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Zend-Avesta
(Ouvrage de Zoroastre, 3 vols.) in French
by Abraham Hyacynthe Anquetil du Perron
Paris 1771, published in 3 volumes consisting of two parts
[The
photographs of these 3 rare volumes were acquired after a special
permission, following an appointment with the Librarian in the mid
1980s, of the State Library of NSW, Sydney, Australia to view the books]
A brief
summary
of the life and works of this extraordinary Frenchman:
 Born
on December 7, 1731 in Paris, son of a Catholic Parisian grocer.
Du Perron
studied Hebrew at the University of Paris. This was his first
contact with an Eastern language. He then turned his attention to
learning about Persia and its colloquial languages.
Du Perron
was only 23 years old in 1754 when his mind was set on travelling
to India.
Not having
means and finance he enlisted as a private soldier, on
November 2,
1754,
on the Indian expedition which was about to depart from the port of
L'Orient. After a passage of ten months, Anquetil landed on
August 10,
1755
at the French occupied port of
Pondicherry.
He, thence embarked on many-faceted journey via Calcutta and Pondicherry
to the British East India occupied port of Surat.
 In
1771, about seventeen years later after that faithful day in
Paris, where he saw the Oxford manuscripts for the first time, he
published the very first European translation of the Avesta in French
and named it "Zend-Avesta, ouvrage de Zoroastre."
Died
January 17, 1805
The
following is a brief historical abstract from ‘Avesta
Grammar by A. V. Williams Jackson, Stuttgart, 1892’
“In
1723 a copy of only the Vendidad Sadeh was procured by an
Englishman, George Boucher, from the Parsis in Surat and was deposited
more as a curiosity in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Not much
interest occurred as no one could read these texts of the Avesta. In
1754 a young Frenchman, Anquetil
du Perron came across some tracings made from the Oxford MS., and sent
to Paris as a specimen. Fired by an extraordinary enthusiasm he
decided to decipher the Holy Texts. He at once conceived the spirited
idea of going to Persia or India to obtain from the priests themselves
the knowledge of their sacred books.
The
history of his labors is interesting. He stayed among the Parsis of
Surat for seven years, during which time he succeeded in winning the
confidence of Dastoor Darab (the principle disciple of Dastoor Jamasp of
Kerman) to study and acquire the holy manuscripts. He gradually
induced the priest to impart to him the language of their sacred works,
to let him take some of the manuscripts, and even to initiate him into
some of the rites and ceremonies of the religion.
In 1761
he left Surat for his home. He stopped at Oxford before going directly
to Paris to compare his own MSS with
the Vendidad Sadeh deposited in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, in order
to be assured of his work and the Avestan language. Back home in Paris
he devoted ten years to work upon his MSS. and upon a translation, and
in 1771, seventeen years from the time he had first marched out
of Paris, he gave forth to the world the results of his untiring labors.
This was the first translation of the Avesta, or, as he called it,
Zend-Avesta (Ouvrage de Zoroastre, 3 vols., Paris 1771), a
picture of the religion and manners contained in the sacred book of the
Zoroastrians. He was also the first to make use of the Vedic language
for philological comparison. He showed that Old Persian is closely
related to Avestan and established the place of Old Iranian within
comparative grammar.
In Europe
a discussion as to the authenticity of the work arose. It was suggested
that the so-called Zend-Avesta was not the genuine work of Zoroaster,
but was a forgery. Foremost among the detractors, it is to be regretted,
was the distinguished Orientalist, Sir William Jones. He claimed,
in a letter published in French (1771), that Anquetil had been duped,
that the Parsis of Surat had palmed off upon him a conglomeration of
worthless fabrications and absurdities. In England, Sir William Jones
was supported by Richardson and Sir John Chardin; in Germany, by
Meiners. Anquetil du Perron was labelled an impostor who had invented
his own script to support his claim.
In France
the genuineness of the book was universally accepted, and in one famous
German scholar, Kleuker, it found an ardent supporter. He
translated Anquetil's work into German (1776, Riga), for the use of
his countrymen, especially the theologians, and he supported the
genuineness of those scriptures by classical allusions to the Magi. For
nearly fifty years, however, the battle as to authenticity, still raged.
Anquetil's translation, as acquired from the priests, was supposed to be
a true standard to judge the Avesta by, and from which to draw
arguments; little or no work, unfortunately, was done on the texts
themselves. The opinion, however, that the books were a forgery was
gradually beginning to grow somewhat
less. There is some controversy as to who later first translated
the German version into English.
It was
Anquetil’s work on the Vedic language for philological comparison that
ultimately gave way to scholarly study of his devoted work.
