Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/136

98 in the country near the modern Delhi—the kingdom of the Kurus.

These colonists were no others than the Bharatas renowned in the wars of Sudas, but their kings belonged to the house of Kuru, and hence the tribe went by both names, Bharatas and Kurus. From what part of the Panjab the Kurus came, is a question still involved in obscurity. In the Aitareya Brahmana it is stated that the Uttara Kurus and the Uttara Madras lived beyond the Himalaya, perhaps in Kashmir, but in the epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the land of the Uttara Kurus became a mythical country, although it is identified with the Ottorakorrha of Ptolemy and placed somewhere east of the modern Kashgar; but we would place the Uttara Kuru alluded to in the Aitareya Brahmana somewhere north of the Sub-Himalayan range, i.e. in Kashmir. We assume that the colony of the Kurus on the Ganges rose to prowess and fame about 1400 B.C..

When the Hindus had once begun to settle on the fertile banks of the Jumna and the Ganges, other colonists descended these streams and soon occupied the whole of the Doab, the tract of country between the two rivers. While we find the Kurus or Bharatas occupying the country near the modern Delhi, another adventurous tribe, the Panchalas, seized the tract of country near the modern Kanouj. The original seat of the Panchalas is still less known than that of the Kurus, and it has been supposed that they also came from the northern hills, like the Kurus.