The Battle of the Ten Kings (Sanskrit: दाशराज्ञ युद्ध, IAST: Dāśarājñá yuddhá) first alluded to in the 7th Mandala of the Rigveda (RV), took place between a king of the Bharatas and a confederation of tribes. It resulted in a decisive victory for the Bharatas and subsequent formation of the Kuru polity. It is possible that the Battle of the Ten Kings, mentioned in the Rigveda, may have "formed the 'nucleus' of story" of the Kurukshetra War, though it was greatly expanded and modified in the Mahabharata's account. The term 'Mahabharata' itself implies a reference to this war through the prefix Maha- before Bharata i. e. – Great Bharatas or Victory to the Bharatas.^[3]

In Book 3, the Bharatas are noted to have crossed Beas and Sutlej, in their progress towards Kurukshetra where they came across a nascent (and temporary) inter-tribal alliance.^[2] This led to the battle, which is described in the 18th hymn (verses 5-21) of Book 7; the exact motivations are doubtful — Michael Witzel argues that it might have been a product of intra-tribal resentment or intrigues of an ousted family priest^{[lower-alpha 1]} while Ranbir Chakravarti argues that the battle was probably fought for controlling the rivers, which were a lifeline for irrigation.^[2][5][6][4] The hymns also makes mention of the tribes seeking to steal cows from the Bharatas.^[4]

Hanns-Peter Schmidt, whom Witzel deems to have produced the most "detailed, and ingenious reinterpretation" of the hymns, locates a unique poetic moment across the RV corpus, in their extraordinarily abundant usage of sarcastic allusions, similes and puns to mock the tribal alliance.^[2][6][7] Some of those allusions seem to be heavily context-specific and (still) remain unrecognized; there exist considerable disputes about interpretations of particular words, in light of the employed figures of speech and other poetic devices.^[6][4]

Numerous translators since the 1800s including K. F. Geldner have considered the battle as a historical event, based on the narration-characteristics of the verses.^[6] Witzel dates the battle between approximately 1450 and 1300 BCE; he deems the concerned hymns to be late interpolations.^[11] Stephanie W. Jamison warns against using it as a major source to reconstruct history since the description of the battle is "anything but clear."^[4][8]

Both Witzel and Jamison find the very next hymn (7.19, verse 3) to show a striking shift of allegiance with Indra helping Sudas as well the Purus, who won land.^[2][4]

Stephanie W. Jamison notes it to be the most famous historical conflict in RV—in that, it secured the dominance of Bharatas over Vedic tribes—as does Witzel.^[4][7]

The territory would eventually become the first South-Asian "state" under the Kuru tribe in post-RV span and serve as the heart-land of Brahminical culture.^[2][10] The Purus went on to survive as a marginal power in Punjab; Witzel and some other scholars believe Porus (c. early 300 BC) to be a king from the same tribe.^[2][10]

Witzel notes this battle to be the probable archetype/prototype of the Kurukshetra War, narrated in the Mahabharata.^[12] John Brockington takes a similar approach.^[13] S. S. N. Murthy goes to the extent of proposing the battle as the very "nucleus" of the Kurukshetra War; Walter Ruben adopts a similar stance.^[3][14] However, Witzel maintains the nucleus text of the Mahabharata to be in description of some event in the Late Vedic spans; it was since reshaped (and expanded) over centuries of transmission and recreation to (probably) reflect the Battle of the Ten Kings.^[2] Alf Hiltebeitel rejects Witzel's and Brockington's arguments as "baffling fancy" and notes a complete lack of means to connect the battle with the "fratricidal struggle" of the Mahabharata.^[15][13]

• Kurukshetra War
• Mahabharata
• Historicity of the Mahabharata