A literary history of Persia

VINDICATION OF ANQUETIL 57catholic in his interests, so able a man of letters,and so eleganta scholar, that his opinion was bound to carry great weight,especially in his own country : and consequently}} 'Influence of'. . ..sir w. joness we find his scepticism as to the genuineness orthe Avesta echoed in England by Sir John Chardinand Richardson (the celebrated Persian Lexicographer) andinGermany by Meiners and, at first, Tychsen, who, however,afterwards became one of Anquetil's strongest supporters, anattitude assumed from the firstby another German scholar,Kleuker, who translated Anquetil's work into his ownlanguage, and added to it several appendices. In England,for the moment, Sir William Jones's opinion carried everythingbefore it,and Anquetil's translation " was laid aside as spurious"and not deserving any attention 1;while in France, on theother hand,itfrom the first commanded that general recognitionand assent which are now universally accorded to it.Totrace in detail the steps whereby this recognition was securedisnot within the scope of this book, and we can only notice afew of the most important. Such as desire to follow themin detail will find all the information they require in theexcellent accounts of Haugand Darmesteter referred to inthe footnote on this page, as well as in Geldner's article,Awestalhteratur, in vol. ii(pp. 153, especially p. 40,Geschichte der Awestaforschung]of Geiger and Kuhn's Grundrissder Iranischen Philologie (Strassburg, 1896).The firstimportant step in the vindication of Anquetilwas made byhis illustrious compatriot, Sylvestre de Sacy,who, in 1793, published in the Journal des SavantsMemoiressut his five celebrated Mtmoires sur diverses Antlquithtiquitesdeia de la Perse, which dealt chiefly with the PahlawiPerse (1793)- . .. r v o - 'i r i_ j iinscriptions of the Sasaman kings, for the decipher-1See West's third edition of Haug's Essays on the Pdrsis, pp. 16-53,and Darmesteter's Introduction to his translation of the Avesta in MaxMullen's Sacred Books of the East (Oxford, 1880), vol. iv, pp. xiii-xxv, toboth of which I have been greatly indebted in this portion of my subject