Kurukshetra simply means “the field of the Kurus.” The Kurus or Kauravas decended from Kuru, a king of the Lunar Dynasty. About eighty-five miles north-northeast of Delhi, Kurukshetra has been an important pilgrimage site (tirtha) for at least twenty centuries. References in the Mahabharata to a firealtar (vedi) of Brahma would indicate that this area was considered the very heart of the Aryan or Bharata homeland. These plains also saw great historic battles, including those with the Mughals in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.