Note 7 — Chapter I

We shall find, in Csoma’s own account, the special reasons which induced him to decide on prosecuting his specific object. He was made of the right stuff for such an enterprise, for, having once taken the resolution, he was ready to face all the trials and struggles in the way, of the magnitude of which he was duly warned. He deliberately prepared himself for the task, by systematic scientific studies continued over many years, without patronage or pecuniary aid of any kind, beyond Councillor Kenderessy’s promise of support, amounting to one hundred florins a-year. The entire sum of his other resources amounted to little more than two hundred florins. “Relying solely,” as Hegedüs says, “on Divine Providence and on the unalterable desire to sacrifice his life in the service of his country, he started towards the distant goal,” regarding which Csoma pointedly remarks that he “cannot be accounted of the number of those wealthy European gentlemen who travel at their own expense for pleasure and curiosity; being rather only a poor student, who was very desirous to see the different countries of Asia, as the scene of so many memorable transactions of former ages; to observe the manners of several peoples, and to learn their languages, … and such a man was he, who, during his peregrinations, depended for his subsistence on the benevolence of others.”7