The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.112

v1.c17.112

Corresponding with the change in geographical conditions is a still greater change in the grouping of the tribes. The Bharatas, who are the heroes of the third and the seventh books of the Rigveda, no longer occupy the main position, and we find in their place, in the land which we know they once held, the Kurus, and close to the Kurus the allied Pañchālas. As we have seen already, there is little doubt that the Kurus were new comers with whom the Bharatas amalgamated, and the Kurus thus reinforced included in their numbers the Pūrus. The mention of the Uttara-Kurus as resident beyond the Himālaya is sufficiently accounted for if we suppose that a branch of this tribe had settled in Kashmīr, just as another branch seems to have settled on the Indus and the Chenāb. The Pañchālas, too, seem to have been a composite tribe, as the name which is clearly derived from *pañcha*, ‘five,’ shows. According to the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa the older name for the Pañchālas was Krivi; and we may at least believe that the Krivis who with the Kurus appear to have constituted the two Vaikarṇa tribes of the Rigveda were a part of the Pañchāla nation¹. The same Brāhmaṇa suggests, if it does not prove, that the Turvaças were another element of the people; and the disappearance from history at this period of the Anus and Druhyus may indicate that they also were merged in the new confederation. With the Kurus and Pañchālas must be ranked the Vaças and Uçīnaras, two minor tribes who occupied the Middle Country, and the Sṛiñjayas, whose close connexion with the Kurus is proved beyond doubt by the fact that at one time they had a Purohita in common, showing that, for the time at least, they must have been acting under the leadership of one king.