Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/168

 to be the old name of the Panchālas, who inhabited the country to the north of the modern Delhi.

The Atharva-veda mentions as remote tribes not only the Gandhāris and Mūjavats, but also the Magadhas (Behar) and the Angas (Bengal). We may therefore conclude that by the time that Veda was completed the Aryans had already spread to the Delta of the Ganges.

The Panchālas are not mentioned in either Veda, and the name of the Kurus is only found there indirectly in two or three compounds or derivatives. They are first referred to in the White Yajurveda; yet they are the two most prominent peoples of the Brāhmaṇa period. On the other hand, the names of a number of the most important of the Rigvedic tribes, such as the Pūrus, Turvaças, Yadus, Tṛitsus, and others, have entirely or practically disappeared from the Brāhmaṇas. Even the Bharatas, though held in high regard by the composers of the Brāhmaṇas, and set up by them as models of correct conduct, appear to have ceased to represent a political entity, for there are no longer any references to them in that sense, as to other peoples of the day. Their name, moreover, does not occur in the tribal enumerations of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa and of Manu, while it is practically altogether ignored in the Buddhistic literature.

Such being the case, it is natural to suppose that the numerous Vedic tribes, under the altered conditions of life in vast plains, coalesced into nations with new names. Thus the Bharatas, to whom belonged the royal race of the Kurus in the epic, and from whom the very name of the Mahābhārata, which describes the great war of the Kurus, is derived, were doubtless absorbed in what came to be called the Kuru nation. In the genealogical