Tribes in Ancient India c7.20

c7.20

In the first verse of the Bhagavadgītā, the only book in India which is reverenced by people of all kinds of religious belief, the land of Kurus is called Dharmakṣetra, or the holy land. In other parts of the *Mahābhārata*, too, Kurukṣetra is mentioned as a land which was especially holy. Thus the *Vanaparvan* (Chap. 129, pp. 394-5) tells us that Kurukṣetra was the holy spot of the righteous Kurus. It was here that Nahuṣa's son, Yayāti, performed many religious ceremonies, that divine and royal sages performed the Sārasvata Yajña, and that Prajāpati performed his Yajña. In the Brāhmaṇa texts also, Kurukṣetra is regarded as a particularly sacred country, for within its boundaries flowed the sacred streams Dṛṣadvatī and Sarasvatī, as well as the Āpayā.¹