The 45th meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC) was held in Budapest, Hungary between June 23–28, 2002 with 83 participants from 22 countries. The programme of the meeting is available here.
The following summary of the meeting appeared as preface of the volume of proceedings.
(p. 1, Altaica Budapestinensia MMII. Proceedings of the 45th Permanent International Altaistic Conference, Budapest, Hungary, June 23–28, 2002. Edited by Alice Sárközi and Attila Rákos. Research Group for Altaic Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Department of Inner Asian Studies, Eötvös Loránd University. (Budapest, 2003). ISBN 963 508 388 2)
Preface
The 45th meeting of the Permanent International Conference was held in Budapest, Hungary between June 23–28, 2002. This was the second time that the city hosted the PIAC.
There were 83 participants from 22 countries, most of them read papers. The conference was opened by A. Mesko, deputy secretary general of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
The conference paid homage to L. Ligeti on the 100th anniversary of his birth. The opening ession was devoted to the commemoration of the outstanding scholar, the forefather of Mongolian studies in Hungary. D. Sinor, the secretary general of the conference, A. Róna-Tas, Gy. Hazai, K. Uray-Kőhalmi, G. Kara (in a message) and Á. Birtalan recollected their personal memories of the master.
The conference did not have a central theme, its aim was to provide a forum to discuss the recent problems of several branches of Altaic studies: Turkic, Mongolian, Tungus, Japanese and Korean including even Tibetan subjects.
The participants of the conference had the opportunity to visit the golden treasures of Nagyszentmiklós with Runic inscriptions at the Hungarian National Museum.
The gold medal committee consisting of the Secretary General, D. Sinor, the president of the conference, A. Sárközi, G. Stary, V. Alpatov and H. Okada awarded the pre-eminent Japanese scholar in Tungus studies Jirō Ikegami with the Indiana University gold medal for Altaic Studies.
The Turkish Embassy most generously gave a reception to make a further opportunity to the participants for a friendly chatting.
Papers published in this volume are those arrived till the deadline. The editors did not make any attempt to unify the transcriptions and preserved the authors’ individual systems.
The organisation of the conference and the publication of this volume was supported by the generous financial contributions from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (Országos Tudományos Kutatási Alap). We thank these organisations for their contributions.
A special thank should be expressed to all the colleagues and the students of the Inner Asian Department of the Eötvös Loránd University who diligently helped the work of the organisers.
Budapest, 2nd of June 2003