BRASSAI, Sámuel. Torockó (now Rimetea in Romania) or Torockószentgyörgy (Coltești) 15.6.1797 or 13.2.1800 — Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca in Romania) 27.6.1897. Hungarian Philosopher and Polyhistor, who translated a specimen of the Hitopadeśa in 1884. Born in a Transylvanian Saxon family, son of the elder Samuel Br., a priest and teacher, and Krisztina Koncz. He was nominated the Professor of Philosophy at the Kolozsvár Unitarian College in 1837 and Professor of Mathematics at the Ludoviceum (school) in Budapest in 1848, returned to his old chair in Kolozsvár in 1858. In 1872 Professor at the new Kolozsvár University, retired in 1884 and now concentrated on Sanskrit. His other interests included Hungarian, German, and classical philology, philosophy, and mathematics. According to Bethlenfalvy 1980, 17 the Hitopadeśa extracts were translated from secondary sources. At Kolozsvár also taught Sanskrit (Helmolt on von Wlislocki, JGLS 1, 1908, 194).
Publications: Publications on all above-mentioned fields of interest.
– Introduction and the first tale of the Hitopadeśa in Hungarian, Erdélyi Múzeum-egylet Kiadványaí 1, 1884, 76-82; tr. William Rice’s Tiger-Hunt in India as Tigrisvadászat Indiában. Pest 1859.
– Magyar vagy czigány zene? 56 p. Kolozsvár 1860 (Hungarian or Gipsy music?).
– Reviews of Fiók’s translations: Erdélyi Múzeum 1886, 314-347 (Nala) & 1887, 394-423 (Śakuntalā).
Sources: Bethlenfalvy 1980, 17; Das geistige Ungarn 1; *Magyar Életrajzi Lex. 1 (with photo); French & German Wikipedia (with different pictures, more details in *Hungarian version).
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