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 orientale, 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.
ANSDELL, RICHARD (1815–1885), English painter, was born in Liverpool, and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1840. He was a painter of genre, chiefly animal and sporting pictures, and he became very popular, being elected A.R.A. in 1861 and R.A. in 1870. His “Stag at Bay” (1846), “The Combat” (1847), and “Battle of the Standard” (1848), represent his best work, in which he showed himself a notable follower of Landseer.
ANSELM (c. 1033–1109), archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Aosta in Piedmont. His family was accounted noble, and was possessed of considerable property. Gundulph, his father, was by birth a Lombard, and seems to have been a man of harsh and violent temper; his mother, Ermenberga, was a prudent and virtuous woman, from whose careful religious training the young Anselm derived much benefit. At the age of fifteen he desired to enter a convent, but he could not obtain his father’s consent. Disappointment brought on an illness, on his recovery from which he seems for a time to have given up his studies, and to have plunged into the gay life of the world. During this time his mother died, and his father’s harshness became unbearable. He left home, and with only one attendant crossed the Alps, and wandered through Burgundy and France. Attracted by the fame of his countryman, Lanfranc, then prior of Bec, he entered Normandy, and, after spending some time at Avranches, settled at the monastery of Bec. There, at the age of twenty-seven, he became a monk; three years later, when Lanfranc was promoted to the abbacy of Caen, he was elected prior. This office he held for fifteen years, and then, in 1078, on the death of Herlwin, the warrior monk who had founded the monastery, he was made abbot. Under his rule Bec became the first seat of learning in Europe, a result due not more to his intellectual powers than to the great moral influence of his noble character and kindly discipline. It was during these quiet years at Bec that Anselm wrote his first philosophical and religious works, the dialogues on Truth and Freewill, and the two celebrated treatises, the Monologion and Proslogion.
Meanwhile the convent had been growing in wealth, as well as in reputation, and had acquired considerable property in England, which it became the duty of Anselm occasionally to visit. By his mildness of temper and unswerving rectitude, he so endeared himself to the English that he was looked upon and desired as the natural successor to Lanfranc, then archbishop of Canterbury. But on the death of that great man, the ruling sovereign, William Rufus, seized the possessions and revenues of the see, and made no new appointment. About four years after, in 1092, on the invitation of Hugh, earl of Chester, Anselm with some reluctance, for he feared to be made archbishop, crossed to England. He was detained by business for nearly four months, and when about to return, was refused permission by the king. In the following year William fell ill, and thought his death was at hand. Eager to make atonement for his sin with regard to the archbishopric, he nominated Anselm to the vacant see, and after a great struggle compelled him to accept the pastoral staff of office. After obtaining dispensation from his duties in Normandy, Anselm was consecrated in 1093. He demanded of the king, as the conditions of his retaining office, that he should give up all the possessions of the see, accept his spiritual counsel, and acknowledge Urban as pope in opposition to the anti-pope, Clement. He only obtained a partial consent to the first of these, and the last involved him in a serious difficulty with the king. It was a rule of the church that the consecration of metropolitans could not be completed without their receiving
