The five peoples
The phrase pañcajana, the five peoples, recurs in the hymns without ever being defined, and the identification with Anu, Druhyu, Turvaśa, Yadu and Puru comes from later commentary rather than from the Ṛgveda itself. It is nonetheless a useful shorthand for the political world the hymns assume: a set of named, mobile, mutually hostile groups in the Punjab and the northwest, contending over cattle, pasture and river crossings.
All three appear in the Battle of the Ten Kings among the confederates defeated by Sudās, which is much of what is known of their politics.
What can and cannot be said
Attempts to assign each people a fixed territory, or to trace their later migrations — the Druhyus to the northwest and beyond, the Anus to the Punjab rivers — rest on Purāṇic genealogy rather than on the hymns, and on the assumption that these texts preserve reliable memory across a very long interval. That assumption is not shared by all historians and the reconstructions built on it vary widely.
What the names do establish is that the Ṛgvedic world was plural. The collection speaks for particular patrons and against their rivals, and the rivals were as much part of that world as the patrons were.
Further reading
- Bryant, Edwin. The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture. Oxford University Press, 2001
- Doniger, Wendy. The Rig Veda: An Anthology. Penguin, 1981
- Jamison, Stephanie W. The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India. Oxford University Press, 2014
- Trautmann, Thomas R. The Aryan Debate. Oxford University Press, 2005
- Sharma, R. S. India's Ancient Past. Oxford University Press, 2005
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.