When the outside world began to learn through travelogues about Tibet and the value of Tibetan Buddhism, the first information came, astonishingly enough, from West European Catholic missionaries. One might well say the first Tibetologists were Catholic priests. The present paper deals with the contacts between East and West from the 13th century up to the late 19th century. The father of modern Tibetology, Korosi Csoma Sandor (1784-1842), especially deserves to be respected as an outstanding scholar by present day Tibetologists and Buddhists alike. Thanks to the efforts of first Catholic clergymen and then Csoma, people became gradually aware of the important role Tibetology and Tibetan Buddhism play for the whole of Buddhism.
