The New Hungarian Quarterly, 1961 (2. évfolyam, 3. szám)
DOCUMENTS
DOCUMENTS 219 his compatriots were not unknown. A honorary diploma dating from the eighties and issued by the Punjab of Anjuman may be quoted here: “ . . .all glory to the town of Budapest and to the Hungarian nation for haying given birth” ... to A. Csorna de Körös and to Dr. W. G. Leitner, “the most successful educationist and originator and organizer of institutions, such as the Punjab University and the Oriental College.” Here in Lahore and in Srinagar, Stein came to know and to win the sympathies of such prominent Pandits as Govind Kaul; and here, too, he acquired his best friends. In 1892 he made the acquaintance of Lionel Charles Dunsterville,7 a gallant young officer and writer, through their mutual friend Zsigmond Justh,8 then on a visit to India. Dunsterville’s book Stalky’s Reminiscences (London, 1928) was dedicated to Stein with the words, “To Sir Aurel Stein, a friend of 35 years and the instigator of this book.” On page no of the book he wrote “... a kindly providence furnished me with a lifelong friend. Providence had to bring my Hungarian friend all the way from Buda-Pesth to the Punjab just to perform this task, because normally, professors of universities and disreputable subalterns seldom meet.”— In 1897, a new professor of history, Percy Stafford Allen9, came to Lahore Government College. First he stayed with the F. H. Andrewses,10 then with Stein at 7 L. Ch. Dunsterville (1865—1946) was a school-fellow of Kipling’s and the hero of his “Stalky & Co.” The obituary on Sir Aurel Stein in the Royal Central Asian Journal was written by him. 8 Sydney Carton, Justh Zsigmond. Napkelet, 1923. 9 P. S. Allen (1869—1933), the greatest authority on Erasmus, member of the British Academy and, at the end of his life, President of Corpus Christi College. 10 J. H. Andrews was at that time Principal of the School of Art in Lahore. He was a wellknown art historian. As Stein’s friend and collaborator he spent nearly 40 years working up the findings of his expeditions. Mayo Lodge. “And so started one of the truest friendships,” wrote Mary Allen, who in 1939 published the correspondence of her late husband.—“The bulk of the letters,” she said in the foreword, “are to Sir Aurel Stein. This correspondence began in 1901 and was carried on with faithful devotion for over thirty years. The weekly letter, written under various conditions, in the train, on the steamer, in the British Museum . .. followed Sir Aurel Stein in all his wanderings. More remarkable still, these hurried greetings wete kept safely by Sir Aurel amid the difficulties of a life continually on the move ... Most i emar kable of all, in spite of long marches ending at midnight, or of dust-laden days of excavation in the desert, these letters were answered with never failing regularity.” The third among Stein's best friends was Thomas Walker Arnold. The most prominent English Islamologist of his time, the congenial translator of “Little Flowers of St. Francis,” he was called by his friends “The Saint.” Professor at the College of Aligarh from 1888, he too became a professor at the Lahore Government College in 1898.11 It was about him that P. S. Allen wrote to Stein on June 11, 1930. that his expected return from Istanbul never took place because he succumbed to a heart attack. “Here is Helen’s last letter from him, dated 8 May from Cairo, and its last words are about you: ‘The General [that was how Allen and Arnold spoke of Stein] has kept me in touch with his movements over the face of the earth, and it is pleasant to think he can embark with such zeal on a new adventure.” Stein’s most important contribution to Sanskritism—the exemplary critical edition and translation of the Kálhana Rájatarangini, the chronicle of the ancient kings of Kashmir (Bombay, 1892, Westminster, 11 The British Academy’s obituary on Th. W. Arnold was written by Sir Aurel Stein: In Memóriám Thomas Walker Arnold 1864— 1930. London, 1932. Proceedings XVIII.