A History of Indian Literature v1.c9.s2.3

v1.c9.s2.3

*Mahābhārata*¹ means "the great narrative of the battle of the Bhāratas." The *Bharatas* are already mentioned in the Ṛgveda as a warlike tribe, and in the Brāhmaṇas we encounter Bharata, the son of Duḥṣanta and Śakuntalā, who is regarded as the ancestor of the royal race of the Bhāratas. The home of these Bharatas or Bhāratas was in the country of the Upper Ganges and the Jumnā. Among the descendants of Bharata, a ruler named *Kuru* was specially prominent, and his descendants, the *Kauravas* (Kuruides), were so long the ruling race of the Bhāratas, that the name Kuru or Kaurava in the course of time assumed the character of a name for the tribe of the Bharatas, and their land is that *Kurukṣetra* or "Kuru-land" with which we are already acquainted from the Yajurveda and the Brāhmaṇas.² A family feud in the royal house of the Kauravas leads to a bloody battle, a truly internecine struggle in which the ancient race of the Kurus, and with it the family of the Bhāratas, is almost entirely ruined. The history of this bloody battle, which we shall probably have to regard as an historical event, though we hear of it only in the Mahābhārata, was told in songs, and some great poet whose name has been lost, combined these songs into an heroic poem of the great battle in the field of the Kurus. Thus, as in the Iliad and in the Nibelungen-song, the tragedy of a terrible war of annihilation forms the actual subject of the heroic poem. This old heroic poem forms the *nucleus* of the Mahābhārata.