The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.128

v1.c24.128

² For complete references to the Vedic passages involved in the discussion, including full bibliographical citations, see Macdonell and Keith, *op. cit.* I, 29 (Abhyāvartin), 347–9 (Dasyu), 450 (Ninditāçva), and especially 504–5 (Parçu), 521–2 (Pārthava); II, 63 (1. Balhika). Macdonell and Keith join with those Sanskrit scholars who oppose the attempt to find any allusions to Irān in the Veda. The extravagant endeavours of Brunnhofer, *Urgeschichte der Arier*, 3 vols, Leipzig, 1893, to identify every remote Vedic term that had a possible geographical content as an Irānian allusion are bizarre in the extreme, even though there are grains of truth in the author’s views when he touches more conservatively on the domain bordering between India and Irān. The writer of the present chapter sympathises strongly with certain of the pleas made by the Vedic scholars Ludwig, Hillebrandt, and Weber to recognise Persian allusions in the Rigveda; the titles of the special articles on the subject by these scholars are duly cited by Macdonell and Keith in the pages of their *Vedic Index*, referred to above. It seems, for example, that some Avestan student may yet make more use than has been done of the material collected by E. W. Hopkins, *Prāgāthikāni*, I, in *J.A.O.S.* 1896, XVII, 84–92.