Wojtilla Gyula: A List of Words Sanskrit and Hungarian by Alexander Csoma de Kőrös.
II. Csoma and Sanskrit Studies
42 g of language teaching and the study of grammar. As it is known, Bengali is a highly diglossic language, the written and the spoken language strongly differ from each other. The College of Fort William had a particular role in the development of the spoken language linked with the growth of Calcutta. The College trained people in a form of Bengali that would meet the new needs of usage in administration and business. Henry Pittis Forster, a senior merchant in the Bengal Establishment had brought out a dictionary under the title A Vocabulary in two Parts Bengalee and English and Vice V ersa (Calcutta 1799-1802). It was used by Csorna for his comparative studies. Interest in Indian languages was further inspired by the missionaries who managed the translation of the Holy Scriptures into Indian vernaculars. A strong advocate of this trend was Rev. William Yates. His A Sanskrit Vocabulary: Containing the Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs and Indeclinable Particles, ... Arranged in Grammatical Order; with Explanations in Bengalee and Englis h (Calcutta 1820) was a good reference book and Csoma quoted a lot of it. Yates belonged to those few people who had a closer connection with Csorna. As Duka says: "From the end of 1837 till the early part of 184 2, Csorna remained in Calcutta arranging the Tibetan works of the Asiatic Society, as its librarian. He published several scientific treatises and articles, and was entrusted by Dr. Yates and other missionaries in the translation of the Liturg y, the Psalm s and the Prayer-boo k into Tibetan." 1 0 One letter by Yates addressed to Csorna was in the Csorna bequest that has been lost in Calcutta. There was a copy of Yates' Sanskrit grammar among Csorna's property left in Darjeeling . Csorna's stay in Calcutta offered a good chance to be acquainted with some excellent scholars such as H.H. Wilson, secretary of the Society, author of the first comprehensive Sanskrit-English dictionary. This monumental work which run into several editions was prepared with the help of learned brahmanas of the College of Fort William. 1 2 The dictionary is distinguished by its comprehensiveness and explicitly stated analysis of all words. This work, was the main source of Csorna's List of words. E urope Friedrich Schlegel, a student of A. Hamilton in Paris, raised the idea of relationship between Sanskrit and European languages in his Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Inder (1808). He compared words and structures. It is to be noted, however, that his supposition that Sanskrit was the parent language of the other Indo-European languages, proved to be mistaken . A real breakthrough came with Franz Bopp. He was the founder of systematic studies in comparative linguistics. His first
