Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c9.s3.187

c9.s3.187

It may be asserted that the Pāṇḍus are a body of strangers unknown to the Vedic texts, and that, therefore, the story of their feuds with the Kurus must be post-Vedic. But such a conclusion would be wrong because, firstly, an *argumentum ex silentio* is seldom conclusive. and, secondly, the Pāṇḍus are, according to Indian tradition, not a body of strangers but in fact scions of the Kurus. Hopkins indeed says that they were an unknown folk connected with the wild tribes located north of the Ganges.⁵ But Patañjali⁶ calls Bhīma, Nakula and Sahadeva Kurus.⁷ Hindu tradition is unanimous in representing the Pāṇḍavas as an offshoot of the Kuru race just as the Kurus themselves were an offshoot of the Bharatas.