Department of Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies

The Department of Mongolian and Inner Asia Studies boasts a long tradition as the centre of Mongolian studies in Hungary. It is also recognised at international level as one of the leading institutions in this field. Before the foundation of the Department of Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies, there was no systematic and institutionalised Mongolian studies education in Hungary, but already in the second half of the 19^th century, there were occasional lectures on Mongolian themes. The first Hungarian scholar with real and thorough knowledge of Mongolian was Gábor Bálint of Szentkatolna (1844-1913). During his research trip (1871-1873) that took him to the Kalmyks in the Volga region and to Mongolia, he acquired an excellent command of Mongolian and studied Mongolian culture, folklore and literature in depth. On this return, in 1875, he was appointed privatdozent at the Royal Hungarian University of Sciences in Budapest (the name of ELTE at that time), and he announced the first series of lessons on Mongolian themes in the history of Hungarian education and of the university. He gave Mongolian lessons until the end of 1878/1879, as well as lessons in Manchu and Tatar. After Bálint, József Budenz (1836–1892) took an interest in the Mongolian language at the university; while it was not among his main interests and he did not teach the language, for two terms (second term of 1888/1889 and first term of 1889/1890), he covered the Mongolian language within his lecture series “Description of the Altaic language group”, which ran for several semesters.

The founder of today’s modern education and research in Mongolian studies in Hungary was the famous Mongolist and Orientalist, Lajos Ligeti (1902–1987). He began teaching Mongolian philology and Mongolian language and literature at the Royal Hungarian Pázmány Péter University of Budapest in 1932. Today’s Department of Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies was founded as the Inner Asian Institute in 1940/1941 with Lajos Ligeti as director and worked under this name until 1962. In 1962, the institutes were renamed as departments, and from that time, the institute was known as the Department of Inner Asian Studies. In 2014, it changed its name to its current designation, the Department of Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies.

The department was led from its foundation to 1972 by Lajos Ligeti. His disciple György Kara then took the helm, and was the head of the department until 2000. When he spent long periods at Indiana University in Bloomington in the late 1990s, he was substituted by his colleague Alice Sárközi and later by his student Ágnes Birtalan. Ágnes Birtalan took over the chair in 2000 and has remained head of the department to this day.

Education

The department has had fairly broad educational profiles throughout its history. The main domains have been Mongolian and Tibetan studies (Tibetan has belonged to a separate unit since 2014), but Manchu studies and broader Altaic interests have also fallen within it. Currently, the department hosts the following programmes at BA, MA and PhD levels:

•    Eastern languages and cultures, specialisation in Mongolian Studies (BA programme, major, 6 semesters, 180 credits, in Hungarian)

•    Mongolian Studies (BA, minor, 4–6 semesters, 50 credits, in Hungarian)

•    Mongolian Studies (MA programme, 4 semesters, 120 credits, in Hungarian)

•    Mongolian Studies (PhD programme, Doctoral School of Linguistics, 4+4 semesters, 240 credits, in English and Hungarian)

The thematic content of Mongolian studies degree programmes has varied throughout its history; it has always been based on the philological, linguistic and historical foundations built by Lajos Ligeti, but each influential faculty member has added his or her singular elements to the edifice while preserving the earlier values. In addition to lessons in written Mongolian, analysis of historical and Buddhist sources, early Mongolian literature, the history of Central Asia, Altaic studies and the legendary seminars of Ligeti, when György Kara held the chair, teaching modern Mongolian became key, combined with a knowledge of dialects, folk poetry and modern Mongolian literature. Ágnes Birtalan introduced the fieldwork-based approach and added the study of Mongolian nomadic culture, folklore, shamanism and Buddhism to earlier themes, also with a focus on Oirat and Buryat dialects. The current courses offered by the department therefore cover extremely diverse topics, including Mongolian language and its dialects, various Mongolian writing systems, history of Inner Asia and Mongolia, Mongolian folklore and nomadic culture, Buddhism, shamanism and folk-religion, as well as old and modern Mongolian literature.

