Wojtilla Gyula: A List of Words Sanskrit and Hungarian by Alexander Csoma de Kőrös.
II. Csoma and Sanskrit Studies
49 between Tibetan and Sanskrit in the Csorna oeuvre. The same scholars heavily deny the possibility that Csorna might have preferred Sanskrit to Tibetan or he might have spoken so. But it is beside the point. Nobody can study Buddhist texts without a solid knowledge of Sanskrit. Moreover it was not knwon in Csorna's time that the major part of Sanskrit Buddhist texts have been lost forever! Csorna's approach to Sanskrit could be compared to that of a scholar who started his studies in Old Testamen t on the basis of Vulqat a and who suddenly began to study Semitic languages. And after completing his Tibetan dictionary and grammar Csorna had good reasons and proper time to plunge into Sanskrit studies. It was not at all a kind of disappointment in Tibetan studies rather a complementary task. Now let us examine his writings bearing on his attempts to relate Sanskrit and Indo-Aryan languages to Hungarian. This is certainly a delicate question where we have to proceed with care. It seems to be preferable to trace Csorna's own statements in chronological order. There are two paragraphs of significance in Csorna's letter to Captain Kennedy dated on 25th March 1825. Paragraph 30 reads: "In support of the possibility to accomplish my engagement, I beg leave to state that I am acquainted with several ancient and modern European and Asiatic languages, and that my mother-tongue , the Hungarian idiom, is nearly related, not in words, but in structure, with the Turkish, Indian, Chinese, Mogul, and Tibetan languages. In every language in Europe, except the Hungarian, Turkish and those of Finnish origin, there are prepositions like in the language of Hebrew or Arabic origin, but in our tongue, like in the Indian, Chinese and Tibetan, we have postpositions, and for the formation of different cases in declension, we have affixes with which to form from the same root several sorts of verbs. Our idiom is not inferior either to the Sanskrit or Arabic." I beg lave to give a few instances of my assertion. Pannónia is a literal translation of the Sanskrit word "sarbiya" now applied to a province on the south side of the Danube, of which Belgrade is the capital, formerly belonging to Hungary, now under Turkish dominion. Dacia, or after Greek orthography, Dakia /the modern Lower Hungary/, Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, Bessarabia, was probably an appellative name for those countries, on account of their being abundant in grapes, from the Sanskrit word "dakh" or "dak", signifying "the grape" in the form of the adjective "dakhia" or "dakia", "the graped" ..." 3 4 In his letter to Baron Neumann cited above, he says that Hungarian scholars would be surprised at the degree of relationship between Sanskrit and Hungarian. The third document is part of the preface to his Essay towards a Dictionary Tibetan and Englis h (Calcutta, 1834;. It reads: "After thus being familiarised with the language and general contents of the Buddhistic works of Tibet, the author thought himself happy in having found an easy access to the
