DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

5.5] UTOPIAN KURUS ; IKSVAKUS 125
woman, author also of the famous and touching gambler’s hymn RV.
10.34. He complains that his ribs clashed together (from hunger)
like co-wives, reminding Upmasravas, “Give heed, O son (of
Kurusravana) Upamasravas, grandson of Mitratithi; I am thy father’s
bard!”.
The Kurus seem to have settled in the Delhi-Meerut region on the
Jumna, and to have been allied with the Pancalas (perhaps ‘five-eels’)-
The Kuru territory with a petty king, survived to the days of the
Buddha. The trading center (nigtima) Kammasa-damnm of the Kurus
in the Kuru country was visited by the Buddha himself according to
DN. 15, DN. 22. It occurs again in MN. 10, MN. 106. In MN. 82,
Buddha’s disciple Rattha-pala (Rastra-pala), son of the leading
head-man of local families, lived and was converted by the Buddha at
Thulla-kotthita (in the Kuru country) which contained a Kuru royal
park named Migacira.
A northern branch of the Kurus, the Uttara-kurus, retained a
legendary reputation, supposedly living near Mount Meru in a paradise
on earth, where all men were born kind, lived a pure life ; where no
land was brought under the plough, men lived on wild rice from untilled
soil, and did not ride chariots. The chariot had by then become the
prerogative of a wealthy and armed ruling class, hence a symbol of class
division. The same Uttara-kurus are mentioned in AB. 8.14, as having
a special consecration for their kings, in their land beyond the
Himalaya; in AB. 8.23, their Utopia appears as a place of the gods
unconquerable by any mortal. The distance from legend or myth to
reality, never very great in India, was small at the period and for the
sources. When compared with other paradisaic legends the grain of
fact seems to be the tradition of a free, happy, peaceful, tribal life
with neither agriculture nor aggression.
5.3. Among names common to several of our sources, that of
Iksvaku (an obscure chief in RV. 10.60.4) occurs as founder of the
Kosalan line of kings. The derivation is from iksu = sugar-cane (first
mention, AV. 1.34.5;. also a kind of gourd), obviously totemic, presumably
pre-Aryan. The word Sarkara for sugar which travelled all over the
world from India, has not a Sanskrit appearance. Rama is one of
Iksvaku’s descendants, though the hero’s father Dagaratha has a name