Puru (Vedic tribe)

For the historical king, see Porus.

The Pūrus are a tribe, or a confederation of tribes, mentioned many times in the Rigveda. RV 7.96.2 locates them at the banks of the Sarasvati River. There were several factions of Purus, one being the Bharatas. Purus rallied many other tribes against King Sudas of the Bharata, but were defeated in the Battle of the Ten Kings (RV 7.18, etc,) around 3000 BC .

India's famous name Bharat or Bharat-Varsh is actually named after a descendant of the Chandravanshi Puru dynasty King Bharat. Bharat-Varsh means 'Kingdom of Bharat'.

Kuru was born after 23 generations of Puru's dynasty, and after 14 generations of Kuru, Kauravas and Pandavas were born. These were the same renowned Kaurav and Pandavs who fought the epic battle of Mahabharata. The dynasty of king Yadu - Andhak, Vrasni and Bhoj, under the leadership of Shree Krishna, helped the Pandavas win the battle. According to Puranic tradition, the war occured 95 generations after Manu Vaivasvata.

The King Porus of Alexander's time seem to reflect the old tribal name. The modern Punjabi Puri clan traces its lineage to the Puru tribe.

The Puranas state that there are 1,050 years between Parikshit of the Kurus and the last Kuru king at the time of Mahapadma Nanda. King Porus' son Malayketu was the last king of this Vedic tribe. Within five years or so of Alexander's withdrawal the Rigvedic Puru tribe finally disappeared from history. Chandragupta Maurya took the whole of the Panjab with Taxila.

There were two main Vedic cultures in ancient India. The first was a northern kingdom centered on the Sarasvati-Drishadvati river region dominated by the Purus and the Ikshvakus that produced the existent Veda texts that we have. The second was a southern culture along the coast of the Arabian Sea and into the Vindhya Mountains, dominated by the Turvashas and Yadus and extending into groups yet further south. These northern and southern groups vied for supremacy and influenced each other in various ways as the Vedas and Puranas indicate. The northern or Bharata culture ultimately prevailed, making India the land of Bharata or Bharatavarsha and its main ancient literary record the Vedas, though militarily the Yadus remained strong throughout history.

Rigvedic Puru tribe lineage

Rigvedic Chandravanshi Puru Dynasty Tree. From Yayati to Kauravas and Pandavas.

According to Puranic legend, below is the Chandravanshi lineage:
Brahma -> Atri -> Chandra -> Budha (married to Manu's daughter Ila) -> Pururava -> Ayu -> Nahusha -> Yayati -> Puru and Yadu

Puru started the Puruvansh and Yadu started the Yaduvansh.

King Yayati's elder son Yadu had officially lost the title to govern by his father's command since he had refused to exchange his youth with his father. Thereby, he could not have carried on the same dynasty, called Somvanshi. Consequently, the generations of King Puru, Paurav or Puruvanshi were the only ones to be known as Somvanshi.

Yayati divided up his kingdom into five quarters (VP IV.10.1708). To Turvasha he gave the southeast (Bay of Bengal); to Druhya the west Gandhara; to Yadu the south (By Arabian sea); to Anu the north Punjab; and to Puru the center (Sarasvati region) as the supreme king of Earth.

The Rig Veda notes an earlier period of Turvasha-Yadu predominance, which the Purus broke in order to become the dominant people in the region.

One scholar Buddha Prakash, Professor of History and of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology, Director of the Institute of Indic Studies (1964); in his book Political and Social Movement in Ancient Punjab states:

The Purus settled between the Asikni and the Parusni, whence they launched their onslaught on the Bharatas, and after the initial rebuff in the dasarajna war, soon recouped and resumed theit march on the Yamuna and tha Sarasvati and subsequently merged with the Bharatas, Some of their off-shoots lingered on in the Punjab and one of their scions played a notable part in the events of the time of Alexander's invasion. They probably survived in the Punjab under the name of Puri, which is a sub-caste of the Khatris. ,

— Political and Social Movement in Ancient Punjab, By Buddha Prakash, pp 77

Another scholar Kosambi, Damodar Dharmanand (1966) in his book Ancient India: A History of its Culture and Civilisation states:

The cause of the Ten-Kings battle was that the Ten tried to divert the river Parushni. This is a stretch of the modern Ravi which, however, changed its course several times. Diversion of the waters of the Indus system is still a cause for angry recriminations between India and Pakistan. The 'greasy-voiced' Purus, though enemies of Sudas, were not only Aryans but closely related to the Bharatas. Later tradition even makes the Bharatas a branch of the Purus. The same clan priests in the Rigveda impartially call down curses and blessings upon the Purus in diverse hymns, which shows that the differences between them and the Bharatas were not permanent. The quarrel was of another sort than that between Aryan and non-Aryan. The Purus remained in the Harappa region and expanded their rule over the Panjab in later times. It was they who put up the strongest fight against Alexander in 327 B.C. The modern Panjabi surname Puri may possibly originate with the Puru tribe.,

— Ancient India: A History of its Culture and Civilisation, By Kosambi, Damodar Dharmanand, pp 81-83

D. D. Kosambi (2004) in his book An introduction to the study of India history writes:

The Puru tribe seems to have been as Aryan as any. It survived in the Mahabharata story, and to Alexander's time (perhaps in the modern Punjabi surname Puri)

— Ancient India: A History of its Culture and Civilisation, By Kosambi, Damodar Dharmanand, pp 95

Naval Viyogi (1996) in his book The founders of Indus valley civilization and their later history writes:

It was they who put up the strongest fight against Alexander in 327 B.C. The modern Punjabi surname Puri may possibly originate with the Puru tribe.

— , The founders of Indus valley civilization and their later history, By Naval Viyogi, pp 155

References

• Kosambi, Damodar Dharmanand (1966). Ancient India: A History of its Culture and Civilisation. Delhi: Pantheon Books. pp. 81–83.
• Prakash, Buddha (1964). Political and Social Movements in Ancient Panjab. Delhi, Patna, Varanasi: M. Banarsidass. p. 77.