Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s11.565

v1.c3.s11.565

⁴⁴ *Cf.* Grierson, *Languages of India*, 52 *et seq.*; *Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society*, 1908, 837 *et seq.* On the other hand, it is probably an error to assume that the Bharatas were originally situated far west of Kurukṣetra, and that the main action of the Rigveda was confined to the Panjab. When Vasiṣṭha celebrates the crossing of the Vipāś and Śutudrī (Rv. iii. 33), he probably came from the east, as Pischel, *Vedische Studien*, 2, 218, points out, and not from the west. Adopting the ordinary view, Hopkins, *India, Old and New*, 52, finds it necessary to suggest that Yamunā is only another name in the Rv. for the Paruṣṇī. But the necessity for this suggestion, which is not in itself plausible, disappears when it is realized that the Bharatas held a territory roughly corresponding to Kurukṣetra, and bounded on the east by the Yamunā. On the other hand, Hillebrandt, *Vedische Mythologie*, 1, 142, 143, places the Kurus near the Ārjīkīyā in Kaśmīr, which puts them too far north. So also Zimmer, *Altindisches Leben*, 103, and Eggeling, *Sacred Books of the East*, 12, xlii. It seems probable that the Kurus were at a very early period widely scattered to the north of the Himālaya, in Kurukṣetra, and about the Sindhu and Asiknī.