Géza Bethlenfalvy
The Founder of
Tibetan and Buddhist Studies
Alexander Csoma de Kőrös (1784–1842)
[...]
He set out on the road to discover the ancient homeland of the Magyars on
his own, on foot, carrying a walking stick, a haversack, and a small amount of
savings. He was not able to head straight for the region where he suspected
that the Huns and Magyars, or "Yugars" (Uighurs), had been located (somewhere
east of the Urals, in the Russo-Siberian steppes, west of the Great Wall
of China and north of Tibet, possibly the areas inhabited by Turkic and
Mongolian tribes), because, being a Székely and thus under obligation to serve
in the armed forces, he could not obtain a passport, and it was impossible to
travel anywhere in the Russian empire without one. He had also heard about
the epidemics that plagued the Ottoman empire. He therefore headed south,
making a huge detour through Persia, and its capital Teheran in particular
(there he was given some assistance by Captain Henry Willock, then in charge
of the British Mission), and carrying on to Bukhara, the main centre of the
emirate of West Turkestan. Proceeding towards the caravan route across the
Himalayas, along which native traders transported from Tibet the goat's
"pashmina" wool that was used to make Kashmir shawls, Csoma reached the
border of Tibet at Leh, the capital of Ladakh ("the land of high passes"), which
was then still a nominally "independent" kingdom with a Tibetan-speaking
population, east of Kashmir, today part of the north-western tip of India. At the
time he arrived there, Csoma was unaware that Tibet was a "closed territory",
with only Tibetans and Kashmiris being permitted to travel on the trade route
running north-east through Tibet to China, but he came to realise soon
enough that this meant it was impassable for him. He turned back in order to
seek another route.
He retraced his steps for several days towards Kashmir, and on 16th July
1821 two men who had both covered a long distance met on the bank of
the River Dras, in a Himalayan valley at an altitude of over 3,000 metres.
One was the Székely student Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, who was crossing
this remote part of the world carrying no more than a haversack, while
the other was a wealthy and influential veterinary surgeon, William Moorcroft,
an Englishman, who at this point in time was the superintendent of the stud of
the East India Company near Calcutta. This chance encounter was to
have an unforeseeable and decisive significance for both men. Csoma, on
Moorcroft's advice, was to switch to Tibetan studies which were to make
him world-famous, whereas Moorcroft, for his part, was strengthened in his
hope that Europeans could penetrate Afghanistan. After all, this solitary,
penniless wanderer, with no imperial backing or experienced escorts, no
caravan loaded with goods and no money, had negotiated, without a scratch,
precisely the route from Bukhara via Kabul to Lahore that for years now he
himself had dreamed of making. The bottom line was that Moorcroft's official
duties included finding a way of providing remounts, if possible overland,
instead of having them shipped, for the lengthy sea voyage was a greater
burden for horses than for men. The legendary herds of Arab thoroughbreds
were bred around Bukhara, but the only way of reaching there, since use of the
caravan routes over the Himalayas was impossible, was to cross Afghanistan,
which then, as now, was a fearsome prospect.
[...]
Géza Bethlenfalvy,
a scholar of Indian, Tibetan and Buddhist studies, has taught at Eötvös Loránd
University, Delhi University and, as a guest professor, at the University of Vienna.
Between 1994 and 2000 he was the Director of the Delhi Hungarian Cultural Centre.
Two catalogues of the Kanjur, the 105-volume Tibetan holy scriptures of Buddhism,
are the most noteworthy of his many publications.
