Csoma de Körös

Csoma de Körös, ALEXANDER, a Hungarian traveller and philologist, born 4th April 1784 in the Transylvanian village of Körös, was educated first at the college of Nagy-Enyed, and subsequently at Göttingen, where Eichhorn the Orientalist inspired him with a passion for philology. In 1819 he studied Slavonic in Croatia with his customary ardour, and next year started on his pilgrimage to Central Asia, finding his way in Asiatic dress with the most indomitable perseverance by Bagdad and Teheran to Bokhara, thence by Kabul and Lahore to Cashmere and Tibet. He soon began to devote himself to a study of the Tibetan language under the patronage of the English government. Early in 1827 he started on his third journey thither, and remained in the country for three years, completely absorbed in study, and indifferent to the extreme cold of winter and to privation of every kind. Early in 1831 he arrived at Calcutta, where he completed his Tibetan grammar and dictionary. He was appointed librarian to the Asiatic Society, but no comforts could wean him from his love for travel. In January 1836 he started on another journey to Tibet, but died of fever six days after arriving at Darjeeling in Sikkim, 30th March 1836, a veritable martyr to science. His Life was written by Dr Theodore Duka (1885), who disposed of the assertion so often made, that the traveller's zeal, at least after the years of mere boyhood, was due to a devout imagination that somewhere in the heart of Asia it was possible still to discover the original home of the Magyar race.