Cosmography and Geography in Early Indian Literature c5.s4.72

c5.s4.72

We have referred above to the grammatical convention according to which tribal names in the plural would indicate both the people and the land inhabited by them. Thus the land of the Kuru people is mentioned by the same name in the plural in the *Chāndogya Upaniṣad*103 in the passage *maṭaci-hateṣu Kuruṣu* ‘the Kuru country having been devastated by locusts’. The name Vidarbha occurs in later Vedic literature primarily as the name of a territory,¹⁰⁴ although there is no doubt that it was named after a people called Vidarbha. The *Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra* likewise applies the name Śaphāla to the kingdom of Ṛtuparṇa.¹⁰⁵