Part 2

Speaking of Csoma Körösi’s literary life at Calcutta, M. Pavie says, in the article which has already been cited, “These labours occupied his time for the space of nine years. He had turned his study into a sort of cell, from which he scarcely ever emerged, except to walk up and down the long neighbouring galleries. It was there that, during our stay in Bengal, we very frequently saw him, absorbed in a dreamy meditation, smiling at his own thoughts, as silent as the Brahmans who were copying Sanskrit texts. He had forgotten Europe to live amid the clouds of ancient Asia.”

Early in 1842 Csoma Körösi left Calcutta, with the intention of revisiting Tibet, and of making his way, if possible, to Lhasa, where he was in hopes of discovering rich stores of Tibetan literature as yet unknown to the learned world. On the 24th of March he arrived at Darjíling, in Nepal, where the superintendent of the station, Dr. Archibald Campbell, did all he could to further his views. But on the 6th of April he was attacked by fever, and on the 11th he died, a victim, as Professor Max Müller has said, “to his heroic devotion to the study of ancient languages and religions.” His wants, apart from literary requirements, appear to have been as few as those of any monk, whether Christian or Buddhistic. “His effects,” says Dr. Campbell, “consisted of four boxes of books and papers, the suit of blue clothes which he always wore, and in which he died, a few shirts, and one cooking-pot. His food was confined to tea, of which he was very fond, and plain boiled rice, of which he ate very little. On a mat on the floor, with a box of books on the four sides, he sat, ate, slept, and studied; never undressed at night, and rarely went out during the day. He never drank wine or spirits, or used tobacco or other stimulants.”

A few days before he died he gave Dr. Campbell “a rapid summary of the manner in which he believed his native land was possessed by the original ‘Huns,’ and his reasons for tracing them to Central or Eastern Asia.” Dr. Campbell gathered from his conversation that “all his hopes of attaining the object of the long and laborious search were centred in the discovery of the country of the ‘Yoogars.’ This land he believed to be to the east and north of Lassa and the province of Kham, and on the northern confines of China; to reach it was the goal of his most ardent wishes, and there he fully expected to find the tribes he had hitherto sought in vain.” On the way he hoped to make great literary discoveries, and he would dilate in the most enthusiastic manner “on the delight he expected to derive from coming in contact with some of the learned men of the East (Lassa), as the Lamas of Ladakh and Kānsun, with whom alone he had previous communion, were confessedly inferior in learning to those of Eastern Tibet.” He was generally reticent about the benefits which scholars might derive from his contemplated journey, but “What would Hodgson, Turnour, and some of the philosophers of Europe not give to be in my place when I get to Lassa!” was a frequent exclamation of his during his conversations with Dr. Campbell before his illness.

The Asiatic Society of Bengal at once placed a thousand rupees at the disposal of Dr. Campbell for the erection of a monument above the remains of the Hungarian pilgrim. And the Government of India has since given instructions that the grave of this genuine and disinterested scholar shall be for all time placed under the care of the British Resident at Darjíling. [18]

To the Hungarian enthusiast may be fairly applied, with a slight change, the words which Professor Max Müller [19] has written with reference to Hiouen-thsang, the Chinese pilgrim, who spent so much time “quietly pursuing among strangers, within the bleak walls of the cell of a Buddhist college, the study of a foreign language,” that there was “something in his life and the work of his life that places him by right among the heroes of Greece, the martyrs of Rome, the knights of the Crusades, the explorers of the Arctic regions; something that makes it a duty to inscribe his name on the roll of the worthies of the human race.”

