The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.30

v1.c17.30

Other references to connexions with Irān have been seen in two names found in the Rigveda. Abhyāvartin Cāyamāna, whose victory over Varaçikha has already been recorded, bears the epithet Pārthava, and the temptation to see in him a Parthian is naturally strong. But the Rigveda knows a Pṛithī and later texts a Pṛithu, an ancient and probably mythical king, and thus we have in the Vedic speech itself an explanation of Pārthava which does not carry us to Irān. Still less convincing is the attempt to find in the word Parçu in three passages of the Rigveda a reference to Persians: Parçu occurs indeed with Tirindira as a man's name, but the two are princes of the Yadus, and not a single personality, 'Tiridates the Persian'.¹ Whatever the causes which severed Irān and India, in the earliest period, at least as recorded in the Rigveda, the relations of the two peoples seem not to have been those of direct contact.