The Mongol-Manchu Collection

Louis Ligeti
The collection contains 320 Mongolian and 30 Manchu manuscripts and block-prints. It was founded by Orientalist Louis Ligeti (1902–1987), who brought for the Academy over a hundred manuscripts and block-prints from his study tour to Inner Mongolia and China in 1928–1930.

Prior to that, there was a single Mongolian manuscript there, a glossary from Kowalewski's dictionary whose author is unknown.

A large part of the Mongolian collection is devoted to Buddhism. Its oldest and most valuable piece is a 17th-century manuscript, a variant of Sa-Skya Pandita's Treasury of Good Sayings in pre-classical Mongolian and Tibetan (Mong. 54).

Sa-Skya Pandita's Treasury of Good Sayings
(MS Mong. 54)
The Manchu Collection was founded by Gábor Bálint (1844–1913), a member of Béla Széchenyi's Eastern Asian expedition.

Lajos Bese made a brief description of the Mongol-Manchu collection in 1978.

The Mongol and Manchu Manuscripts and Blockprints in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was published in 2000.