Hungarian folk superstition scholarship

János Varga

1844 – 1881

János Varga was a 19th-century Hungarian scholar whose prize-winning work A babonák könyve (The Book of Superstitions, 1877) systematically catalogued Hungarian folk superstitions including witchcraft, ghosts, curses, and fortune-telling practices. Awarded by Hungarian doctors and naturalists, it remains a foundational document of Hungarian ethnographic and folk-religious study.