Kurukshetra: The Battlefield of the Mahabharata
Kurukshetra in Haryana is the field where the Mahabharata’s great war was fought and the Bhagavad Gita was spoken.
Kurukshetra is a city in Haryana, in northern India. Its name means the field of the Kurus, and in the Mahabharata it is the plain where the great war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas was fought.
What the story says
Two families of cousins, raised together in Hastinapur, fell out over the throne. Their quarrel grew until the armies of nearly every kingdom in ancient India gathered on the field of Kurukshetra.
The war lasted 18 days. On the first morning, Arjuna looked across the field, saw his own teachers and relatives in the enemy ranks, and refused to fight.
What Krishna told him then, about duty, courage, and doing what is right without clinging to results, is the Bhagavad Gita, the most famous conversation in all of Indian literature.
Watch the story
Hear this place come alive in the Mythical Masala episode S4E4: Mahabharata War Begins: The First Three Days at Kurukshetra:
Find it on the map
Here is Kurukshetra today. Zoom out to see where it sits in India, or tap the button to open it in Google Maps.
What we actually know
Kurukshetra is also called Dharmakshetra, the holy place, and the land of the Bhagavad Gita. According to the Puranas, the region is named after King Kuru, the ancestor of both the Pandavas and the Kauravas.
Within the region, the village of Jyotisar is traditionally held to be the exact spot where Krishna spoke the Gita to Arjuna. Historians treat the war itself as epic tradition rather than a dated historical event, so this page keeps the story and the history in separate boxes, as with every place in this series.