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And, what was worse, he took the proper names in their modern Parsi forms, which often led him to comparisons that would have appalled Ménage. Thus Ahriman became a Sanscrit word ariman, which would have meant "the fiend"; yet Bohlen might have seen in Anquetil's work itself that Ahriman is nothing but the modern form of Angra Mainyu, words which hardly remind one of the Sanscrit ariman.

The Germans have translated and published separately, this part of M. Anquetil's work. Voyages dans les Mers de l'Inde. Par M. Legentil, 1781. 5 vols. 8vo. M. Legentil's object was to observe the transit of Venus, in 1761 and 1769. His work, besides entering into the subject of Indian astronomy, gives many important details on antiquities and natural history.

According to him, Zend is a Prácrit dialect, as it had been pronounced by Jones, Leyden, and Erskine. His mistake consisted in taking Anquetil's transcriptions of the words, which are often so incorrect as to make them look like corrupted forms when compared with Sanscrit.

There was no one who even tried to read the texts by the light of Anquetil's translation, to obtain a direct understanding of them. About 1825 Eugène Burnouf was engaged in a course of researches on the geographical extent of the Aryan languages in India.

He was thus led to study the languages of Persia, and, first of all, the oldest of them, the Zend. But as he tried to read the texts by help of Anquetil's translation, he was surprised to find that this was not the clue he had expected.

Anquetil's translation was still the only guide, and as the doubts about the authenticity of the texts grew fainter, the authority of the translation became greater, the trust reposed in the "Avesta" being reflected on to the work of its interpreter. The Parsis had been the teachers of Anquetil; and who could ever understand the holy writ of the Parsis better than the Parsis themselves?

Burnouf, laying aside tradition as found in Anquetil's translation, consulted it as found in a much older and purer form, in a Sanscrit translation of the Yasna made in the fifteenth century by the Parsi Neriosengh in accordance with the old Pahlavi version.

As soon as the French version of the "Avesta" appeared, he published a German translation of it, and also of Anquetil's historical dissertations. Then, in a series of dissertations of his own, he vindicated the authenticity of the Zend books.

Jean would sit drawing pictures or dreaming over his copy-books at one end of the table where Mademoiselle Servien had just cleared away the meal. His father would be busy with a book. As age advanced he had acquired a taste for reading, his favourites being La Fontaine's Fables, Anquetil's History of France, and Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique, "to get the hang of things," as he put it.