Where is Kurukshetra?

Kurukshetra means the field of the Kurus, and it was a real region before it was a battlefield. Vedic literature knows it as a sacred plain between the rivers Saraswati and Drishadvati, a place where sacrifices were performed and where the Kuru clan held power. The Mahabharata calls it dharmakshetra, the field of dharma, in the first line of the Bhagavad Gita.

It lies in the modern district of Kurukshetra in Haryana, roughly 160 kilometres north of Delhi. The epic associated sites cluster within a few kilometres of each other: Brahma Sarovar and Sannihit Sarovar, the large tanks where pilgrims bathe at a solar eclipse; Jyotisar, with its old banyan tree, held to be where Krishna spoke the Gita to Arjuna; Bhishma Kund at Narkatari, where Arjuna is said to have drawn water for the dying Bhishma; and Thanesar, the ancient Sthanvishvara, which was a capital under Harsha in the seventh century.

The epic also calls the region Samantapanchaka, and explains the name with an older story: Parashurama, after destroying the kshatriyas twenty-one times, filled five pools there with their blood. That makes the plain a place of slaughter long before the eighteen days, which is exactly the point the epic is making when it chooses the site.

Archaeologically the area has Painted Grey Ware settlements of the early first millennium BCE, consistent with a late Vedic Kuru presence. Nothing excavated there proves or disproves a battle.

The plain is still treated as sacred ground. Pilgrims come for the eclipse bathing at Brahma Sarovar, and a marked circuit of sites around the district ties each stop to an episode of the epic. The museums and the university at Kurukshetra hold the collections from the local excavations.