A letter from Dr. Wilson to the Secretary of Government refers to the arrangements which had been made with regard to Csoma. It bears the date 15th July 1831, and states that the Society were willing to avail themselves of Csoma’s services for two years, on the [[113]]salary which the Government had already sanctioned to him.
Eighteen months after the date of the above, Dr. Wilson wrote another letter, announcing to Government the completion of Csoma’s works for the press, and suggesting, at the same time, how they should be dealt with.
On the 26th of December 1832, Dr. Wilson writes that, besides the Dictionary and the Grammar, a translation of a Tibetan vocabulary, containing “a summary of the Buddha system,”[1] was ready for publication and at the disposal of Government, “to whom the author considered his works to belong, in return for the patronage it had been pleased to afford him. Should it be the pleasure of Government to defray the cost of publication, which has been estimated at from 3000 to 4000 rupees, Mr. Csoma will be happy to conduct them through the press in Calcutta; or he is willing, should the Government think proper, to send them, through me, to England, where, perhaps, the Honourable Court of Directors or some literary association may undertake their publication.”
Dr. Wilson was preparing to leave India, and he was ready to take charge of the manuscripts, with a view to their being published in Europe.
The following was the resolution of the Government as to the publication of the Grammar and Dictionary, and this finally decided the hitherto pending question. The order was, that the works should be printed in Calcutta at the expense of Government, which had certainly the very great advantage of the author’s immediate supervision whilst issuing from the press.
The Government Secretary’s letter to Dr. Wilson is dated the 27th of December; it alludes to circumstances of some interest, and pays a deserved tribute to his remarkable merits as a man of science, on the eve of his departure for Europe. [[114]]
“The Vice-President in Council is disposed to think it most desirable that the Tibetan Grammar and Dictionary prepared by A. Csoma de Körös should be published in Calcutta, at the cost of the Government, India being the most appropriate place for the publication, and the Government being the only party likely to incur the expense.
“I am instructed to observe,” continues Mr. Swinton, “that the Government is sensible of the advantage which would be derived from your taking charge of these works and superintending their publication in England, if it were proposed to transmit them for that purpose; and recognises in your offer the same disinterested zeal which has ever distinguished your devotion to the advancement of literature.
“The Vice-President in Council has perused with much gratification the report of the meritorious labours of Mr. Csoma.”
In January 1833, Dr. Wilson, having spent many years in the study of Oriental literature, left Calcutta for England, to devote the remainder of his days to the same cause, as Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford. Other and more worthy pens have done justice to the brilliant talents and meritorious accomplishments of Horace Hayman Wilson. A grateful remembrance of him is due also from the biographer of Körösi Csoma Sándor, for the interest he took, when in Calcutta, in the Hungarian traveller, and for his kindness afterwards in publishing a biographical sketch of him in the “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society” in 1834. The sketch, so far as it went, has hitherto served as the basis of all notices of Csoma’s earlier life.