There can be little doubt as to what would have been the direction of his ulterior steps, supposing him to have safely reached Lassa, and there obtained what he hoped for. He would most likely have endeavored to penetrate into Mongolia and the country around it. [[157]]
No unprejudiced person, therefore, who had the opportunity of weighing all the circumstances and the actual facts, will assuredly feel justified in pronouncing a condemnation, and in showing up Csoma as one who had wandered in search of fantastic ideas, and sacrificed the labours of a long life in vain.
A few words will explain our meaning.
In a book recently published[11] we find it stated that Professor Hunfalvy, a great authority on Finnish philology, had declared that “Körösi, during his stay in Calcutta, experienced the bitterest moments of his life, being conscious (?) that up to that time he had fruitlessly looked for the origin of the Hungarians.”
Such disappointment we find nowhere alluded to by Csoma; he spoke nowhere of any bitter sorrow at the uselessness of his labours, yet such an opinion seems to have been shaped after his death.
Another great authority, Arminius Vámbéry, in a letter to Mr. Ralston, draws the conclusion that “Körösi was a victim to ‘unripe’ philological speculation, because he was looking for a nation speaking the Magyar tongue, and suffered much disappointment at not finding the looked-for relatives.”
Professor Vámbéry continues—
“And this (viz., finding Magyar-speaking relatives) was impossible for Körösi to attain, because the Magyar tongue is a mixture of an Ugrian and Turko-tatar dialect. This knowledge, however,” says Vámbéry, “is the result of recent (principally his own) investigations, and poor Körösi could have had hardly any notion of it!”
Such is the learned Professor’s judgment on Csoma in 1882.
We may mention that the Ugric and the Turko-tatar theory was strongly advocated by Vámbéry in his last great philological work. [[158]]