Wojtilla Gyula: A List of Words Sanskrit and Hungarian by Alexander Csoma de Kőrös.
II. Csoma and Sanskrit Studies
48 Moreover, he went to Upper Bengal and wrote a letter to Prinsep from Jalpaiguri on 7th March 1836. Among others he says here: "... after remaining in these parts for a certain period, to study Bengalee and Sanskrit, afterwards I shall go by water to the upper provinces, devoting my whole time to the study of the Sanskrit language and to the acquirement of the principal dialects." 3 This seems to reassert his original aim. But something intervened. The reasons behind it are unknown to us. He went neither to Mithila nor to the upper provinces. Instead he headed for Maldah, and then to Titalya where he settled for a longer period. For this period we have the account of an eyewitness. Major Lloyd who was commanding the frontier station and sympathised with Csorna, writes about Csoma as follows: "At tfie beginning of 1836, when Csorna quitted his apartments he had in the Asiatic Society's house, he wished to study Bengalee, and I sent him to Julpigori, where he remained about three months; but being dissatisfied there, he returned to Titalya, I think, in March. He would not remain in my house, as he thought his eating and living with me would cause him to be deprived of the familiarity and society of natives, with whom it was his wish to be colloquially intimate; I therefore got him a common native hut, and made it as comfortable as I could for him, but still he seemed to me to be miserably off. I also got him a servant, to whom he paid three of four rupees a month, and his living did not cost him more than four more. He did not quit Titalya, I think, till the end of November 1837, and all the time he was there he was absorbed in the study of the Sanskrit, Mahratta, and Bengali languages, I think it was in November that he left, purposing to go to Calcutta..." 3 2 There are more than one uncertain fact concerning this stay in Titalya. Major Lloyd, the soldier, inaccurately says that Csoma studied Mahratta. Marathi language is spoken in present-day Maharashtra in the neighbourhood of Bombay. Marathi was taught at the College of Fort William in Calcutta but unlikely in Titalya situated in the Bengali language area. Sir Dennison E. Ross in his memorial speech (1910) says that Csoma used this period in Titalya for learning Bengali and improving his Sanskrit. 3 3 Modern scholars of Tibetan studies criticise Csoma for wasting his time in Titalya instead of keeping up the more fruitful Tibetan studies. It is certainly a posterior judgement. Looking into the matter in Csoma's time we have to treat this question more carefully. Csoma has had a good opportunity to improve his Bengali and Sanskrit in Titalya where he had found native speakers of Bengali who possessed the knowledge of the rich Bengali literature and folklore, too. His work here was similar to his field work in Ladakh. The fact that Bengali was one of the most important Modern Indo-Aryan languages with a great religious literature might have stood behind his efforts. As to Sanskrit we have to clear a misunderstanding up. The point is, since Duka's book, that some scholars see a "conflict"
