New challenges for the Oriental Collection

Abstract

The need to create an independent Oriental Collection withinthe Library of HAS has been raised by Hungarian scholars as early as the late 19th century. The date is not incidental because in that century Oriental research has been flourishing allover Europe, and this meant an incentive to thoroughly investigating Eastern sources relatingto the original homeland and the prehistory of Hungarians. Hungarian travellers and scholars, who were attracted to the East because of the prehistory of Hungarian people, have played at the same time a major role in describing Asia from the point of geography, geology, ethnology, zoology and botany. Many of these scholars were members of HAS, and regularly contributed to its library not only their own publications but also manuscripts and rare books collected during their travels to enrich the library’s collections. The ever growing stock has significantly increased due to the decree after World War II on systematically dividing the collection interest among libraries. As a result, the field of Oriental research was commissioned to HAS, meaning also that the relevant, extremely valuable collection of the Municipal Library of Budapest was transferred to the HAS Library.