Although the language and literature of Tibet occupied so much of Csoma Körösi’s time and thoughts, yet the main object of his life was to work out the mysterious problem as to the origin of the Hungarian nation. According to M. Jules Mohl, it was a remark of Blumenbach’s about the possibility of discovering in Asia the original home of the prehistoric ancestors of the Magyars, which first turned the attention to the subject of the young Hungarian, who was then studying medicine at Göttingen. According to Hunfalvy, [20] his fancy may have been fired by De Guignes’s opinion, published a little before 1815, that the Huns had wandered from the western borders of the Chinese empire, first to the neighbourhood of the Volga, and then on to Pannonia. But the fact of Csoma Körösi being a Szekler by birth, says Hunfalvy, is regarded as one of the reasons for his looking for the origin of his nation and language in the seat of the ancient Huns. For the Hungarian chronicles had for centuries nourished in the Szeklers the belief that they were the direct descendants of the Huns of Attila. In a letter which he wrote home during his stay in Teheran, dated the 21st of December 1820, he said:—“Both to satisfy my own desire, and to prove my gratitude and love to my nation, I have set off, and must search for the origin of my nation according to the lights which I have kindled in Germany, avoiding neither dangers that may perhaps occur, nor the distance I may have to travel. Heaven has favoured my course, and if some great misfortune does not happen to me, I shall within a short time be able to prove that my conviction was founded upon no false basis.” During his stay in Calcutta, between his expeditions, he experienced “the bitterest moments of his life,” being conscious that up to that time he had fruitlessly looked for the origin of the Hungarians. It was that feeling, says Hunfalvy, which drove him forth upon the pilgrimage which proved fatal to him. “According to his conviction, the country inhabited by the Dsugur or Dzungar race, dwelling to the north-east of Lhassa, on the western frontier of China, was the goal which he had been seeking all his life, the region in which he might hope at length to discover the Asiatic descendants of the ancestors of his Hungarian forefathers.” The foundation of his hopes, as expressed a few days before his death to Dr. Campbell, was as follows:—“In the dialects of Europe, the Sclavonic, Celtic, Saxon, and German, I believe, the people who gave their name to the country now called Hungary were styled Hunger or Ungur, Oongar or Yoongar; and in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian works there are notices of a nation in Central Asia resembling in many respects the people who came from the East into Hungary. In these languages they are styled Oogur, Woogur, Voogur, or Yoogur, according to the pronunciation of the Persian letters; and from the same works it might be inferred, he said, that the country of the Yoogurs was situated as above noted.” His views, however, on this subject are not accepted by his countrymen. His opinion “was based upon a false foundation,” says Hunfalvy, and consequently his labours in that particular field have remained without result. But as a scholar in general, as a specialist in everything which concerns Tibet, and as a single-minded, self-sacrificing student, he is held in high honour in his native land, as may be learnt from the oration which was delivered in his honour at Pest on the 8th of October 1843 by Baron Joseph Eötvos, who was at one time the Minister of Public Instruction for Hungary.

On this subject I have been favoured with a letter (in English) from the Hungarian linguist and explorer Professor Arminius Vámbéry. In it, after stating that scarcely anything is known in Hungary about the early years of Csoma Körösi, he proceeds to say:—“We only know that it was the study of Oriental languages in Germany which gave him the idea of the possibility of finding a people in Asia speaking our language, and closely connected with us. This, of course, was a mistake, for Hungarian, a mixed tongue consisting of an Ugrian and a Turko-Tatar dialect, has undergone two genetic periods—one in the ancient seat between the Urals and the Volga, and another after the settlement on Pannonia, where also large Slavonic elements inserted themselves. It was thus a sheer impossibility to discover in Asia a language similar to ours, although a considerable amount of affinity can be proved, partly in the Ugrian branch (the Ostyak and the Vogul), partly in the Eastern Turkish, unadulterated by Persian and Arab influence.

“This knowledge, however, is the result of recent investigations, and poor Körösi could have had hardly any notion of it. His unbounded love for science and for his nation drove him to the East without a penny in his pocket, and most curious is the account I heard from an old Hungarian, Count Teleky, regarding the outset of Körösi’s travels. The Count was standing before the gate of his house in a village in Transylvania, when he saw Körösi passing by, clad in a thin yellow nankin dress, with a stick in his hand and a small bundle.

“‘Where are you going, M. Körösi?’ asked the Count.

“‘I am going to Asia in search of our relatives,’ was the answer.

