Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s11.362

v1.c3.s11.362

It is significant that while the Kāśis, Kosalas, and Videhas were united, any relations which the Kuru-Pañcala peoples may have had with them were hostile. It is a fair conclusion that between these two great groups of peoples there did exist some political conflict as well as probably a difference of culture in some degree. The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa,¹¹ in the story of the advance of Āryan civilization over Kosala and Videha, preserves a clear tradition of this time, and a piece of evidence that in the Kuru-Pañcāla country lay the real centre of the Brāhmaṇa culture (see also Kuru-Pañcāla). That the Kosala-Videhas were originally settlers of older date than the Kuru-Pañcālas is reasonably obvious from their geographical position, but the true Brāhmaṇa culture appears to have been brought to them from the Kuru-Pañcāla country. It is very probable that the East was less Āryan than the West, and that it was less completely reduced under Brahmin spiritual supremacy, as the movement of Buddhism was Eastern, and the Buddhist texts¹² reveal a position in which the Kṣatriyas rank above Brāhmaṇas. With this agrees the fact that the later Vedic texts¹³ display towards the people of Magadha a marked antipathy, which may be reasonably explained by that people’s lack of orthodoxy, and which may perhaps be traced as far back as the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā.¹⁴ It is, of course, possible that the Kosala-Videhas and Kāsīs actually were merely offshoots of the tribes later known as the Kuru-Pañcālas, and that they by reason of distance and less complete subjugation of the aborigines lost their Brahminical culture. This hypothesis, however, appears less likely, though it might be supported by a literal interpretation of the legend of the Aryan migration in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa.¹⁵