Gábor Bálint de Szentkatolnai (March 13, 1844 – May 26, 1913) was a Hungarian linguist, Esperantist, Orientalist, and traveller. He explored Central Asia and the Far East with expeditions led by Hungarian nobles. Balint supported the idea that Hungarian was a Turanian language and did not accept Finno-Ugric origins.
Life and work
Balint (standing at the centre) on the Zichy expedition, 1895
Bálint was born in the Székely family of Endre Bálint and Ágnes Illyés, in Szentkatolna, Háromszék county. The Székely were border guards in the Hungarian Kingdom and had been made into nobility in the 17the century and this was continued by the Habsburg King of Hungary, Rudolf (1572–1608) and Prince Gábor Rákóczy I of Transylvania (1630–1648). The village of Szentkatolna was not far from Kőrös where the linguist Sándor Csoma de Kőrös had been born. The Székely folk belief was that they were descendants of the Huns. Kőrös explored the idea in 1822 by travelling to the region and had died in 1842. The legends of Kőrös would likely have been heard by Bálint in his youth. Although of noble origins the Bálint family lived under strain and he went to local schools before taking the Lyceum examination in Nagyvárad. He studied several classical and European languages already and he then joined the University of Vienna to study law. He also took classes in oriental studies. Economic troubled led him to leave and complete his studies at the University of Pest in 1871. He interacted with the Budapest scholars János Fogarasi (1801–1878) and Ármin Vámbéry (1832–1913). Fogarasi was working a dictionary of the Hungarian language and this would be completed only in 1874. Vámbéry had travelled in central Asia and taught Turkish at the University of Pest. Bálint was sponsored by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to travel through Russia, central Asia and Mongolia in 1871 with a scholarship of 100 golden forints which was double with support from the minister for culture József von Eötvös. He returned in 1874 with a collection of ethnographic literature of the Kalmyks (1871–1872) and Khalkhas (1873).[1][2] On returning he joined the Academy of Sciences as a linguist at a salary of 500 forints. The academy had tensions between the camp of Fogarasi and the camps of Pál Hunfalvy and Jozef Budenz (1836–1892). Bálint questioned the study of the Cheremiss language by Budenz claiming that two dialects had been mixed up. In 1877 Bálint joined an expedition organized by Count Béla Széchenyi into Asia. Bálint was interested in Tamil and Dravidian studies. Bálint caused further troubles for Hunfalvy when he claimed in 1877 that Hungarian was an independent of the Turanian languagees and not related to a Finno-Ugric ursprache. He claimed that Hungarian was closer to Mongolian than Hungarian is to Finnish. Fogarasi died in 1878 and Hunfalvy and Budenz tried to block Bálint's collaboration with Vámbéry. From 1879 to 1892 Bálint took up voluntary exile and undertook travels in the middle east and northern Africa along with his wife Rozália Spielmann. He spent some time in the Ottoman Empire. In 1893 he returned home, thanks to his Szekely friends, to be appointed chair of the department of Ural-Altaic languages, Franz Jozef University, Kolozsvár, where he remained until his retirement in 1912. He taught Japanese, Turkish, Mongolian, Korean, and Kabardian. He received an honorary doctorate in 1896. In 1895 Count Jenő Zichy led an expedition into the Caucasus with Bálint and others. Zichy's private purpose was to meet a Georgian prince named "Zici" who he thought was related.[3][4][5][6]
^Zágoni, Jenő, ed. (1981). Szentkatolnai Bálint Gábor önéletrajzi naplótöredéke [The Autobiographical Diary Breakup of Gábor Bálint Gábor Szentkatolnai Sepsiszentgyörgy] (PDF) (in Hungarian). Covasna County Museum.
