The Rediscovery

In 1754 a young French scholar, Anquetil du Perron, saw four leaves of an unreadable Zend manuscript — and enlisted as a common soldier to reach India and learn its secret. Years among the Parsi priests of Surat won him 180 manuscripts and the first translation of the Avesta (1771). William Jones and the English scholars mocked it as a forgery too dull to be Zoroaster's; comparative philology vindicated Anquetil after his death. The faith of Cyrus and Darius, scattered by Alexander's conquest, gave its book back to the world.