Rásonyi László: Stein Aurél és hagyatéka (A MTAK kiadványai 18. Budapest, 1960)

1968 SIR AUREL STEIN AND HIS LEGACY "I give all my boolts (other than those selected as hereinafter provided) to tho Hungarian Academy of Sciences at Budapest to be added to its library in token of my grateful remembrance of the help I received from the latter as student and of the encouragement which tho Academy accorded me as one of its member" — writes Aurel Stein in his will and with this official formulation he expresses his very old intention. It liappened as late as 1922 that at the First General Assembly of that year the Chief Librarian of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was reading out Aurel Stein's letter including, among ot hers, the following: "Many happy memories of my youth attach me to the old Library of t he Academy . . . This was where I spent the most pleasant hours of mine outside the paternal home . . . Thus I need not give the reasons for having left my books to the Library of the Academy by my will made several years ago ... I saw to it that the books should get to Budapest free of charge at that time, and that no terms should prevent the Library from selling the unwanted works for its own purposes." In order to be able to appreciate the importance of the bequest, we must see clearly the personality, endeavours of Aurel Stein as well as the trend of his research activity, in brief his intellectual legacy, too, — both the man and the scientist. He was born in Budapest on November 26, 1862. Not only his highly cultured parents (being merchants) but also his far elder brother Ernest were aiming at affording him, the talented child, then the young man the possibility of the full intellectual development. The Kreuz-Schulo of Dresden, the Lutheran Grammar-School of Budapest as well as the universities of Vienna, Leipzig, and Tübingen made of him a scientist with a wide intellectual horizon. Also the scholarship renewed for him by tho Hungarian State year by year helped him to study abroad. In this way he was going in for Iranian studies in Cambridge, Oxford, and London in 1884—85. He completed the Officers' Training Corps at the Military Academy of Budapest among the first ones in rank and became an excellent cartographer here. Then he continued his studies again in London for a year. It appears from his diarylike notes how the young scientist obtained here the appreciation of a great many prominent men (Sir Henry Rawlinson, Dr. Rost, Theodore Duka, the Surgeon-Colonel of Hungarian origin etc.). He got to India in this manner. She was the land of his dreams not only for her own sake but also for the reason that she brought him nearer to his researches concerning the eastern penetration of Alexander the Great, then that of Hellenism, furthermore to his investigations on the mysterious Central Asia. The example of Alexander Csoma de Koros, his modest and heroic fellow-countryman who had renounced even family life in order to devote himself to science only and who a century ago had lived as a monk among the monks in the icy, dready monasteries of Tibet for eleven years was always in his mind. By means of his travel-diary, reports, papers, and works the career of Aurel Stein can be followed up to the great exploring expeditions. This first period of his researches promoted Northern India's archaeology and historical geography. During the second period covering a quarter of a century the great expeditions to Central Asia took place sheding light, first of all, on the relations between India and Central Asia. The best short account of the results of the three great expeditions was given by Stein himself in the introductions to his considerable works (Ancient Khotan, Serindia, Innermost Asia), moreover in the volume "Revealing India's Past", London, 1939 (Archaeological Exploration in Central Asia, pp. 152—182). The third period covering two decades (till his death at Kabul on October 26, 1943) was devoted to the Iranian expeditions disclosing the ancient relations bet weenlndia and Asia Anterior. The fertilit y of this extraordinarily hard-working man most obviously appears from the bibliography to be found in the foot-notes, though under the circumstances this bibliography cannot lay claim to bo complete. He was a philologist for sixty years and a discoverer in the field of archaeology and geography for fifty years. The whole world was opened to Stein loading him with innumerable deco-