books, he, too starts with a number of excuses: "This is the essence of linguistics, metrics, poetry, and so on, Merely a brief summary devoid of self-sufficiency, Not counting on appreciation and fame, Nor on deep interest from the wise." The Lama's syllabus aims at giving a few guidelines to assist the inquirer in Tibetan linguistics (sgra ) as well as in those sciences generally termed as "minor" which are in any way related to literature: that is, as the author writes, metrics, which enables those familiar with the subject to speak in verse correctly; drama, which enables the connoisseur to avoid mistakes in the usage of the rules of correct speech, while the knowledge of allegory prevents the misuse of names, and poetry makes its user pre-eminent in stylistics. We would expect Csoma to be most interested in the part concerning lingui tics, as his main goal was to write a Grammar. But the Lama did not dwell upon this subject long enough, he recommended, instead, several books: "There used to be eight fundamental lingui ic books; six, however, were destroyed in the time ot Glun-dar-ma, so now there are only two, radiating light, the Sum-cu-pu and the Rtags-'ju -pa. There are a great number of commentaries written on these latte r books by Tibetan V scholars, the most outstanding of which are Za-lu locava s commentary on Sum Rtags and his "Dag-yig rin-po-ihe zu-ma-tog", and also Dpal-khan
