ANQUETIL-DUPERRON Abraham (EN)
Biographical Article
Biography
Anquetil-Duperron's biography is known through his detailed description of his trip to India in a speech published as an introduction to his translation of the Zend Avesta (Paris, 1771). Furthermore, this text was the subject of a scientific publication by Jean Deloche, Manonmani Filliozat, and Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat (Anquetil-Duperron A. H., 1997). Obituaries of (Anquetil L. P., 1805, Dacier J. B., 1808) and works inspired by this pioneer (Brunnhoffer H., 1883; Menant D., 1907; Modi J. J., 1916; Schwab R., 1934; Kieffer J .-L., 1983; Filliozat P. S., 2005) provide further sources that make it possible to retrace the main threads of his life.
Training
Born in Paris on December 7, 1731, Anquetil-Duperron studied at the Université de Paris and in Jansenist circles. As a diligent reader at the Bibliothèque du roi in Paris who was interested in eastern languages, especially Hebrew, he was noticed by Abbé Claude Sallier (1685-1761), custodian of the département des Imprimés, who introduced him into scholarly circles (Filliozat P.S., 2005, p. 1262). Legend has it that his vocation as an orientalist was born when Michel-Ange-André Leroux-Deshauterayes (1724-1795), professor of Arabic at the Collège de France, showed him the tracing of four leaves of a preserved Old Persian manuscript in Oxford (Anquetil-Duperron A. H., 1997, p. 75). This event persuaded him to go to India to learn languages, search for manuscripts, and translate texts to understand the Indo-Iranian civilisation still little known in Europe.
Travel to India
Without waiting for an official scientific mission, he enlisted in the army of the Compagnie des Indes and left Paris on November 7, 1754. After arriving in Lorient in Brittany, he was appointed interpreter for oriental languages at the Bibliothèque du roi and was given a pension and a place on the Duc d’Aquitaine, which left for India on February 24, 1755 (Anquetil-Duperron A. H., 1997, p. 77-79). Anquetil-Duperron arrived in Pondicherry on August 9, 1755 and immediately launched upon his quest to learn Indian languages, particularly Sanskrit (Anquetil-Duperron A. H., 1997, p. 89). To this end he traveled to Chandernagor in Bengal, where his state of health, already weakened by illnesses, deteriorated. In the spring of 1757, he was prevented by the Seven Years' War from going to Benares to study Sanskrit and witnessed the capture of Chandernagor by the English. He returned to Pondicherry by land, after a long, incredible journey, during which he encountered his brother, Étienne Anquetil de Briancourt (1727-1793) (Anquetil-Duperron A. H., 1997, p. 95-163). They both left for Surat in Gujarat, via Mahé, Goa, and Aurangabad, where Anquetil-Duperron met Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gentil (1726-1799), with whom he formed a friendship driven by shared scientific curiosity (Anquetil-Duperron A. H., 1997, p. 271). After arriving on May 1, 1758 in Surat, he again witnessed a city’s capture by the English. The following year, he met the Parsi destours Darab and Kaous, with whom he studied the rich Zoroastrian literature in Old Persian (Anquetil-Duperron A. H., 1997, p. 339 et passim). In 1761, English domination forced him to return to France. On March 15, 1761, he left Surat and India via Bombay, on a French prisoner ship (Anquetil-Duperron A. H., 1997, p. 436). Once released, he took advantage of his presence in England to examine the Avestan manuscripts of the Oxford library and meet the professors of the university.
Back to Paris
After arriving back in Paris on March 14, 1762, Anquetil-Duperron deposited eighteen manuscripts at the Bibliothèque du roi the very next day (Anquetil-Duperron A. H., 1997, p. 461) where he would remain employed as an interpreter for Oriental languages until 1792. On September 6, 1763, he was elected a member of the Academy des inscriptions et belles-lettres where he remained until its reorganisation by Napoleon, to whom he refused to take the oath of loyalty, which, for him, was "owed only to God, from the creature to the Creator" (AN A/A/63; Schwab R., 1934; Filliozat P. S., 2005, p. 1279). He died at the home of his brother Guillaume-Louis Anquetil (1735-?) on January 18, 1805 (28 Nivôse, year XIII), having led a life centred upon his scientific work, deprived of the pleasures of the world, likening himself to a "renunciant on the banks of the Seine” (Filliozat P.S., 2005, p. 1274).
The Collection
An Initial Deposit
The collection of Anquetil-Duperron manuscripts arrived at the Bibliothèque nationale in two instalments. On his return to Paris on March 15, 1762, Anquetil-Duperron himself deposited eighteen manuscripts, which he described in the second volume of his translation of the Zend Avesta (vol. II, p. I-XL Anquetil-Duperron, 1997, p. 461). These were essentially Mazdean manuscripts in Old Persian and Pehlvi, transferred to the "Persan" collection (BnF Supplément Persan 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 34, 39, 40, 43), Persian manuscripts (BnF Supplément Persian 37, 41, 42, 46, 47, 48, 417, 983), and a Gujarati translation of the Ardā Vīrāf Nāmag (BnF Indien 722), a Middle Persian tale relating the journey of the soul of Ardā Vīrāf who traverses the paradises and the hells described by Zoroaster. This volume presents a hundred paintings, often full-page, in the most beautiful style of the Gujarati school.
