Anquetil-Duperron and Sir William Jones

When it had barely run half its course the eighteenth century grew tired of itself. Turning away from its Classical and Biblical heritage it fled in its dreams to the Druids, the Middle Ages, Egypt, India, China. It looked for new mythologies, new arts and above all for new Legislators, such being the term it applied to the supposed founders of ancient civilizations. Among the legislators of antiquity none held a higher reputation than Zoroaster. Eudoxus, a pupil of Plato, regarded his teachings as the “most enlightened and useful” form of philosophy, and the library of Alexandria treasured his complete works, in two million verses! Of this immense literary output not a line was available in the eighteenth century. True, Dr. Hyde (1636-1703) had collected what Moslem writers asserted about Zoroaster and his teachings. But such sources were late and for obvious reasons unreliable. It was known that there were still small bodies of Zoroastrians in Persia, but Persia was at that date difficult of access. The best hope seemed to he in India, where Zoroastrians (commonly known as Parsees) had fled from Arab persecution.