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)

M. Vida : Serving two Nations

: Tivadar Duka

. 209 This work was Duka's most important achievement. It did not only clear some of the misunderstandings then prevailing around the personality of Csoma but was at the same time an important contribution to orientalist literature. He wanted to raise a wide interest in Hungary in the branches of orientalism, and at the same time wanted to make Hungarian science better known in England and Europe. Besides, his was the first serious evaluation of the life-work of Körösi Csoma based on authentic biographical data. Part of his endeavour to establish orientalism in Hungary was his role in making the already mentioned orientalists corresponding members of the Hungarian Academy. Rajendralala Mi ra, then the greatest scholar of Sanskrit, looked upon Csoma as the greatest European export of Tibetan literature up to the middle of the 19th century. Already in the mid eighteen twenties there were some Englishmen aware of the Hungarian scholar and Csoma could continue his travel and work with the help of the Bengal Government. Csoma finished his Tibetan dictionary at about that time and won the support of Horace Hayman Wilson, a scholar of Sanskrit, the secretary of the Asiatic Society. Csoma's first literary discoveries were reviewed by Wilson already in 1831 in the Calcutta journal "Gleanings of Science".

4

6 The reviewed article was in fact an introduction to his Tibetan dictionary listing those men who had already made a serious study of Tibetan literature: Adelung, the author of Mithridates; Pallas, a Russian traveller; and K aprotĥ and Remus from the beginning of the 19th century. Through Hodgson, the English envoy in Nepal, the Asiatic Society obtained several Tibetan Buddhist books, but the indispensable dictionaries and grammars were still missing.

4

7 That is why Csoma could obtain British support for his plans. His article "Translation of a Tibetan Fragment by Alexander Csoma, with notes

" appeared in the 1832, in the first volume of the Asiatic Society Journal,

4

8 Most of Csoma's writings appeared in India but before 1885 there —: A grammar of the Tibetan language in English. Calcutta, 1834. —: Subhashita Ratna Nidhi = Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. XXIV, XXV, Calcutta, 1855, 1856 (edited by A. Campbell); also VII, 1911. —: Mahavyutpatti. Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. Memoirs I —IV. Parts I-II, Calcutta, 1910, 1916. (edited by Sir Denison Ross and Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana) Part 3, 1944 (edited by Charan Chaterjee) —: The life and teaching of Buddha. With a preface by W. W. Hunter. Calcutta, 1957. Körösi Csoma Sándor: Ázsiai levelek és más írások. (Letters from Asia and other writings) Selected, introduced and notes by János Heller. Budapest, 1949. 4

6 The first notice on the notes made by Körösi Csoma on his arriving in Calcutta in 1830 was written by Horace Hayman Wilson. Gleanings of Science, 1831. 4

7 See above, (46). The only exceptions were: Giorgi Alphabetum Tibetanum, studio et laboré Fr. Augustini Georgii, Eremitae Augustiani, editum Romae 1762. Quarto, p. 820; and the collection of Tibetan words made by Marscham (Serampore, 1826). Csoma saw the latter only in 1830, having finished his dictionary in 1830. See (43), p. 120. 4

8 Translation of a Tibetan Fragment, with Remarks by Dr Wilson. Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society. 1832. Vol. 1. p. 269. — Cf. Duka (43), pp. 165—175. 14 Orvostörténeti Közlemények 6.