The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.41

v1.c24.41

That the war between the Kurus and Pāṇḍus is historical and that it took place in ancient times cannot be doubted, however much its story has been overloaded with legend, and however late may be the form in which it has been handed down. The legend of the war of the Mahābhārata in India finds its exact parallel in the legend of the Trojan war in Europe. Each became the great central point to which the nations of the Middle Ages referred their history. To have shared ancestrally in the fame of Kurukshetra or of Troy was for nations the patent of nobility and ancient descent. The remotest peoples of Eastern and Southern India and the late invaders of the North-West alike claimed a place in the story of the Mahābhārata, even as the royal houses of Western Europe traced their origin to Trojan heroes. Until the close of the sixteenth century no historian of France or Britain doubted that the kings of these countries were descended from the Trojan Francus or Brutus, both of whom were in reality eponymous heroes like Yadu and his brothers in the Purāṇas. Milton in his *History of England* (1670) repeats the story of Brutus at length and in detail; but a chance phrase—'they who first devis'd to bring us from some noble ancestor'—shows that historians were beginning to recognise the origin of such legends. And so far as the Mahābhārata associates most of the nations of India with the great war it has been 'devis'd' in the same manner and for the same purpose. A nucleus of fact has been encrusted with the legendary accretions of ages.