The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c6.s3.t3.23

c6.s3.t3.23

This notice by Varâha Mihira carries us back at once to A.D. 500, when the holy tank at Thânesar was in full repute. But the Pauranic legends attribute to it an antiquity long anterior even to the Pândus themselves. On its banks Kuru, the common ancestor of the Kauravas and Pândavas, sat in ascetic abstraction; here Paraṣu-Râma slew the Kshatriyas, and here Pururavas having lost the nymph Urvaśi, at length met his celestial bride at Kurukshetra “sporting with four other nymphs of heaven in a lake beautiful with lotuses.” But the story of the horse-headed Dadhyanch, or Dadhícha, is perhaps even older than the legend of Pururavas, as it is alluded to in the Rig Veda.* “With his bones Indra slew ninety times nine Vritras.” The scholiast explains this by saying that the thunderbolt of Indra was formed of the horse's head with which the Aswins had supplied the headless Dadhyanch, that he might teach his science to them. According to the legend, Dadhyanch during his lifetime had been the terror of the Asuras, who, after his death, multiplied and overspread the whole earth. Then “Indra inquiring what had become of him, and whether nothing of him had been left behind, was told that the horse's head was still in existence, but no one knew where. Search was made for it, and it was found in the lake Saryandrat on the skirts of Kurukshetra.” I infer that this is only another name for the great tank of Kurukshetra, and consequently that the sacred pool is at least as old as the Rig Veda itself. I think it also probable that the *Chakra-tirath*, or spot where Vishnu is said to have taken up his *Chakra*, or discus, to kill Bhishma, may have been the original spot where Indra slew the Vritras, and that the bones, which were afterwards assigned to the Pândus, may have been those of the Vritras of the older legend. In support of this suggestion, I may mention that the *Chakratirath* is close to *Asthipur*, or the "place of bones." In A.D. 634 these bones were shown to the Chinese pilgrim, Hwen Thsang, who records that they were of very large size.* All my inquiries for them were fruitless, but the site of *Asthipur*, or "Bone-town," is still pointed out in the plain to the west of the city, near *Aujas-ghât*.