“And thus he really went ... undergoing, as may easily be conceived, all the hardships and privations of a traveller destitute of means, living upon alms, and exposed, besides, to the bitter deception of not having found the looked-for relatives. And still he went on in his unflagging zeal, until, assisted by your noble countrymen, he was able to raise himself a memorial by his Tibetan studies.

“I suppose that, when dying in Ladak ... he always had his eyes directed to the steppes north of Tibet, to the Tangus country, where, of course, he would have again been disillusioned.

“Körösi was therefore a victim to unripe philological speculation, like many other Hungarian scholars unknown to the world. But his name will be always a glory to our nation, and I am really glad to hear that [some one] ... has devoted time to refresh the memory of that great man.—Yours very sincerely,

“A. Vámbéry.

“Budapest, February 20, 1882.”

About the time when Csoma Körösi was starting from Bucharest on his adventurous pilgrimage, another equally genuine and disinterested scholar, Mr. Brian Houghton Hodgson, was commencing his long residence in Nepal. Living continuously in that country for three-and-twenty years, and occupying from 1831 to 1843 the important post of British Resident at Kathmandu, he was able to succeed in making the immense collections of Buddhistic works which he afterwards, with a generosity as great as his industry, made gratuitously accessible to European scholars. “The real beginning of an historical and critical study of the doctrines of Buddha,” says Professor Max Müller (“Chips,” i. 190), “dates from the year 1824. In that year Mr. Hodgson announced the fact that the original documents of the Buddhist canon had been preserved in Sanskrit in the monasteries of Nepal.” But there is no need to dwell here on the well-known fact that an immense amount of such Sanskrit literature was discovered by Mr. Hodgson in Nepal, and presented to the Royal Asiatic Society, the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and the Société Asiatique of Paris. We have at present to deal only with the stores of information which he extracted from Tibet. Mr. Hodgson not only established the fact, Professor Max Müller goes on to say, “that some of the Sanskrit documents which he recovered had existed in the monasteries of Nepal ever since the second century of our era,” but he also showed that “the whole of that collection had, five or six hundred years later, when Buddhism became definitely established in Tibet, been translated into the language of that country.” Of the sacred canon of the Tibetans, translated into their language from Sanskrit, Mr. Hodgson received a copy as a present from the Dalai Lama, and this he presented to the East India Company. As early as 1828 he printed in the “Asiatic Researches” (vol. xvi.) an article on Nepal and Tibet, in which he stated that “the body of Bhotiya [i.e., Tibetan] literature now is, and long has been, a mass of translations from Sanskrit; its language native; its letters (like its ideas) Indian.” [21] To that statement he in 1837 appended this note: “It is needless now to say how fully these views have been confirmed by the researches of De Körös. It is but justice to myself to add that the real nature of the Kahgyur and Stangyur was expressly stated and proved by me to the secretary of the Asiatic Society some time before M. De Körös’s ample revelations were made. Complete copies of both collections have been presented by me to the Honourable East India Company, and others procured for the Asiatic Society, Calcutta: upon the latter M. De Körös worked.” It was a fortunate combination which brought the special knowledge and the patient industry of Csoma Körösi into contact with the immense mass of materials obtained by Mr. Hodgson from Tibet.

Of the sacred canon of the Tibetans the following description is given by Professor Max Müller, who refers to Köppen’s “Religion des Buddha” as his authority: [22]—“It consists of two collections, commonly called the Kanjur and Tanjur. The proper spelling of their names is Bkah-hgyur, pronounced Kah-gyur, [23] and Bstan-hgyur, pronounced Tan-gyur. The Kanjur consists, in its different editions, of 100, 102, or 108 volumes folio. It comprises 1083 distinct works. The Tanjur consists of 225 volumes folio, each weighing from four to five pounds in the edition of Peking. Editions of this colossal code were printed at Peking, Lhassa, and other places. The edition of the Kanjur published at Peking, by command of the Emperor Khian-Lung, sold for £600. A copy of the Kanjur was bartered for 7000 oxen by the Buriates, and the same tribe paid 1200 silver roubles for a complete copy of the Kanjur and Tanjur together. Such a jungle of religious literature—the most excellent hiding-place, we should think, for Lamas and Dalai-Lamas—was too much even for a man who could travel on foot from Hungary to Tibet. The Hungarian enthusiast, however, though he did not translate the whole, gave a most valuable analysis of this immense Bible in the seventeenth volume of the ‘Asiatic Researches,’ sufficient to establish the fact that the principal portion of it was a translation from the same Sanskrit originals which had been discovered in Nepal by Mr. Hodgson.”

