While exploring Ladakh he had a chance encounter with another European, Alexander Csoma de Kőrös a penniless Hungarian philologist from Transylvania. Csoma was searching for the ancient Asian roots of the Hungarian language in the Tibetan tongue. Moorcroft shared his own Tibetan dictionary with the traveller and although Csoma failed to prove his thesis he is now widely seen as the founder of Tibetology. It was Moorcroft who steered Csoma towards the compilation of the first Tibetan-English dictionary and grammar book for the EIC.