ANQUETIL  ,

DUPERRON, ABRAHAM HYACINTHE (1731-i8o5), French 'orientalist, brother of Louis Pierre Anquetil, the historian, was born in Paris on the 7th. of December 1731 . He was educated for the priesthood in Paris and Utrecht, but his taste for Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and other languages of the East developed into a passion, and he discontinued his theological course to devote himself entirely to them . His diligent attendance at the Royal Library attracted the attention of the keeper of the manuscripts, the Abbe Sallier, whose influence procured for him a small salary as student of the oriental languages . He had lighted on some fragments of the Vendidad Sade, and formed the project of a voyage to India to discover the works of Zoroaster . With this end in view he enlisted as a private soldier, on the 2nd of November 1754, in the Indian expedition which was about to start from the port of L'Orient . His friends procured his discharge, and he was granted a free passage, a seat at the captain's table, and a salary, the amount of which was to be fixed by the governor of the French settlement in India . After a passage of six months, Anquetil landed, on the loth of August 1755, at Pondicherry . Here he remained a short time to master modern Persian, and then hastened to Chandernagore to acquire Sanskrit . Just then war was declared between France and England; Chandernagore was taken, and Anquetil returned to Pondicherry by land . He found one of his brothers at Pondicherry, and embarked with him for Surat; but, with a view of exploring the country, he landed at Mahe and proceeded on foot . At Surat he succeeded, by perseverance and address in his intercourse with the native priests, in acquiring a sufficient knowledge of the 'lend and Pahlavi languages to translate the liturgy called the Vendidad Sade and some other works . Thence he proposed going to Benares, to study the language, antiquities, and sacred laws of the Hindus; but the capture of Pondicherry obliged him to quit India .

Returning to

Europe in an English vessel, he spent some time in London and Oxford, and then set out for France . He arrived in Paris on the 14th of March 1762 in possession of one hundred and eighty oriental manuscripts, besides other curiosities . The Abbe Barthelemy procured for him a pension, with the appointment of interpreter of oriental languages at the Royal Library . In 1763 he was elected an associate of the Academy of Inscriptions, and began to arrange for the publication of the materials he had collected during his eastern travels . In 1771 he published his Zend-Avesta (3 vols.), containing collections from the sacred writings of the fire-worshippers, a life of Zoroaster, and fragments of works ascribed to him . In 1778 the published at Amsterdam his Legislation orientate, in which he endeavoured to prove that the nature of oriental despotism had been greatly misrepresented . His Recherches historiques et geographiques sur l'Inde appeared in 1786, and formed part of Thieffenthaler's Geography of India . The Revolution seems to have greatly affected him . During that period he abandoned society, and lived in voluntary poverty on a few pence a day . In 1798 he published L'Inde en rapport avec l'Europe (Hamburg, 2 vols.), which contained much invective against the English, and numerous misrepresentations . In 1802—1804 he published a Latin translation (2 vols.) from the Persian of the Oupnek'hat or Upanishada . It is a curious mixture of Latin, Greek, Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit .

He died in Paris on the 17th of

January 18o5 . See Biographie universelle; Sir William Jones, Works (vol. x., 180.7); and the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society (vol. iii., 1856-1857) . For a list of his scattered writings see Querard, La France litteraire .