Anquetil du Perron, born at Paris in 1731, devoted himself early to the study of Oriental literature.  He mastered the Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian languages, and by his ardor in these studies attracted the attention of Oriental scholars.  Meeting one day in the Royal Library with a fragment of the Zend Avesta, he was seized with the desire of visiting India, to recover the lost books of Zoroaster, “and to learn the Zend language in which they were written, and also the Sanskrit, so as to be able to read the manuscripts in the Bibliotheque du Roi, which no one in Paris understood."[117] His friends endeavored to procure him a situation in an expedition just about to sail; but their efforts not succeeding, Du Perron enlisted as a private soldier, telling no one of his intention till the day before setting out, lest he should be prevented from going.  He then sent for his brother and took leave of him with many tears, resisting all the efforts made to dissuade him from his purpose.  His baggage consisted of a little linen, a Hebrew Bible, a case of mathematical instruments, and the works of Montaigne and Charron.  A ten days’ march, with other recruits, through wet and cold, brought him to the port from whence the expedition was to sail.  Here he found that the government, struck with his extraordinary zeal for science, had directed that he should have his discharge and a small salary of five hundred livres.  The East India Company (French) gave him a passage gratis, and he set sail for India, February 7, 1755, being then twenty-four years old.  The first two years in India were almost lost to him for purposes of science, on account of his sicknesses, travels, and the state of the country disturbed by war between England and France[118].  He travelled afoot and on horseback over a great part of Hindostan, saw the worship of Juggernaut and the monumental caves of Ellora, and, in 1759, arrived at Surat, where was the Parsi community from which he hoped for help in obtaining the object of his pursuit.  By perseverance and patience he succeeded in persuading the Destours, or priests, of these fire-worshippers, to teach him the Zend language and to furnish him with manuscripts of the Avesta.  With one hundred and eighty valuable manuscripts he returned to Europe, and published, in 1771, his great work,—­the Avesta translated into French, with notes and dissertations.  He lived through the French Revolution, shut up with his books, and immersed in his Oriental studies, and died, after a life of continued labor, in 1805.  Immense erudition and indomitable industry were joined in Anquetil du Perron to a pure love of truth and an excellent heart.