Just outside of Darjeeling, on a downhill road towards the tea gardens and army base at Lebong, is the old cemetery once used by the English and other Europeans in the time that the town was the primary summer hill station of the British Raj, then centred in Calcutta. The cemetery is small and these days untended, except for the quite prominent grave marker of the Hungarian linguist Alexander Csoma de Koros which, when the present author visited the site, had been recently cleaned, cared for and decorated. There is an informative plaque there commemorating de Koros' life and work and explaining that the grave had been established by the Royal Asiatic Society and had been tended by money from authorities in Hungary.
As well as this, closer into town, just around the bend from the Raj Bhavan (the Maharaja's winter residence), there is another marker also tended by Hungarian authorities, this time an abstract wooden statue (pillar) in the Boodhist manner dedicated to de Koros and standing among a row of statues to other notable citizens of the town. De Koros, therefore, has two markers dedicated to him and both are looked after by authorities in far away Eastern Europe. It comes to pass, in fact, that Hungarians not only tend these markers but are known to travel here in order to visit them, such is the repute of de Koros in his native land. He is regarded as one of the great sons of the Magyar people and his grave in Darjeeling is a place of solemn pilgrimage for Hungarians.
The esteem in which he is held is not limited to his fellow nationals, however. De Koros is a hero in Hungary, but in Boodhist Japan he is nothing less than a Bodhisattva, which is to say a saint of the first order, a semi-divine being who has attained liberation but vowed to remain in the wheel of existence in order to assist other sentient beings to the same end. He was given this status by the Boodhist authorities in Japan in 1933. On the occasion, a large statue of him sitting in the lotus position was installed at the Tokyo Boodhist University. See thus:
So who, exactly, was Alexander Csoma De Koros and what did he do to deserve such high praise and sanctification? He is not a well-known figure in the Anglosphere outside of the narrow field of Tibetan linguistics and other obscure byways of academia. His hagiography is as follows:
This retired manner was his most notable trait. He devoted himself entirely to study and otherwise lived as a hermit. In Ladakh, however, he was tutored by a Lama named Sangs-Rgyas-Phun-Tshogs and quickly mastered the Tibetan tongue, one of the first Europeans to do so. He furthermore immersed himself in the esoteric teachings of Tibetan Boodhism by reading the two great encyclopaedias of Lamaism, the one hundred volumes of the Kangyur, and the two hundred and twenty-four volumes of the BsTangyur. The Tibetans gave him the name Phyi-glin-gi-grwa-pa, meaning "the foreign student". Tibetan Boodhism became his great love. He had set out in search of the roots of his own language and instead found a spiritual tradition high in the Himalayas. Mr. Edward Fox wrote an account of this journey in the 2006 book The Hungarian Who Walked to Heaven.
De Koros spent many years compiling a dictionary of Tibetan and an account of Tibetan grammar and when this work was completed he headed for Calcutta to see it published. There he was welcomed by the Royal Asiatic Society who unanimously inducted him as an honorary member and organised a stipend upon which he could live. From 1839 to 1842 he worked as a librarian for the Society while his dictionary, grammar and other works were readied for publication. (Having established that this vagabond with a strange European accent was not a spy, the British were remarkably supportive and encouraging to De Koros, let it be said.)
Then, in 1842, he determined to set out for Lhasa. This journey was interrupted, however, when he contracted malaria. He was on his way to Lhasa when he died of fever in Darjeeling on April 11 1842. Thus was Darjeeling his last resting place, and thus he is today a celebrated figure in the town.
De Koros, then, is, in the Buddhist firmament, a scholar saint. His claim to sainthood is founded in his extraordinary dedication to learning. (There was once a time when extraordinary intellectuals qualified as saints. Alas, in our own time, it is only do-gooders and social workers who qualify.) His story is one of a remarkable journey, as if he was drawn across the world, to the very roof of the world, to his destiny. A map of his travels - one of the most extraordinary intellectual and spiritual adventures ever undertaken by a European Orientalist - is illustrated below:
* * *
Born in Koros, Transylvania, in the 1780s - the exact date is disputed - he was a painfully shy and inward character who devoted his life to the study of languages, for which he had an unusual gift. By the time he was in his mid twenties he had acquired mastery of over a dozen languages including English, Latin, Greek, and others more exotic. In 1820, just in his forties, he set out to travel eastwards, his reason being to trace the origins of the Hungarian language in the Orient. We have a full account of his travels in the form of a letter he composed at one point, since he travelled without official sanction and was sometimes questioned about who he was and what was his purpose. He travelled largely on foot, walking from Constantinople overland to British India. There he met the explorer William Moorcroft with whom he travelled to Ladakh in order to investigate the languages of Tibet. Moorcroft assisted him and wrote him a recommendation which he needed at a later point because he was detained by the British on suspicion of being a spy. This matter was resolved, however, and the British then offered him every assistance. A Captain Kennedy, who first took him into custody, wrote of him that he "... declines any attention that I would be most happy to show him, and he lives in the most retired manner.” 
This retired manner was his most notable trait. He devoted himself entirely to study and otherwise lived as a hermit. In Ladakh, however, he was tutored by a Lama named Sangs-Rgyas-Phun-Tshogs and quickly mastered the Tibetan tongue, one of the first Europeans to do so. He furthermore immersed himself in the esoteric teachings of Tibetan Boodhism by reading the two great encyclopaedias of Lamaism, the one hundred volumes of the Kangyur, and the two hundred and twenty-four volumes of the BsTangyur. The Tibetans gave him the name Phyi-glin-gi-grwa-pa, meaning "the foreign student". Tibetan Boodhism became his great love. He had set out in search of the roots of his own language and instead found a spiritual tradition high in the Himalayas. Mr. Edward Fox wrote an account of this journey in the 2006 book The Hungarian Who Walked to Heaven.
De Koros spent many years compiling a dictionary of Tibetan and an account of Tibetan grammar and when this work was completed he headed for Calcutta to see it published. There he was welcomed by the Royal Asiatic Society who unanimously inducted him as an honorary member and organised a stipend upon which he could live. From 1839 to 1842 he worked as a librarian for the Society while his dictionary, grammar and other works were readied for publication. (Having established that this vagabond with a strange European accent was not a spy, the British were remarkably supportive and encouraging to De Koros, let it be said.)
Then, in 1842, he determined to set out for Lhasa. This journey was interrupted, however, when he contracted malaria. He was on his way to Lhasa when he died of fever in Darjeeling on April 11 1842. Thus was Darjeeling his last resting place, and thus he is today a celebrated figure in the town.
De Koros, then, is, in the Buddhist firmament, a scholar saint. His claim to sainthood is founded in his extraordinary dedication to learning. (There was once a time when extraordinary intellectuals qualified as saints. Alas, in our own time, it is only do-gooders and social workers who qualify.) His story is one of a remarkable journey, as if he was drawn across the world, to the very roof of the world, to his destiny. A map of his travels - one of the most extraordinary intellectual and spiritual adventures ever undertaken by a European Orientalist - is illustrated below:
Yours,
Harper Mc Alpine Black
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