J. Antall szerk.: Medical history in Hungary 1972. Presented to the XXIII. International Congress of the History of Medicine / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 6. (Budapest, 1972)

M. Vida : Serving two Nations: Tivadar Duka (1825—1908)

i

/¡_2 Medical History in Hungary 1972 (Comm. Hist. Artis Med. Suppl. 6.) THE FIRST SCHOLARLY APPRECIATION OF KŐRÖS CSOMA Twenty-five years of medical practice and the many duties found in London did not lead Duka to give up his old dream, to write a serious biography on Körösi Csoma for the Hungarian readers. Later he recollected that on arriving in India "It was my determined intention to learn about the experiences of Sándor Körösi Csoma

, of whom I had first heard as a student at Eperjes,"

4

3 Soon after his arrival in Calcutta

—where Körösi had spent most of his last years

—Duka started to collect personal memories and remembrances on him. Although Körösi led, only twelve years before (on 11th April 1842), the gathering of data was quite difficult, partly due to the modest, withdrawn hermit's life Körösi lead, and partly as a result of the changes frequently O¢eųring in the British administration. Finally he succeeded in getting hold of copies of Kőrösi's manuscripts through the help of Arthur Grote and Rajendralala Mi ra, the librarian of the Asiatic Society, and in the archives of the Calcutta High Court of Justice he found a case with "Alexander Csoma de Körös" written on it. The iron box contained various writings left behind by the scholar when he set out for Lhassa, on his last journey. The only surviving trace of this bequest is the list of the contents

—published by Duka in his monograph

—because when three years later he returned to Calcutta he found that all the writings had been destroyed.

4

4 In 1856 Duka made his pilgrimage to the cemetery of Darjeeling, to the lonely grave of his compatriot. Later on he himself looked after the grave, taking over the duty from the English physician Collins, Through thirty years Duka was engaged in collecting data and prepared the first Hungarian biography of Körösi Csoma for the hundredth anniversary of his birth

—also celebrated by the Hungarian Academy. Before finishing the book Duka once more returned to Bengal to complete his researches in the Calcutta archives. Here he was greatly helped by one of the secretaries of the government called Durand and by the board of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in finding some new documents. The Hungarian version

—modestly called a "biographical sketch"

—appeared in 1885 on the initiative of the Academy, and in the same year an English edition also came out in London.

4

5 The Hungarian biography entitled "

Körösi Csoma Sándor dolgozatai" (The Works of Sándor Körösi Csoma) included also twenty-one articles of Csoma which had appeared in various English periodicals or existed only in manuscript-form.

4

5/

a 4

3 Dula, Tivadar: Körösi Csoma Sándor dolgozatai. (The Writings of Sándor Körösi Csoma). Compiled and introduced with a biography by —.p. 157. 4

4 Duka, Theodore

: Life and Works of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös. A biography compiled chiefly from hitherto unpublished data. London, 1885. p. 164-165. Here Duka told the story of the iron casket and gave a list of its contents. 4

5 See above, (44) i

5/

a The published works of Sándor Körösi Csoma: Csoma de Kőrös, A.

: Eassy towards a dictionary, Tibetan and English. Calcutta, 1834.