Fraternity-Testvériség, 1960 (38. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1960-02-01 / 2. szám
2 FRATERNITY after taking a boat down the Tigris to Baghdad, to Tehran, which he reached in October, 1820, and a year later, having crossed the Kara Kum desert of Turkestan, he found himself in Bokhara. No one knows how many days he spent without food or water, nor how his weak body withstood the strain of his privations and hardships. By January, 1822, he had reached Kabul, after which he saw Lahore and Amritsar and at last gained the green vale of Kashmir, whence he decided to set forth for Yarkand in the Takla Makan desert of Sinkiang. However, for some reason — probably because of the danger of the fierce nomadic tribes infesting the desert routes in those days, as also his lack of credentials — he returned from Leh, in the Ladakh range, and halted for a time in Lahore. It was here that he became friends with an English traveller, Mr. Moorecroft, who advised him to undertake the study of Tibetan, which might offer him a better opening to the unravelling of the Magyar mystery. Csorna did not hesitate and in the year 1823, five years after he left his home town, with growing enthusiasm and his usual perseverance, he plodded onwards, recrossing the high Himalayan passes. Near Leh, a little to the south, by the Zaskar river, stands the Buddhist monastery of Zangla, which received him and sheltered him, while he gave himself whole-heartedly to the study of the Tibetan language, culture and religion. Touched by his humble bearing and diligence, the monks soon came to regard him as one of their own. He shared the cell of a lama, who treated him as his disciple, and after one year and a short stay at Sabathu in Himachal Pradesh, he returned to his Guru, this time at the monastery of Phutkal, in the latter’s village of Teta. With the encouragement of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Csorna undertook the gigantic task of compiling a Tibetan-English dictinoary of no fewer than 40,000 words, along with a grammar of the Tibetan language. These comprehensive and extensive works were the first of their kind and formed a guide to future authors. When the Society offered substantial help to promote his masterpiece, Csorna, with his characteristic modesty born of disinterested work, refused it and was content to continue the saintly, simple life of the monastery’s lamas. RESEARCHES IN CALCUTTA The day came, however, when in order to enlarge his vistas, after having exhausted the knowledge and information available in the lamasery libraries, he found it necessary to document himself out of ancient collections in India and accepted the Asiatic Society of Bengal’s offer to come and live at their headquarters in Calcutta and avail himself of the Society’s treasure of about 1,000 volumes in Tibetan. There, he spent his days absorbed in work, producing treatises on various religious works and deepening his studies in Sanskrit. True to his life of dedication, he utilized all the funds sent him
