Memory of the World; 2012 - unesdoc - Unesco

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Csoma archive of the Library
of the Hungarian Academy
of Sciences
Inscribed 2009
What is it
Csoma was the first European to interpret the cultural
heritage of the Tibetan people. He compiled the first
Tibetan-English dictionary of scientific value together
with a grammar of the Tibetan language. The archive
includes his collection of Tibetan manuscripts and
his correspondence.
Why was it inscribed
The archive is a prime source for Buddhist and Tibetan
studies. It is a unique testimony of Tibetan monastic
knowledge at the beginning of the 19th century and
includes the first books written for use by a Westerner
to explain Tibetan religion, science and culture in a
simple style.
Where is it
Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
Kőrösi Csoma Sándor or, as he signed his name in English,
Alexander Csoma de Kőrös (c.1784–1842) was among the
Hungarian scholars who went to the East to find the cradle
of his nation, assumed to be somewhere in Central Asia.
He became the first European to study the social and
cultural context of Tibetan people, and especially Buddhist
monks who, at the beginning of the 19th century, lived
in a secluded society. In 1834 he published in Kolkata
(Calcutta) two ground-breaking books, Dictionary, English
and Tibetan, the first such dictionary of scientific value,
and A Grammar of the Tibetan Language in English.
The Csoma archive is home to the four so-called
‘Alexander books’ which are summary outlines of various
fields of Tibetan literature and scholarship, compiled
at his explicit request probably by Csoma’s teachers,
the lamas at the Zangla monastery in Ladakh, now in
northern India. Their value resides in their uniqueness,
having been composed as single copies personally for
Csoma. The archive also contains thirty-two Tibetan block
prints and manuscripts copied or purchased by Csoma,
his correspondence (nearly 250 letters), the Csoma-
� One of the ‘Alexander books’,
a compendium of medicine
and chronology written by one
of the lamas at the Zangla
monastery, Sangyee Phuntsok,
for Csoma between June 1823
and October 1824.
328 Csoma archive of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Another of the ‘Alexander �
books’, a compendium of
Tibetan grammar and poetry
also written by Sangyee
Phuntsok, for Csoma between
June 1823 and October 1824.
related collection of his first biographer, Theodore Duka
(1825–1908) and contemporary and modern documents
related to Csoma’s life and work.
The archive is a prime source for an understanding of the
basic concepts of Buddhism, summarized on the basis of
the sutras revealed by Buddha and of the sacred writings
on monastic discipline occurring at a very early phase
of the history of Buddhism. They treat every aspect of
Tibetan knowledge: cosmology, cosmography, medicine,
grammar, philosophy, history, metrics, etc.
The ‘Alexander books’ and the Tibetan woodblock
prints and manuscripts were donated in 1839 by Csoma
to the secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, S.C.
Malan, to whom he taught the Tibetan language at that
time. When Duka, the biographer of Csoma, visited
Malan in London in 1883, he was given these treasures
and in 1885 he donated them and his own Csoma
collection to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.