About
Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, born in Transylvania into an impoverished noble family, studied at the Reformed College of Nagy-Enyed and then at the University of Göttingen, where he turned to Oriental languages. In 1820, he set out on foot for Asia to trace the origins of the Hungarian people. He spent four years in Buddhist monasteries in Zangskar and Ladakh, studying Tibetan language and Buddhist literature. He published the first Tibetan-English dictionary and a Tibetan grammar in Calcutta in 1834, thereby founding European Tibetology. Librarian of the Asiatic Society of Bengal from 1837 to 1841, he was elected honorary member of the Royal Asiatic Society. He died in Darjeeling in 1842 while preparing to travel to Lhasa.
* 1784-03-27 — † 1842-04-11
Major works
- Essay towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English (1834)dictionary
- A Grammar of the Tibetan Language (1834)grammar
Key milestones
- 1820Sets out on foot for Asia to trace the origins of the Hungarian people.
- 1834Publishes the first Tibetan-English dictionary and a Tibetan grammar in Calcutta.
- 2009The Csoma Archive at the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
Themes
TibetologyOriental languagesBuddhismHungarian originsTravel and exploration
Sources: csoma.mtak.hu · cambridge.org · media.unesco.org