Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s11.547

v1.c3.s11.547

It is a probable conjecture of Oldenberg’s²⁹ that the Kuru people, as known later, included some of the tribes referred to by other names in the Rigveda. Kuruśravaṇa, shown by his name to be connected with the Kurus, is in the Rigveda called Trāsadasyava, ‘descendant of Trasadasyu,’ who is well known as a king of the Pūrus. Moreover, it is likely that the Tṛtsu-Bharatas, who appear in the Rigveda as enemies of the Pūrus, later coalesced with them to form the Kuru people.³⁰ Since the Bharatas appear so prominently in the Brāhmaṇa texts as a great people of the past, while the later literature ignores them in its list of nations, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they became merged in some other tribe. Moreover, there is evidence that the Bharatas occupied the territory in which the Kurus were later found. Two of them are spoken of in a hymn of the Rigveda³¹ as having kindled fire on the Dṛṣadvatī, the Āpayā, and the Sarasvatī—that is to say, in the sacred places of the later Kurukṣetra. Similarly, the goddess Bhāratī (‘belonging to the Bharatas’) is constantly mentioned in the Āprī (‘propitiatory’) hymns together with Sarasvatī.³² Again, according to the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, one Bharata king was victorious over the Kāśis,³³ and another made offerings to Gaṅgā and Yamunā,³⁴ while raids of the Bharatas against the Satvants are mentioned in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa.³⁵ Nor is it without importance that the Bharatas appear as a variant for the Kuru-Pañcālas in a passage of the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā,³⁶ and that in the list of the great performers of the horse sacrifice the names of one Kuru and two Bharata princes are given without any mention of the people over which they ruled, while in other cases that information is specifically given.³⁷