The Sanskrit works which Mr. Hodgson so generously presented to the Asiatic Society of Paris were soon turned to good account. From them M. Eugène Burnouf drew the materials for his celebrated “Introduction à l’Histoire du Buddhisme Indien.” But of the Tibetan sacred writings, which were also rendered available to European students, no great use has ever been made except by two scholars. Csoma Körösi, as has been already stated, published an “Analysis of the Tibetan Work entitled the Kah-gyur,” and an “Abstract of the Contents of the Bstan-hgyur;” and M. P. E. Foucaux brought out at Paris in 1847 his “Rgya Tch’er Rol Pa, ou Développement des Jeux, contenant l’Histoire du Bouddha Çakya-Mouni, traduit sur la Version Tibétaine du Bhahhgyour, et Revu sur l’Original Sanskrit (Lalitavistâra).” M. Foucaux’s excellent work is too well known to require more than a passing notice here. But as Csoma Körösi’s Analyses are probably less familiar, it may be well to extract from them a short account of the different sections of the colossal Tibetan collection.

The first of its two parts, he remarks, is styled Ká-gyur, or vulgarly Kán-gyur, [24] i.e., “Translation of Commandments,” being versions of Sanskrit writings imported into Tibet, and translated there between the seventh and thirteenth centuries, but mostly in the ninth. The copy on which he worked at Calcutta, consisting of 100 volumes, “appears to have been printed with the very wooden types that are mentioned as having been prepared in 1731.” This first part comprises seven divisions, which are in fact distinct works. These he names as follows:—

1. Dulvá (“Discipline,” Sanskrit Vinaya). This division occupies thirteen volumes, and deals with religious discipline and the education of persons who adopt the religious life. It is subdivided into seven parts as follows:—

1. “The Basis of Discipline or Education.” 4 vols. 2. “A Sútra on Emancipation.” 30 leaves. 3. “Explanation of Education.” 4 vols. 4. “A Sútra on Emancipation for the Priestesses or Nuns.” 36 leaves. 5. “Explanation of the Discipline or Education of the Priestesses or Nuns, in one volume with the preceding tract.” 6. “Miscellaneous Minutiæ concerning Religious Discipline.” 2 vols. 7. The chief text-book (or the last work of the Dulvá class) on education. 2 vols.

2. “Shés-rab-kyi-p’ha-rol-tu-p’hyin-pa (by contraction Shér-p’hyin, pronounced Sher-ch’hin), Sans. Prajná páramitá, Eng. ‘Transcendental wisdom.’” This division occupies twenty-one volumes, which all “treat of speculative or theoretical philosophy, i.e., they contain the psychological, logical, and metaphysical terminology of the Buddhists, without entering into the discussion of any particular subject.”

3. “Sangs-rgyas-p’hal-po-ch’hè, or by contraction P’hal-ch’hen, Sans. Buddhāvataṇsaka, ... Association of Buddhas, or of those grown wise.” This division contains six volumes, the subject of the whole being “moral doctrine and metaphysics. There are descriptions of several Tathágatas or Buddhas, their provinces, their great qualifications, their former performances for promoting the welfare of all animal beings, their praises, and several legends. Enumeration of several Bodhisatwas, the several degrees of their perfections, their practices or manners of life, their wishes, prayers, and efforts for making happy all animal beings.”

4. “Dkon-mch’hog-brtségs-pa, or by contraction Dkon-brtségs (pronounced kon-tségs). In Sans. Ratna-kúṭa, the ‘Jewel-peak,’ or precious things heaped up, or enumeration of several qualities and perfections of Buddha and his instructions. The subject, as in the former division, still consists of morals and metaphysics, mixed with many legends and collections of the tenets of the Buddhistic doctrine.”

