INTRODUCTION, I.

The Oxford Vendîdâd, which had been sent from England a few years earlier to the Orientalist Etienne Fourmont, was in his possession. He determined at once to give France both the books of Zoroaster and the first European translation of them. Impatient to set off and unable to wait for a government mission that had been promised to him, he enlisted as a private soldier in the service of the French East India Company. He embarked at Lorient on February 24, 1755, and after three years of endless adventures and dangers throughout the breadth of Hindustan—at the very time when war was raging between France and England—he finally arrived at Surat, where he stayed among the Parsis for three more years. Here began another struggle, no less difficult but more decisive, against the mistrust and ill-will of the Parsis that had previously disheartened Fraser. However, he emerged victorious and finally succeeded in winning from the Parsis both their books and their knowledge. He returned to Paris on March 14, 1764, and the following day deposited the entire Zend-Avesta and copies of most of the traditional books at the Bibliothèque Royale. He spent ten years studying the material he had collected and published the first European translation of the Zend-Avesta in 1771¹.

A violent dispute broke out at once, as half the learned world denied the authenticity of the Avesta, pronouncing it a forgery. It was the future founder of the Royal Asiatic Society, William Jones—a young Oxonian at the time—who opened the war. He had been wounded to the quick by the scornful tone Anquetil adopted toward Hyde and a few other English scholars: the Zend-Avesta suffered for the faults of its introducer, and Zoroaster suffered for Anquetil. In a pamphlet written in French², with a verve and style that showed him to be a capable disciple of Voltaire, W. Jones pointed out and dwelt upon the oddities and

¹ 'Zend-Avesta, work of Zoroaster, containing the Theological, Physical, and Moral Ideas of this Lawgiver... Translated into French from the original Zend.' By M. Anquetil Du Perron, 3 vols. in 4°, Paris, 1771.
² 'Letter to M. A du P, in which is included the examination of his translation of the books attributed to Zoroaster.'