The life and fate of Alexander Csoma de Körös has occupied my mind for many years. In the late autumn of 1999, I traveled to the Himalayas, to the village of Kanam on the border of India and China. Alexander Csoma had spent perhaps the most important years of his research in Kanam and also compiled most of his famous Tibetan-English dictionary and grammar there. In this place I understood many things about him that the literature and legends failed to tell. The perspective is quite different "at the top of the world" but the overwhelming experience is difficult to grasp.

I had no intention of producing yet another biography and interpretation of Csoma, although the script was inspired by his person and the circumstances.

Much has been written about Alexander Csoma de Körös' wanderings, and much about the significance of his scholarly work. Yet despite being seen by most Hungarians as one of their great national figures, little can be said about the personality of the man who led such an extraordinary life, how his character was shaped by the events he experienced, the studies he pursued. He certainly never talked to anyone about himself: reticence was one of his main characteristics.

The poor scholar was one of our century's great, original pioneers. As a student, before he started university, together with two other fellow students, he solemnly vowed to devote his life to the task of penetrating Central Asia in quest of the origin of his nation. In the first thirty-five years of his life he prepared himself for the task in Europe, and during the next 12 years he traveled around as a pilgrim in Asia or lived a life of solitude and privation in the cold of Tibet, learning from Buddhist monks. He spent the remaining 11 years of his life publishing in India parts of the material he had collected himself… His fate was typical of scholarly pioneers. Someone else reaped the rewards of his efforts. To the scholars of his century Csoma was an obscure, Transylvanian figure, abandoned among the Himalayan hills—however, from the summits a giant cast its shadow on Central Asia. (W.W. Hunter)