ANQUETIL, LOUIS PIERRE (1723-1808), French historian, was born in Paris, on the 21st of February 1723. He entered the congregation of Sainte-Geneviève, where he took holy orders and became professor of theology and literature. Later, he became director of the seminary at Reims, where he wrote his Histoire civile et politique de Reims (3 vols., 1756-1757), perhaps his best work. He was then director of the college of Senlis, where he composed his Esprit de la Ligue ou histoire politique des troubles de la Fronde pendant le XVIe et le XVIIe siècles (1767). During the Reign of Terror he was imprisoned at St Lazare; there he began his Précis de l’histoire universelle, afterwards published in nine volumes. On the establishment of the national institute he was elected a member of the second group (moral and political sciences), and was soon afterwards employed in the office of the ministry of foreign affairs, profiting by his experience to write his Motifs des guerres et des traités de paix sous Louis XIV., Louis XV, et Louis XVI. He is said to have been asked by Napoleon to write his Histoire de France (14 vols., 1805), a mediocre compilation at second or third hand, with the assistance of de Mézeray and of Paul François Velly (1709-1759). This work, nevertheless, passed through numerous editions, and by it his name is remembered. He died on the 6th of September 1808.
ANQUETIL, DUPERRON, ABRAHAM HYACINTHE (1731-1805), French orientalist, brother of Louis Pierre Anquetil, the historian, was born in Paris on the 7th of December 1731. He was educated for the priesthood in Paris and Utrecht, but his taste for Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and other languages of the East developed into a passion, and he discontinued his theological course to devote himself entirely to them. His diligent attendance at the Royal Library attracted the attention of the keeper of the manuscripts, the Abbé Sallier, whose influence procured for him a small salary as student of the oriental languages. He had lighted on some fragments of the Vendidad Sade, and formed the project of a voyage to India to discover the works of Zoroaster. With this end in view he enlisted as a private soldier, on the 2nd of November 1754, in the Indian expedition which was about to start from the port of L’Orient. His friends procured his discharge, and he was granted a free passage, a seat at the captain’s table, and a salary, the amount of which was to be fixed by the governor of the French settlement in India. After a passage of six months, Anquetil landed, on the 10th of August 1755, at Pondicherry. Here he remained a short time to master modern Persian, and then hastened to Chandernagore to acquire Sanskrit. Just then war was declared between France and England; Chandernagore was taken, and Anquetil returned to Pondicherry by land. He found one of his brothers at Pondicherry, and embarked with him for Surat; but, with a view of exploring the country, he landed at Mahé and proceeded on foot. At Surat he succeeded, by perseverance and address in his intercourse with the native priests, in acquiring a sufficient knowledge of the Zend and Pahlavi languages to translate the liturgy called the Vendidad Sade and some other works. Thence he proposed going to Benares, to study the language, antiquities, and sacred laws of the Hindus; but the capture of Pondicherry obliged him to quit India. Returning to Europe in an English vessel, he spent some time in London and Oxford, and then set out for France. He arrived in Paris on the 14th of March 1762 in possession of one hundred and eighty oriental manuscripts, besides other curiosities. The Abbé Barthélemy procured for him a pension, with the appointment of interpreter of oriental languages at the Royal Library. In 1763 he was elected an associate of the Academy of Inscriptions, and began to arrange for the publication of the materials he had collected during his eastern travels. In 1771 he published his Zend-Avesta (3 vols.), containing collections from the sacred writings of the fire-worshippers, a life of Zoroaster, and fragments of works ascribed to him. In 1778 he published at Amsterdam his Législation orientate, in which he endeavoured to prove that the nature of oriental despotism had been greatly misrepresented. His Recherches historiques et géographiques sur l’Inde appeared in 1786, and formed part of Thieffenthaler’s Geography of India. The Revolution seems to have greatly affected him. During that period he abandoned society, and lived in voluntary poverty on a few pence a day. In 1798 he published L’Inde en rapport avec l’Europe (Hamburg, 2 vols.), which contained much invective against the English, and numerous misrepresentations. In 1802-1804 he published a Latin translation (2 vols.) from the Persian of the Oupnek’hat or Upanishada. It is a curious mixture of Latin, Greek, Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit. He died in Paris on the 17th of January 1805.
See Biographie universelle; Sir William Jones, Works (vol. x., 1807); and the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society (vol. iii., 1856-1857). For a list of his scattered writings see Quérard, La France littéraire.
ANSA (from Lat. ansa, a handle), in astronomy, one of the apparent ends of the rings of Saturn as seen in perspective from the earth: so-called because, in the earlier telescopes, they looked like handles projecting from the planet. In anatomy the word is applied to nervous structures which resemble loops. In archaeology it is used for the engraved and ornamented handle of a vase, which has often survived when the vase itself, being less durable, has disappeared.
ANSBACH, or Anspach, originally Onolzbach, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, on the Rezat, 27 m. by rail S.W. of Nuremberg, and 90 m. N. of Munich. Pop. (1900) 17,555. It contains a palace, once the residence of the margraves of Anspach, with fine gardens, several churches, the finest of which are those dedicated to St John, containing the vault of the former margraves, and St Gumbert; a gymnasium; a picture gallery; a municipal museum and a special technical school. Ansbach possesses monuments to the poets August, Count von Platen-Hallermund, and Johann Peter Uz, who were born here, and to Kaspar Hauser, who died here. The chief manufactures are machinery, toys, woollen, cotton, and half-silk stuffs, embroideries, earthenware, tobacco, cutlery and playing cards. There is considerable trade in grain, wool and flax. In 1791 the last margrave of Anspach sold his principality to Frederick William II., king of Prussia; it was transferred by Napoleon to Bavaria in 1806, an act which was confirmed by the congress of Vienna in 1815.