Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/187

 interest as being in later times the scene of the conflict, described in the Mahābhārata, between the Panchālas and Matsyas on the one hand, and the Kurus, including the ancient Bharatas, on the other. In the famous law-book of Manu the land of the Kurus is still regarded with veneration as the special home of Brahmanism, and as such is designated Brahmāvarta. Together with the country of the Panchālas, and that of their neighbours to the south of the Jumna, the Matsyas (with Mathurā, now Muttra, as their capital) and the Çūrasenas, it is spoken of as the land of Brahman sages, where the bravest warriors and the most pious priests live, and the customs and usages of which are authoritative.

Here the adherents of the Yajurveda split up into several schools, which gradually spread over other parts of India, the Kaṭhas, with their subdivision the Kapishṭhalas, being in the time of the Greeks located in the Panjāb, and later in Kashmir also. The Kaṭhas are now to be found in Kashmir only, while the Kapishṭhalas have entirely disappeared. The Maitrāyaṇīyas, originally called Kālāpas, appear at one time to have occupied the region around the lower course of the Narmadā for a distance of some two hundred miles from the sea, extending to the south of its mouth more than a hundred miles, as far as Nāsik, and northwards beyond the modern city of Baroda. There are now only a few remnants of this school to the north of the Narmadā in Gujarat, chiefly at Ahmedabad, and farther west at Morvi. Before the beginning of our era these two ancient schools must have been very widely diffused in India. For the grammarian Patanjali speaks of the Kaṭhas and Kālāpas as the universally known schools of the Yajurveda, whose doctrines were proclaimed in every village. From the Rāmāyaṇa,