Terjék József: Collection of Tibetan MSS and Xylographs of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös.
The History of the Collection
8 What is more, they produced their own literature as is shown by another book (No. 19) in the Csoma-Collection: one of Con-kha-pa's letters, consisting of only a few pages, was commented on by the second pan-chen Lama in a sixty page long study. Consequently the Alexander-books do not show any deviation from the usual forms of Tibetan literature. What do the authors themselves think of their work? The pledge (dam-bta 1) following the invocation in each syllabus is full of apoligies. Kun-dga' óhos-legs regards his work a "confused little study"; he writes that his booklet requires from the reader only slight intellectual efforts and "will not bring luck for wisdom" (No. 4). Sans-rgyas phun-chogs refuses to allow his work to be critically examined because he does not want to compete with the wise (No. 6/a), "not expecting to be admired, acknowledged or studied thorougly by the wise" (No. 8). The authors' self-disparagement is even more evident from the titles of the books and the colophons. The books have no real titles and the colophons emphasize the shortcomings of the treatment of the subjectmatter. These features of the Alexander-books are all the more striking when we think of the long, embellished book-titles customary in Tibetan literature (e.g. No. 5) or highly embellished and grandiloquent colophons. However, the Lamas' behaviour is far from being odd to those who are familiar with Tibetan studies. First the syllabuses had to be written up in an unusually short time and not on inspiration but on commission. It may also have given them some discomfort that they were to comply with the requests and confine themselves to limited lengths and subjects, something they were totally unaccustomed to. It is only natural that the Lamas compared the Alexander-books to the standards of Tibetan book-writing. The undoubtedly highly educated Lamas were understandably discontented when they were asked to write a short summary of the widely known medical work of Rgyud-bái or to explain the meaning of the word "Buddha". So the credit must clearly go to Csoma for his tenacity in making the Lamas write the syllabuses. Csoma had these letters written at the very beginnings of his studies and research into Lamaism, an entirely unknown field of knowledge for him (and indeed for the European mind in general at that time ). But one of the Alexander-books, Chul-khrims rgya-mcho's work,
