The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.20

v1.c17.20

Though defeated in the battle with Sudās, the Pūrus were clearly a great and powerful people. Their home was round the Sarasvatī, and there is no need to interpret that name as referring to the Indus rather than to the eastern Sarasvatī. On the Indus they would have been removed somewhat widely from the Bharatas, their chief rivals, two of whose princes, Devaçravas and Devavāta, are expressly recorded in one hymn to have dwelt on the Sarasvatī, Āpayā, and Dṛishadvatī. The importance of the tribe is reflected in the fact that we possess an unusually large number of the names of its members. The earliest prince recorded seems to have been Durgaha, who was succeeded by Girikshit, neither of these being more than names. The son of Girikshit, Purukutsa, was the contemporary of Sudās, and one hymn tells in obscure phrases of the distress to which his wife was reduced by some misfortune, from which she was relieved by the birth of a son, Trasadasyu. It is not unlikely that the misfortune was the death of Purukutsa in the battle of the ten kings. The new ruler, as his name indicates, was a terror to the Dasyus or aborigines, and seems not to have distinguished himself in war with Āryan enemies. We hear of a descendant Tṛikshi, and, apparently still later in the line, of another descendant Kuruçravaṇa, son of Mitrātithi and father of Upamaçravas, whose death is deplored in a hymn of the tenth book. The name is of importance and significance, for it suggests that already in the later Rigvedic period the Pūrus had become closely united with their former rivals, the Bharatas, both tribes being merged in the Kurus, whose name, famous in the later Saṃhitās and the Brāhmaṇas as the chief bearers of the culture of the Vedic period, is not directly mentioned in the Rigveda, though it was clearly not unknown. Other princes of the Pūru line were Tryaruṇa, and Trivṛishan or Tridhātu; and later evidence enables us with fair certainty to connect with the Pūrus the princely name Ikshvāku, which occurs but once in a doubtful context in the Rigveda.