[1] See Yule’s “Marco Polo,” vol. i. p. 209, regarding Buddhist ritual in China. [↑]
[5] Deductions based upon the etymology and similarity in the pronunciation of certain words, are not safe grounds upon which to rest scientific conclusions. Csoma has frequently shown his distrust of such. Yet such an objection need not preclude our noting down any striking examples which we may have fallen in with.
What may have been the faith of the Magyar ancestors is not yet decided; this subject demands yet further investigation, especially in the direction in which Csoma laboured.
Csoma says, with reference to the study of Tibetan, and especially of the Sanskrit, that his countrymen will find in it a fund of information [[56]]respecting their national origin, manners, customs, and idiom.
Even among the early data of the ancient history of the Hungarians, there are words and names which seem to point unmistakably to their Buddhistic origin. Bihar is an important county in Lower Hungary. Buda, the old capital of Hungary, sounds the same as the name which is still worshipped by hundreds of millions of the human race. Why should it be a far-fetched conclusion to assume that on the neighbouring hills, rising on the banks of the Danube, there stood in ancient times a temple of Buddha,—perhaps a Lama monastery? Below it, on the opposite bank, stretching into the distant plain, was built Pest. “Pest,” “past,” is a Persian word, and expresses the topographical relation which exists between the ancient town of Buda and the new town of Pest. Whether this suggestion is likely to attract the attention of those, who are more competent to judge may be questioned, but the coincidence is very striking, and it is perhaps not out of place to put it on record here. [↑]