Lajos Ligeti (28 October 1902 – 24 May 1987) was aHungarianorientalist and philologist, who specialized in Mongolian and Turkic languages.
Ligeti was born inBalassagyarmat in 1902. After completing his secondary studies in his native town, he entered the prestigious Eötvös-Kollégium. He studied classical languages, but concentrated on Turkish and Hungarian philology atBudapest University under bothGyula Németh and Zoltán Gombocz, obtaining his doctorate in 1925. He spent three years on a scholarship in post-doctoral research in Paris where he studied Chinese underHenri Maspero,Tibetan underJacques Bacot, andMongolian and Inner Asian languages underPaul Pelliot, one of the three students, the others beingDenis Sinor andFrancis Cleaves who carried on Pelliot's work in Mongolian studies, and his closest disciple.[1]
From 1928 to 1930 he engaged in field research in Inner Mongolia, and, while staying inlamaseries, masteredChakhar,Kharchin andDagur, while collecting extensive sources in manuscript. He later described the results of his investigations into Mongolian Buddhist canon, totalling 108 works, in hisCatalogue du Kanjur mongol, (1942–1944). He obtained a teaching position specializing in Inner Asian studies atPázmány Péter Catholic University in 1931. After his election as acorresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1936, he did further fieldwork among both theMoghuls, and theUzbeks, from 1936 to 1937. In 1940 he assumed the chair of Inner Asian Studies at Budapest, university, where he introduced coursework on Mongolian, Tibetan andManchu. He also played a key role in the development of Hungarian sinology.In 1949, he was awarded theKossuth Prize (1949) and in the following year he launched theActa Orientalia. Among his translations areThe Secret History of the Mongols (1962) and theElegant Sayings of Sakya Pandita (1984).
Though much was lost in the upheavals of World War Two, he managed to conserve important texts in old Mongolian, Manchu, Tibetan and Chinese, which he later gave to the Hungarian Academy. He donated his 11,000 volume private library to the Klebelsberg Library,University of Szeged.[2]
Ligeti died inBudapest in 1987.[citation needed]
