Note 11 — INTRODUCTION.

“Among other liberal pursuits,” he wrote in 1825,11 “my favourite studies were philology, geography, and history. Although my ecclesiastical studies had prepared me for an honourable employment in my native country, yet my inclination for the studies above-mentioned induced me to seek a wider field for their future cultivation. As my parents were dead, and my only brother did not want my assistance, I resolved to leave my native country and to come towards the East, and, by some means or other procuring subsistence, to devote my whole life to researches which may be afterwards useful in general to the learned world of Europe, and in particular may illustrate some obscure facts in ancient history.” Having no hope, he says, of obtaining “an imperial passport” for his journey, he procured “a printed Hungarian passport at Nagy-Enyed, to come on some pretended business to Bucharest,” intending to study Turkish there and then to go on to Constantinople. But he could obtain neither instruction in Turkish nor the means of going direct to Constantinople. So he set forth from Bucharest on the 1st of January 1820, and travelled with some Bulgarian companions to Philippopolis. Tidings of plague forced him to turn aside to the coast of the Archipelago, whence he sailed in a Greek ship to Alexandria. Driven from that city by the plague, he made his way by sea to the coast of Syria, and thence on foot to Aleppo. From that city he proceeded to Bagdad, which he reached in July, travelling part of the way on foot, “with different caravans from various places, in an Asiatic dress,” and the rest “by water on a raft.” In September he left Bagdad, travelling in European costume on horseback with a caravan, and in the middle of next month he arrived at Teheran. In the capital of Persia he spent four months. In March 1821 he again started with a caravan, travelling as an Armenian, and, after a stay of six months in Khorasán, arrived in the middle of November at Bokhara. There he intended to pass the winter; but at the end of five days, “affrighted by frequent exaggerated reports of the approach of a numerous Russian army,” he travelled with a caravan to Kabul, where he arrived early in January 1822. At the end of a fortnight he again set out with a caravan. Making acquaintance on the way with Runjeet Sing’s French officers, Generals Allard and Ventura, he accompanied them to Lahore. By their aid he obtained permission to enter Kashmir, with the intention of proceeding to Yarkand; but finding that the road was “very difficult, expensive, and dangerous for a Christian,” he set out from Leh in Ladak, the farthest point he reached, to return to Lahore. On his way back, near the Kashmir frontier, he met Mr. Moorcroft and returned with him to Leh. There Mr. Moorcroft lent him the “Alphabetum Tibetanum,” the ponderous work published at Rome in 1762, compiled by Father Antonio Agostino Giorgi out of the materials sent from Tibet by the Capuchin Friars. Its perusal induced him to stay for some time at Leh in order to study Tibetan, profiting by “the conversation and instruction of an intelligent person, who was well acquainted with the Tibetan and Persian languages.” During the winter, which he spent at Kashmir, he became so interested in Tibetan that he determined to devote himself to its study, so as to be able to “penetrate into those numerous and highly interesting volumes which are to be found in every large monastery.” He communicated his ideas to Mr. Moorcroft, who fully approved of his plan, and provided him with money and official recommendations. Starting afresh from Kashmir in May 1823, he reached Leh in the beginning of June. From that city, he says, “travelling in a south-westerly direction, I arrived on the ninth day at Yangla, and from the 20th of June 1823 to the 22d of October 1824 I sojourned in Zanskár (the most south-western province of Ladákh), where I applied myself to the Tibetan literature, assisted by the Lámá.”