CSOMA DE KOROS, ALEXANDER, is the form of name assumed in hie published works, all of which are in English, by a scholar of !lung:Irian or rather of Transylvanian birth, whose name in his own Isuguage is written Koriisi Csoma Sander. Ile was born not long before 1790 at Iibriis in the district of Transylvania, inhabited by the race called Szeklers, supposed by many to be descendants of the aucient Huns. His parents, though of noble birth, were extremely poor, and their son received his education gratuitously at the college of Nagy-Enyed, the main support of which we are informed by Paget, the English traveller, is derived from a subscription raised some time ago in Eugland, the proceeds of which, still lodged in the Bank of England, are sufficient to afford the college at the present day a revenue of 1000/. a year. There has always been among the Huuga rians a great curiosity to learn from what country their ancestors originally came. That they were of Asiatic origin is generally admitted, rumours have bcpn often current that tribes had been found in the Rusdan possession§ in Asia speaking a language akin to the Magyar, which is common to the greater part of Hungary and Transylvania, and among others Klaproth, the Chinese scholar, has brought forward various grounds for believing that the Asiatic nation called by Arabian mediaeval writers the Uigurs, must have hecu the same as the Magyars with a slightly altered name. These investigations and speculations took a strong hold of the fancy of the young Canna the Koriis. lie often talked of them When a boy, and when he was about eighteen he told two of his school companions that he meant to travel across Asia to seek out the country of their ancestors. As he grew older however he ceased to say much on the subject, probably from finding that it exposed him to ridicule, and it was supposed that ho lied dropped his intention. In 1S15 he went to Gottingen ostensibly to study medicine, but in reality his chief view was to acquire a sufficient knowledge of oriental languages to qualify him for his purposes of travel. It was in 1820, when he was upwards of thirty years of age, that he set out on his pilgrimage. His friend Hegedus, one of the professors at Enyed. was surprised to hear from him one evening when be walked into his room lightly clad and with a little stick iu his hand, as if about to set out on a country walk, that he came to take his leave, as be meant to start for the East to-morrow. lie had received from his friend Michael Kendcreey, one of the few who encouraged Lim, a contribution of 100 florins (about 101.), and a promise of another 100 yearly, and on this and the produce of his medical skill he meant to rely for subsistence.
The friends had an animated conversation that evening, and the next moruiog Hegedus, who relates these particulars in an obituary notice %Lich he wrote of Ceoma, accompanied him part of his way, and followed him with his eyes to the banks of the Mares. He never
saw him more. Almost the next news that the Transylvanians had of Caoma was in me letter from Teheran, dated the 21st of December 1520, addressed to the patrons of the college of Enyed. In this be mentioned that ivatead of going direct to Ada, ho had, after crossing the Balkan and visiting Constantinople, embarked for Alexandria, probably to consult the Arabic libraries at Cairo, and traversing Egypt and Syria, concluded the first year of his travels at Teheran. Ile was at the time of writing the letter sanguine of finding the object of his search, a nation speaking Huncarian. at no great distance of either time or place, and thought he should be home in about a twelvemonth. Years went by after this and nothing was heard of him, and then a flying rumour came from India that some great Ilungarian scholar was studying Tibetan in one of the monasteries of Tibet. At Teheran, where Csoma was very kindly assisted by the English envoy Sir Ilenry Wiliock, he appeare, on hearing five or Fix words of Tibetan, to have been struck with their resemblance to Magyar, and to have resolved to master the language. Taciturn iu his habits, and peculiarly averse to speaking of himself, he never gave even his frb nde any but the most general account of the year's he spent in Tibet. It is only known that he wandered across Little Bucharia to the desert of Gobi, that partly with Moorcroft, the English traveller, who died before his return, and partly alone, he traversed many of the valleys of the Himalaya, and that ho spent four years from 1827 to 1830 in the Buddhist monastery of Kanam, deeply engaged in the study of Tibetan. For four months of this time he never stirred out of it room nine feet square, in which be remained without fuel, with the temperature below tho zero of Fahrenheit, studying from morning till night the Buddhist sacred booka. He had written down 40,000 Tibetan words, when, in 1S30, he left the mountains to carry his stores of learning to Calcutta, and there a die. covery awaited him which ho afterwards declared occasioned him the bitterest momenta in his life. He had soon found that there was no real resemblance between Tibetan and Magyar, but he prosecuted the study in the hope that the literature of the language would throw some light on the early history of the nation of which ho was in quest, and now learned from the scholars of Calcutta that the litera ture of Tibet consisted of translations from the Sanrcrit, a language which he might have studied with ewe at home. The disappoint ment was so bitter that it threw him on a bed of sickness, but there were consolations in store for him. Ills studies in the Buddhist monasteries had mado him well acquainted with the literature of the Buddhist religion, to which Hodgson and Tumour were then begin ning to call attention, and on this subject Csoma became an oracle.