É. Apor (ed.): Jubilee Volume of the Oriental Collection, 1951–1976. Papers Presented on the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
L. BESE: On the Mongolian and Manchu Collections in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
43 L.BES E ON THE MONGOLIAN AND MANCHU COLLECTIONS IN THE LIBRARY OF THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES A preliminary on the Mongolian manuscripts and xylographs in the Oriental Collection The written records of the Mongolian language have, in the course of time, been scattered throughout the world. Apart from territories where Mongol is spoken, Mongolian collections can be found from the Soviet Union through Europe and America to Japan, in many places in the Northern hemisphere. These collections serve as basis source material for scholars and can perhaps be regarded as one of the main factors in the cultivation of international fluorishing Mongolian research. The fact that these sources are scattered is, at the same time, a definite barrier to resarch as the materials to be found in different countries and different collections have never been and are still not easily available to those who need them. Some progress has been made in the field of cataloguing collections and publishing catalogues. But the situation remains unsatisfactory. Curiously it is the largest Mongolian collections (of Ulan-Bator, Leningrad, Ulan-Ude, Köke Qota) that we know the least of, which means that the most valuable sources of data are withheld from scholars. All in all, large numbers of written records of the Mongolian language are still lying about in uncatalogued anonymity, like dead capital, on the store-shelves of libraries. The Mongolian manuscripts and xylographs of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences have also remained hidden from the outside world. Individual pieces have become known through Prof. Lajos LIGETI* s book (Rapport préliminaire d'un voyage d'exploration fait en Mongolie Chinoise 1928-1931, Budapest 1933); other MSS and xylographs have been publicized through the studies of Hungarian Mongolists, but they only represent a fraction of the whole stock and they do not give sufficient information about the collection as a whole. Accordingly, taking the opportunity provided by this session I should like to make a few comments on the Mongolian MSS and xylographs of the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. 1. The development of the Mongolian collection divides, chronologically, into three phases. The first period is represented by one single work (Mong. 1. A glossary of the Mongolian language copied by a European hand with French interpretations.The
