JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES

October-December 2009 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume I., Issue 4.
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BÁLINT DE SZENTKATOLNA, Gábor
Preface of the ´Romanized Grammar of the East and West Mongolian
Languages with Popular Chrestomathies of Both Dialects´ 1
Background
Translated from Hungarian and Introduction by Borbála Obrusánszky
Gábor Bálint de Szentkatolna, the first Hungarian Mongolian scholar composed a text-book after
arriving home from Mongolia. It was one of the first complete Mongolian text-book in Europe.
Unfortunately, it remained unpublished up until now. From the preface we can understand Bálint’s
opinion on some important Mongolian linguistics questions.
Bálint’s English-Hungarian text-book provides detailed data both for linguists and orientalists. From
the here published preface we got some preview of the Mongolian historical, cultural and religious
tradition, where some gods and the great king, Chinggis khan (in the text: Tschingis khan) are in the
focus. Regarding the linguistics, we got full images on Mongolian dialects and the main ruling systems.
He lists the Mongolian tribes from Inner-Asia to the Caspian-sea, where he did fieldwork, and gathered
folklore tradition from local pastorals and Buddhist lamas. They were the primary sources for him. As
Bálint pointed out in some previous works, he did not want to study the written Mongolian language,
but he was interested in folk speech and language system. In order to learn the living Mongolian
language, he settled down in such places, where he could contact such kind of people. The best place for
him was a school or a Buddhist monastery.
He was not only a great talent in learning languages (he learnt at least 30 languages), but he was also
able to process the collected materials in a methodological manner. Moreover, in the textbook he
presented not only various Mongolian dialects, but he found parallels with other “Turanic” words,
which belonged to the South Indian Dravidian and the Hungarian (Magyar) language as well. Naturally,
he used such a linguist expression (“Turanic”), which was in common useage in his time, but previously
these languages throughout the Eurasian steppe belt were named as Scythian languages. Bálint found
that Mongolian was rather an independent language in the Turanian group, as he explained, less
affected by foreign influence. That is why this would be an important element of the Inner Asian
historical-cultural research.
Bálint’ main merit is that he created a sufficient grammar summary; in it he thoroughly showed
examples of each grammar case in order that the students or learners could understand it. It contains 124
pages in manuscript. It became one of the world’s best textbooks, but unfortunately, it remained
unpublished, until now.
1 A short introduction into the life and œuvre of Gábor Bálint de Szentkatolna can be found in the very first issue of the Journal
of Eurasian Studies, pp. 7-9. – Ed.
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