[3] Anquetil-Duperron initially distinguished himself in the study of theology at Paris[2] and Utrecht with the intention of becoming a priest like his elder brother Louis-Pierre Anquetil.

[5] Playing on the French antipathy towards the English, in his travelogue he later claimed that after seeing the facsimile pages of the Oxford manuscript, he resolved to "enrich [his] country with that singular work" and the translation of it.apud[6] There was a government interest in obtaining eastern manuscripts;[n 2] Anquetil-Duperron obtained a mission from the government to do so but, unable to afford his own passage to India, he enlisted as a common soldier for the French East India Company on 2[3] or 7[2] November 1754.

touched by his romantic zeal for knowledge, granted him free passage, a seat at the captain's table, an allowance of 500 livres from the library, and a letter of introduction to the French governor in India which would entitle him to a small salary while there.

[4] From his private correspondence it appears that he intended to become "master of the religious institutions of all Asia", which in the 18th century were still imagined to all derive from the Indian Vedas.

[6] He promptly fell sick; by coincidence, he landed in the hospital of the Jesuit missionary Antoine Mozac, who some years earlier had copied the "Pondicherry Vedas".

[2] Unable to gain access to the Vedas, Anquetil-Duperron planned to travel to Tibet and China to find the ancient Indian texts there.

[3][6] As Etienne assured Abraham that the Zoroastrian priests of Surat would teach him their sacred texts as well as the languages in which they were written,[7] he resolved to accompany his brother.

Wanting to explore the country, however, he disembarked from his brother's ship at Mahé and travelled overland the rest of the way on foot[2] and on horseback.

The other (the kadmis, led by a certain Darab Kumana) maintained ties to the British East India Company and to Armenian merchants.

[3] On the other hand, Anquetil-Duperron states that he was given a sudra and kusti and he may have been formally invested with them, which would have made him a Zoroastrian in the priest's view, and thus would have been acceptable in a functioning temple.

From Surat, he intended again to travel to Benares[2][6] but the widow of the Frenchman he had killed was bringing charges against him, which Anquetil-Duperron then used as an excuse to seek refuge again with the British and obtain passage on one of the English ships destined for Europe.

[2] In 1763, he was elected an associate of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and began to arrange for the publication of the materials he had collected during his travels.

A heated dispute broke out in Britain and in Europe, which questioned the authenticity of this claimed first translation into a European languages of the Avesta scriptures.

At the fore in this dispute was William Jones, an Oxford graduate, at the time studying law at the Middle Temple in London.

[3] For these philosophes the ideas revealed by Anquetil-Duperron's translation seemed impossible to relate to the idealized Enlightenment-era view of Zoroaster or to his religion which they associated with simplicity and wisdom.

[3] "In his youth a kind of Don Juan; he now led the life of a poor, ascetic bachelor, combining Christian virtue with the wisdom of a Brahmin.

[2] Anquetil-Duperron's most valuable achievement in his last years[3] was the publication of the Oupnek'hat, id est, Secretum tegendum, a two-volume Latin retranslation and commentary of a Persian translation of fifty Upanishads.

The Latin version was the initial introduction of the Upanishadic thought to Western scholars, although, according to Paul Deussen, the Persian translators had taken great liberties in their rendering of the original Sanskrit text and at times changed the meaning.

A 108-page French paraphrase of Duperron's Oupneck'hat by Jean-Denis Lanjuinais appeared in Millin de Grandmaison's Magasin Encyclopédique of 1805.

Arthur Schopenhauer encountered Anquetil-Duperron's Oupnek'hats in the spring of 1814 and repeatedly called it not only his favorite book but the work of the entire world literature that is most worthy of being read.