Long before the Kurukshetra war immortalized in the Mahabharata, the plains of ancient India witnessed a conflict so massive that scholars have described it as a "World War" of the pre-Vedic era. Known as the Dasharajna War (the War of Ten Kings), this event is recorded in the oldest layers of the Rigveda (Mandala 7) and marks a turning point in the formation of what we now know as Bharatvarsha—the land of India.
The Battle Lines: King Sudas vs. The Great Coalition
The war took place approximately 1400 years before the Common Era, though some traditional chronologies place it even earlier.
At the center stood King Sudas, a powerful ruler of the Bharata (Puru) tribe, commanding the fertile heartlands of what is now Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan. Arrayed against him was an unprecedented coalition of ten kings and their tribes, orchestrated by the sage Vishwamitra.
Once Sudas’s own guru, Vishwamitra had been replaced by the rival sage...