Note 20 — INTRODUCTION.

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.