KURU-KSHETRA, a holy tract and place of Hindu pilgrimage in the Amballa district of the Panjab, embracing the country lying around the town of Thaneswar as a centre. The name derives its origin from Kuru, father of Santanu, great grandfather of the heroes who figure in the Maha bharata. Kuru became an ascetic upon the banks of the holy lake south of Thaneswar. The Imperial Gazetteer says that in popular belief the Kuru-kshetra embraces 360 places of pilgrimage, and extends as far as the town of Jind, 64 miles from Thaneswar. Whatever be the precise extent of the sacred tract, it is certain that the strip of country between the Saraswati (Sarsuti) and the Ghaggar (the Saraswati and Drishadvati of the Sanskrit epics) formed the earliest settlement of the Aryan colonists in India, and the Kuru kshetra and the river Saraswati still attract numer ous worshippers. The towns of Thaneswar and Pihoia are the chief centres of pilgrimage, but minor shrines line the bank of the river for many miles. At Thaneswar, as many as 100,000 persons still assemble on the occasion of an eclipse, and treble that number bathe annually in a tank filled from the Saraswati. The great con flict between the Pandava and the Kaurava is described in the Mahabharata as having been fought out in the surrounding country ; and the Mahabharata keeps alive the memory of all the most famous scenes in the minds of Hindu votaries, who regard the Kuru-kshetra as the Holy Land of their religion.
The great lake of Kuru-kshetra is an oblong sheet of water 3546 feet in length from east to west, and 1900 feet in adth. It is men tioned by Abu Rihan, who re rds, on the author ity of Varaha Mihira, that dun g eclipses of the moon the waters of all other to ks visit the tank at Thaneswar, so that the bather i this tank at the moment of eclipse obtains the ad ional merit of bathing in all the other tanks at the ame time.
The battle of Kuru-kshetra was 'a memorable event in the history of the Lunar r . It was fought about B.C. 1367, between the Pandu and the Kuru of Hastinapura, two branchei\of the race ; and, after a series of single combats threugh a space of eighteen days, the Kuru were com pletely defeated, their leader Duryodhana had been slain, and Yudishthra then retired to Dwaraka with Krishna, his principal adviser. Bunsen estimates B.C. 1606 or 1486 as the first year of the Kaurava, and B.C. 1107 or 987 as the last year as the close of the great war, after the battle ol Kuru-kshetra. They were all blood relations, som( of them nearly allied to each other, and connecter by intermarriages.
The commanders-in-chief whom the Kuru lost were Bhishma, slain on the 10th day, Drona or, the 5th, Karna on the 2d, and Salya on the respective days of their commands. It is this wai of succession which is described in the great Sanskrit poem the Mahabharata. One of tlic last incidents of this battle occurred on the night of the 18th day, when Aswatthaman entered tht Pandava camp, and killed the sons of the Pan dava, whose heads he brought to Duryodhana. A series of single combats had chiefly marked this war ; each chief or warrior had challenged opponents, in the daytime, in the presence of the armies, and the act of Aswatthaman was so con trary to the usage of the war, that Kripa remon strated with Aswatthaman against his doing it, but, along with Kritavarmam, accompanied As watthaman to the gate of the Pandava camp, and held the gate during the midnight butchery. The ultimate fate of Aswatthaman is uncertain, but he seems to have been pursued and killed by Bhima. This battlefield of the Kuru is near Thaneswar, between Klima] and Sirhind, is generally identi fied with the field of Paniput to the north-west of Dehli, and the locality is deemed holy. It was a war to the knife between near kinsmen to gain possession of lands of which the Kuru had long held possession to the exclusion of the Panda.
Yudishthra, Baldeva, and Krishna afterwards retired with the wreck of this ill-fated struggle to Dwaraka, but the two former had soon to lament the death of Krishna, who was slain by one of the aboriginal tribes of Bhils, against whom, from their shattered condition, they were unable to contend. After this event, Yudishthra, with Bal deva and a few followers, entirely withdrew from India, and, emigrating northwards by Sind to the Himalayan mountains, are there abandoned by Hindu traditional history, and arc supposed to have perished in the snows. Herodotus describes the ruinous passion for play amongst the Scythic hordes, and which may have been carried west by Odin into Scandinavia and Germany. Tacitus tells us that the Germans, like the Panda, staked even personal liberty, and were sold as slaves by the winner.
The life of Krishna forms a second memorable part of the history of the Lunar race, as he has been deified throughout Hindu India, and is regarded as an incarnation of Vishnu.—Ted's .Rajasthan, i. p. 50 ; Bunsen, ; Wheeler's Maha bharata, p. 567 ; Hardy's :Eastern Monachism, p. 438; Imp. G'az. v. ; Cunningham, Ancient Geog. of India, p. 334.