The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.119

v1.c17.119

Though the Bharatas disappear in this period as a tribe, the fame of the Bharata kings had not been lost: in a passage in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa which describes the famous men who sacrificed with the horse-sacrifice, we hear of the Bharata Dauḥshanti, whom the nymph Çakuntalā bore at Nāḍapit, and who defeated the king of the Satvants and won victories on the Ganges and Jumna, showing that the Bharatas, as in the Rigveda, were performing their great deeds on the eastern as well as on the western side of the kingdom. Another king, Sātrājita Çatānīka, as we have seen, defeated the king of the Kāçis. We hear too of a descendant of Divodāsa, Pratardana, whose name is of value as tending to show that the Tṛtsus were the family of the royal house of the Bharatas: according to the Kaushītaki Upanishad he met his death in battle. It is possible that with him perished the direct Tṛtsu line: at any rate, the first king who bears the Kuru name, Kuruçravaṇa, is a descendant of Trasadasyu, the greatest of the Pūru kings. But of Kuruçravaṇa and of his father Mitrātithi, and his son Upamaçravas we know practically nothing; and the first great Kuru king is one mentioned in the Atharvaveda, Parikshit, in whose reign the hymn tells us the kingdom of the Kurus flourished exceedingly. His grandson and great-grandson according to tradition were the Prātisutvana and Pratīpa whose names are mentioned in the Atharvaveda. A later descendant of his was the famous Janamejaya, whose horse-sacrifice is celebrated in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, and who had in his entourage the priests Indrota Daivāpi Çaunaka and Tura Kāvasheya. His brothers Ugrasena, Bhīmasena, and Çrutasena by the same sacrifice purified themselves of the crime of Brāhman-slaying. But the history of the Kurus was not apparently, at the end of the period, unchequered: there is an obscure reference to their being saved by a mare, perhaps a reference to the prowess of their charioteers or cavalry in battle; but the same text, the Chhāndogya Upanishad, alludes to a hailstorm or perhaps a shower of locusts¹ afflicting them, and a prediction is preserved in an old Sūtra telling that they would be driven from Kurukshetra. It is in accord with these hints that the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad sets as a question for discussion the problem what has become of the descendants of Parikshit: the dynasty must have passed away in some great disaster. From the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa we gather that the capital of Janamejaya was Asandīvant, ‘the city of the throne,’ and that at Mashṇāra a Kuru king won a victory, and Tura Kāvasheya, a priest of the Bharatas, sacrificed at Kārotī.