ion till the
day before setting out, lest he should be prevented from going. He then
sent for his brother and took leave of him with many tears, resisting all
the efforts made to dissuade him from his purpose. His baggage consisted
of a little linen, a Hebrew Bible, a case of mathematical instruments, and
the works of Montaigne and Charron. A ten days' march, with other
recruits, through wet and cold, brought him to the port from whence the
expedition was to sail. Here he found that the government, struck with his
extraordinary zeal for science, had directed that he should have his
discharge and a small salary of five hundred livres. The East India
Company (French) gave him a passage gratis, and he set sail for India,
February 7, 1755, being then twenty-four years old. The first two years in
India were almost lost to him for purposes of science, on account of his
sicknesses, travels, and the state of the country disturbed by war between
England and France[118]. He travelled afoot and on horseback over a great
part of Hindostan, saw the worship of Juggernaut and the monumental caves
of Ellora, and, in 1759, arrived at Surat, where was the Parsi community
from which he hoped for help in obtaining the object of his pursuit. By
perseverance and patience he succeeded in persuading the Destours, or
priests, of these fire-worshippers, to teach him the Zend language and to
furnish him with manuscripts of the Avesta. With one hundred and eighty
valuable manuscripts he returned to Europe, and published, in 1771, his
great work,--the Avesta translated into French, with notes and
dissertations. He lived through the French Revolution, shut up with his
books, and immersed in his Oriental studies, and died, after a life of
continued labor, in 1805. Immense erudition and indomitable industry were
joined in Anquetil du Perron to a pure love of truth and an excellent
heart.

For many years after the publication of the Avesta its genuineness and
authenticity were a matter of dispute among the learned men of Europe; Sir
William Jones especially denying it to be an ancient work, or the
production of Zoroaster. But almost all modern writers of eminence now
admit both. Already in 1826 Heeren said that these books had "stood the
fiery ordeal of criticism." "Few remains of antiquity," he remarks, "have
undergone such attentive examination as the books of the Zend Avesta. This
criticism has turned out to their advantage; the genuineness of the
p