Instruction in Mongolian means the teaching of not a single but two rather different language variants: written Mongolian, which is the traditional literary language of the Mongols written in the vertical Mongolian script, and modern Khalkha Mongolian, spoken in Mongolia and written in the Cyrillic alphabet. During the Mongolian studies major programme, other Mongolian dialects are also mentioned, and students are offered the opportunity to explore them at a deeper level (mainly Buryat and Oirat/Kalmyk).

Research

The contribution of Hungarian Mongolists to the development of Mongolian studies is widely recognised at international level. The research activity of the Department of Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies covers wide areas of Mongolian studies, including the traditional fields of philology, textology and linguistics, as well as religions, shamanism and Buddhism, Mongolian folklore and traditional nomadic culture. Fieldwork-based studies play a leading role in the research, but traditional philological studies are also fundamental.

Hungarian researchers have been carrying out fieldwork in Mongolia since 1957. Between 1991 and the 2010s, the series of Hungarian-Mongolian joint expeditions led by Ágnes Birtalan and Alice Sárközi collected a large amount of research material on the traditional culture, religions and dialects of various Mongolian groups. A number of articles and books has been published based on the results of this fieldwork, and the collected material is still being processed.

Concerning ongoing research projects, since 2019, the department has been part of the “Community building: family and nation, tradition and innovation” project within the framework of the Thematic Excellence Programme. The project’s East Asian Research Group is led by the head of the department, Ágnes Birtalan.

Another research project entitled “Written Tradition of a Minority Culture in a Multiethnic Environment: Cultural and Linguistic Aspects of the Oirat Literacy” and supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office concerns the processing and annotated publication of the Oirat manuscripts and xylographs kept in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, as well as the creation of an electronic corpus of Oirat literature.

The research activity is supported by the Research Centre for Mongolian Studies established next to the Department of Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies in 2014 under the leadership of Ágnes Birtalan.

International relations

For several decades, the department has had an educational relationship with the National University of Mongolia, where Hungarian students of Mongolian can pursue some of their studies on a Hungarian state scholarship. The study scholarship is announced every year for one to four students for a semester. During their training in Mongolia, students can deepen their language knowledge, gain first-hand experience of the country’s culture, consult Mongolian researchers and also carry out fieldwork.

The department has built up contacts with several institutions under the European Union’s Erasmus programme, e.g. with Warsaw and Bern universities. Thanks to the Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility programme, it can also collaborate with non-EU universities, and ELTE has thus entered into a cooperation agreement concerning a student and teacher exchange with the National University of Mongolia. Further exchanges are being organised.

Several collaboration agreements have been concluded with foreign partner institutions, universities and research institutes in recent years – predominantly Mongolian and Chinese – which have also involved cooperative participation in education. 

The partner institutions are:

•    Mongolian National University of Education (Ulaanbaatar)

•    Institute of Language and Literature, Mongolian Academy of Sciences (Ulaanbaatar)

•    Institute of History and Ethnography, Mongolian Academy of Sciences (Ulaanbaatar)

•    Institute of Mongolian Studies, National University of Mongolia

•    Choi Lubsangjab College of Language and Civilisation (Ulaanbaatar)

•    Gandantegchenling Monastery (Ulaanbaatar)

•    Centre of Cultural Heritage of Mongolia (Ulaanbaatar)

•    Minzu University of China (Beijing)

•    Inner Mongolia University (Höhhot)

In recent years, the appeal of the department’s Mongolian studies to foreign students has increased significantly, particularly among PhD students. Since 2015, around 10 students have come to study for their doctorates from Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan under the Hungarian state’s Stipendium Hungaricum scholarship. From China, students typically come to pursue their studies for one or two years, and since 2017, we have welcomed six PhD guest students to our department from Beijing’s Minzu University of China and the Inner Mongolia University. Our teaching staff have held classes and lectured in Mongolia (National University of Mongolia), China (Minzu University of China, Inner Mongolia University, Northwest University for Nationalities, Renmin University of China), Belgium (Universiteit Gent), Russia (HSE Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies), etc.