Terjék József: Collection of Tibetan MSS and Xylographs of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös.

Catalogue

25 ingly urged me that he needed to know how many years had passec since the Lord of Wisdom, the Omniscient, the Companion of the Sun ( = Buddha) had departed from earthy suffering to the Empire of Quietude (= Nirvana

); and since for in order to establish this, one needs to be equipped with familiarity with chronology, which I myself am not trained in, I studied the legends, chronicles and other books thoroughly and after careful calculations I found that from the departure of the Ominiscient, the Companion of the Sun from earthly suffering to the Empire of Quietude threethousand and seventy-two years had passed till the present year (= 1824) of the fourteenth era named Saving the Sun, when I, the scholar Chul-khrims rgya-mcho - an expert in the Tripitaka and the four Tantras - I, who call myself only Ldum-mkhan, compiled, in my residence, the Sunlit Earth, under favourable auspices, the book answering the questions entitled 'The ship penetrating into the sea of teaching-systems'." Cf.: L. Ligeti, T'oung Pao XXX (1933), pp. 26-36, Gy. Kara, Körösi Csoma Sándor (Múlt magyar tudósai), Budapest 1970; Nagy, pp. 1-7. »