G. Orosz (comp.): A Catalogue of the Tibetan Manuscripts and Block Prints in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Vol. 1.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The second part of the Tibetan Collection has more, now hardly distinguishable, layers. The oldest is made up of 20 books donated by Louis Ligeti to the Library upon his return from his expedition to Inner Mongolia in 1928-31 4. A part of these books were ordered to be reprinted by Ligeti himself in the Songzhusi, the famous Tibetan-Mongolian printing house at Beijing, while another part was bought in different monasteries he visited in Inner Mongolia. Ligeti, as vice-president of the HAS, was also instrumental in arranging field trips of Hungarian scholars to Mongolia, the first in 1957 as a result of which three orientalists, György Kara, Katalin Uray-Kőhalmi, and András Róna-Tas, enlarged considerably both the Mongolian and the Tibetan collections of the Library. The actual size of the Tibetan holdings was formed during the 60's-80's when hundreds of Tibetan books of Mongolian origin were donated or sold to the Library by Hungarian scholars and workers active in Mongolia. 2. Notes on the method of description 2.1 Numbering and physical description At their arrival the books were deposited in boxes according to their size and the date of acquisition. Owing to the lack of thematic arrangement, works dealing with different topics were often placed in the same box, while volumes of multi-volume books were sometimes put into different boxes. Since it was not possible to change this arrangement, the present description follows the original numberings of the boxes. This is counterbalanced by the different indices at the end of the catalogue. If a box containes more than one work, simple decimal sub-numbering is used, regardless of whether they are different independent works or parts of a larger collection. Physical descriptions of independent units in a box are given under the number allocated to the unit, while sub-sections contain further detailed descriptions related only to them. The part describing the physical features of a book is set in smaller characters. The approximate date of the imprint was determined on the basis of the type and Csorna de Kőrös. (= Keleti tanulmányok - Oriental Studies, 3). Budapest: Library of the HAS, 1973. 4 See his Rapport préliminaire d'un voyage d'exploration fait ah Mongolie chinoise 1928-1931. Budapest: Société Kőrösi-Csoma, 1933; and his type-written list kept in the Oriental Collection.