Thus it was advances in the study of Sanskrit that
finally won the victory for the advocates of the authenticity of our
Sacred Books. About 1825, long after Anquetil’s death and more than
fifty years after the appearance of his devoted translation, the Avestan
texts themselves began to be studied by Sanskrit scholars. The
close affinity between the two languages had already been noticed by
different scholars; but in 1826, the more exact relation between the
Sanskrit and the Avesta was shown by the Danish philologian, Rask,
who had travelled in Persia and Iran, and who had brought back with him
to the Copenhagen library many valuable MSS. of the Avesta and of the
Pahlavi books.
Rask, in a
little work on the age and authenticity of the Zend Language (1826),
proved the antiquity of the language, showed it to be distinct from
Sanskrit, though closely allied to it, and made some investigation into
the alphabet of the texts. About the same time the Avesta was taken up
by the French Sanskrit scholar, Eugene Burnouf. Knowing the
relation between Sanskrit and Avestan, and taking up the reading of the
texts scientifically, he at once found, through his knowledge of
Sanskrit, philological inaccuracies in Anquetil's translation.
Anquetil, he saw, must often have misinterpreted his teachers; the
tradition itself must often necessarily have been defective. Instead of
this untrustworthy French rendering, Burnouf turned to an older Sanskrit
translation of a part of the Avesta. This was made in the 15th century
by the Parsi scholar, Naryosangh, and was based on the Pahlavi
version. By means of this Sanskrit rendering, and by applying his
philological learning, he was able to restore sense to many passages
where Anquetil had often made nonsense, and he was thus able to throw a
flood of light upon many an obscure point. The employment of Sanskrit,
instead of depending upon the priestly traditions and interpretations,
was a new step; it introduced a new method. The new discovery and gain
of vantage ground practically settled the discussion as to authenticity.
The
testimony, moreover, of the ancient Persian inscriptions deciphered
about this time by Grotefend (1802), Burnouf, Lassen, and by Sir Henry
Rawlinson, showed still more, by their contents and language so closely
allied to the Avesta, that this work must be genuine. The question was
settled. The foundation laid by Burnouf was built upon by such scholars
as Bopp, Haug, Windischmann, Westergaard, Roth, Spiegel, Bartholomae,
Darmesteter, de Harlez, Huebschmann, Justi, Mills, especially Geldner,
including some hardly less known names, Parsis among them. These
scholars, using partly the Sanskrit key for the interpretation and
meaning of words, and partly the Parsi tradition contained in the
Pahlavi translation, have now been able to give us a clear idea of the
Avesta and its contents as far as the books have come down to us, and we
are enabled to see the true importance of these ancient scriptures. Upon
minor points of interpretation, of course, there are and there always
will be individual differences of opinion. We are now prepared to take
up the general division and contents of the Avesta.”
The
following is an interesting historical abstracts
from ‘In Search of Zarathustra’ by Paul Krivaczek, 2002.
This work
(meaning the completion of the translation into French), the first of
its kind ever undertaken by a European, seems to me an event in the
history of literature.
Wrote
Anquetilon the completion of his translation, “I mark the date as the 24th
of March 1759 of J.-C., the day of Amardad, sixth of the month of Meher,
in the year 1128 of Iezdedjerd, year 1172 of the Hegira…….”
Anquetil
‘s translation of the Avesta, the collected works of the Zoroastrian
canon, published in three volumes, finally appeared in 1771. If he
was expecting universal acclaim he was to be disappointed. The
vested interests of too many established ‘experts’ were threatened by
this young, unknown upstart, who had arrived from who knows where,
claiming without a shred of evidence , to have translated works that had
defeated the efforts of some of the greatest scholars of the age.
The philosopher Voltaire and the encyclopédiste Diderot both spoke out
against him. William Jones, who was to become later the foremost
Orientalist of his day, and would make huge contributions to the study
of Persian and Indian language and literature wrote an open letter to
Anquetil, “………….we cannot believe that even the least skilful charlatan
could have written this rubbish with which your volumes are filled
……Either Zoroaster had no commonsense, or he did not write the book you
attribute to him. If he had no commonsense, it were better to
leave him in obscurity; if he did write the book, it is an impertinence
to publish it under his name. Thus you have either insulted the
public by presenting it with nonsense, or misled it by peddling
falsehoods; in either you deserve contempt……………..”
As we have
noted above it was the similarity of Sanskrit and Avestan words first
pointed out by the Danish philologist, Rask, tragically long after
Anquetil’s death and 50 years after the French publication that a full
recognition of Anquetil’s work began to emerge.
References:
Jackson, A. V. Williams, Avesta Grammar, Stuttgart, 1892
Krivaczek, Paul, In Search of Zarathustra, Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
London, 2002 |