The Will
A few days before his death, Anquetil-Duperron wrote his will and designated Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758-1838) as legatee of his manuscripts, including his scientific papers and his Indian manuscripts: "I give and bequeath to M. de Sacy, my former colleague at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, all the manuscripts written by my hand and by others containing my works on Oriental matters, forming more than seven to eight volumes in folio and in quarto and in other formats, together with the general and particular maps and large and small atlases, the manuscripts and printings or engravings which are included in or form part of them. I wish and intend that all the oriental manuscripts written in the different languages of the country that I possess be given to the same M. de Sacy to dispose of them by him as he will advise, on condition that he evaluate their worth and pay the amount to my brothers” (Institut, NS 375, no. 47; quoted by Dehérain H., 1919, p. 155).
The Acquisition of the Collection by the Bibliothèque nationale
Sacy drew up an inventory of the collections of oriental manuscripts (Institut, NS 375, no 46, included in BnF, NAF 5433, p. 21-36) and proposed their acquisition to the Bibliothèque impériale. The collection was evaluated by the curators during the meeting of the Conservatoire de la Bibliothèque impériale on March 28, 1805 (7 germinal year XIII): “The curators of the manuscripts announce to the conservatory that they have carefully examined the oriental manuscripts of the late M. Anquetil du Perron and that according to an evaluation made concurrently with M. Silvestre de Sacy, in charge of the interests of the Anquetil family, the price of this collection reaches the sum of 6,690 francs. The curators of the manuscripts propose to reduce this sum to 6,000 francs, and to make this offer to M. de Sacy. The conservatory approves their proposal and authorises them to take the necessary steps to complete this acquisition” (BNF, Archives modernes 55-56, p. 3). The delivery of the manuscripts was recorded during the session of May 2, 1805 (12 Floréal, Year XIII): "The curators of the manuscripts announce that the Oriental manuscripts of M. Anquetil du Perron, numbering one hundred and fifty-six, have been brought to them this morning” (BNF, Modern Archives 55-56, p. 5). These two minutes are signed by Pascal-François-Joseph Gossellin (1751-1830), geographer, president of the Conservatoire de la Bibliothèque, and Louis Langlès (1763-1824), curator responsible for Oriental Manuscripts.
Scientific Papers
His collection of printed books that was extensively annotated in his own hand and "mistreated by the worms", in the words of Sacy (Institut, NS 375, no 716; quoted by Dehérain H., 1919, p. 137), was put up for sale and scattered. The 25 volumes of his scientific papers were therefore acquired by the library with the batch of manuscripts. They currently form the "Anquetil-Duperron fund" of the Nouvelles Acquisitions françaises (BnF, NAF 8857-8882). This collection in particular contains his French translation of the Upanishads ("Oupnek'hat, literally translated from Persian, mixed with samskrétam [1786]", BnF NAF 8857) which he would finally publish in Latin (Oupnek'hat, id est, Secretum tegendum continens doctrinam e quartet sacris Indorum libris excerptam, Strasbourg, 1801-1802). There are also drafts of his translation of the Avesta, studies on various Mazdean texts, notes on the Parsis, lexicons of Persian and Sanskrit based on the original texts, as well as a rich correspondence with scholars of his time, notably the Jesuit Father Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux (1691-1779) whom he had met in India and who played an important role in his collection of manuscripts and his learning of the Sanskrit language and literature.
Oriental Manuscripts
The Oriental manuscripts acquired by the Bibliothèque nationale were first described by Anquetil-Duperron in an appendix to his introduction to the Zend Avesta (see Voyage en Inde, 1997, p. 482-494). They consist of two manuscripts in Turkish, seven in Arabic, seven in Old Persian, 80 in Modern Persian, three in Hindustani (Urdu), one in Kanada, two in Malayalam, four in Tamil, and six in Sanskrit. They were further described by Sacy as twelve "Zend, Pehlevis, Persian, and Indian manuscripts relating to the religion or history of the Parsis or followers of Zoroaster", sixteen "manuscripts in Sanskrit and other Indian languages", nine "Arabic manuscripts", 90 “Persian manuscripts”, two “Turkish manuscripts”, and one “French manuscript” (“Description de la Haute Éthiopie, de Pétis de la Croix”, BnF NAF 1822).
Sacy added to his list the 18 manuscripts deposited by Anquetil-Duperron on his return from India as well as a list of "Anquetil's drafts" (see BnF NAF 5433, p. 21-36). Among these manuscripts, we find a large number of Persian manuscripts, some of which present paintings, such as the Barzū-Nāma of Atā'i Rāzī containing paintings made in Surat in 1760 (BnF Supplement Persan 499 and 499 A) or the Anvār -i Suhaylī, a Persian translation of the collection of Arabic tales, the Kalila wa Dimna, comprising twelve paintings produced in 1713 during the reign of the Mughal emperor Farruḫ-siyyar (BnF Supplément Persan 920), or a second copy of the Ardā Vīrāf Nāmag of lesser-quality execution (BnF Indien 721). We also note the presence of the manuscript of Sirr-i Akbar, a Persian translation of the Upanishads commissioned by Prince Dārā Šukūh, from which Anquetil-Duperron made his translation (BnF Supplement Persan 14). This copy was acquired through Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gentil (1726-1799), another major collector of Indian manuscripts.