5. “Mdo-sdé (Sans. Sútránta), or simply Mdo (Sans. Sútra), signifying a treatise or aphorism on any subject. In a general sense, when the whole Káh-gyur is divided into two parts, Mdo and Rgyud, all the other divisions except the Rgyud are comprehended in the Mdo class. But in a particular sense there are some treatises which have been arranged or put under this title. They amount to about 270, and are contained in thirty volumes. The subject of the works contained in these thirty volumes is various.... The greatest part of them consist of the moral and metaphysical doctrine of the Buddhistic system, the legendary accounts of several individuals, with allusions to the sixty or sixty-four arts, to medicine, astronomy, and astrology. There are many stories to exemplify the consequences of actions in former transmigrations, descriptions of orthodox and heterodox theories, moral and civil laws, the six kinds of animal beings, the places of their habitations, and the causes of their being born there; cosmogony and cosmography according to the Buddhistic notions, the provinces of several Buddhas, exemplary conduct of life of any Bodhisatwa or saint, etc.” It is the second volume of this section which M. Foucaux has translated.

6. “Mya-n̄an-las-hdas-pa, or by contraction Myang-hdas (Sans. Nirváṇa), two vols. The title of these two volumes is in Sanskrit Mahá parinirváṇa sútra.... A sútra on the entire deliverance from pain. Subject, Shákya’s death under a pair of Sál trees near the city of Kusha or Kámarúpa, in Assam. Great lamentation of all sorts of animal beings on the approaching death of Shákya, their offerings or sacrifices presented to him, his lessons, especially with regard to the soul. His last moments, his funeral, how his relics were divided, and where deposited.”

7. “Rgyud-sdé, or simply Rgyud, Sans. Tantra, or the Tantra class, in twenty-two volumes. These volumes in general contain mystical theology. There are descriptions of several gods and goddesses, instructions for preparing the mandalas or circles for the reception of these divinities, offerings or sacrifices presented to them for obtaining their favour, prayers, hymns, charms, &c., &c., addressed to them. There are also some works on astronomy, astrology, chronology, medicine, and natural philosophy.”

Of the second great division of the Tibetan sacred books Csoma Körösi gives only a brief abstract, “without mentioning the Sanscrit titles of the works” from which its contents have been translated. It will be sufficient to quote the opening lines of his article.

“The Bstan-Hgyur is a compilation in Tibetan of all sorts of literary works, written mostly by ancient Indian Pandits and some learned Tibetans, in the first centuries after the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet, commencing with the seventh century of our era. The whole makes 225 volumes. It is divided into two classes, the Rgyud and Mdo (Tantra and Sútra classes in Sanscrit). The Rgyud, mostly on tantrika rituals and ceremonies, makes 87 volumes. The Mdo, on science and literature, occupies 136 volumes. One separate volume contains hymns or praises on several deities and saints, and one volume is the index for the whole.” [25]

In the year 1830, while Csoma Körösi was still pursuing his studies in the monasteries of Western Tibet, a Russian official, Baron Schilling de Canstadt, was beginning to look for Tibetan books in Eastern Siberia. His first visit, he says, [26] to the monastery of Tchikoï, twelve leagues from Kiachta, the town in which he was stationed, made him aware that it possessed a copy of the Kah-gyur, as well as other sacred books, which were ranged on either side of the altar, wrapped in red and yellow coverings. As the Russian ecclesiastical mission to Pekin was then on the point of starting from Kiachta, he offered to obtain by its means from China such books as the priests might require. They gladly accepted his offer, and made out lists of Tibetan books, which proved of great service to him, especially after they had been supplemented by the additions which were made by a Lama who visited him at Kiachta. He still further ingratiated himself with the priests by presenting them with a lo or tum-tum, which he procured from the nearest Chinese town, as well as by the respect he showed for their sacred books. For when he was allowed to handle a volume of their copy of the Kah-gyur, he took care to touch the margins only of the leaves, not the holy printed part.