college to college. Taking a wider view of all the expenses of a
university course (including clothing and travelling), a parent
who clothed his son and supported him at university as well as
during the vacation could expect to pay from £600-800 for his
four year course around 1850.^24
While the British, as well as the Dutch, the Portuguese,
and the French, directly or in the name of the various East India
Companies they had set up in the late 16th and early 17th
centuries were busy extending their bases, factories,
fortifications and the like, and wherever possible occupying
whole territories in the Indian Ocean area, European scholars on
their part were trying to understand various aspects of the
civilizations existing in this area. Prominent amongst these were
members of several Christian monastic orders, the most well
known being the Jesuits, who were specialising in the fields of
the sciences, customs, manners, philosophies and religions.
There were some others with interests of a more political, his-
torical or economic nature. Many of them took to narrating their
own adventures, and occasionally, misfortunes in the ‘fabulous’
and ‘exotic’ East. Due to the widespread interest of the European
elite, much of this writing was published in one or more
European languages soon after. Accounts and discussions which
happened to be of a limited, but great scholarly or religious
interest, were copied by hand many times over.^25