"Some of the earliest memories history in the modern sense, but as hymns-layered, symbolic and poetic. To approach them is to enter a world where rivers and rituals, clans and cosmos, politics and prayer are inseparable.

Among these ancient memories stands the Dasarajna-the Battle of the Ten Kings, preserved in the Seventh Mandala of the Rigveda. Rooted in the Rigvedic narrative, this book moves beyond the verses of Mandala VII into a reimagined yet contextually grounded world: its rivers and landscapes, tribal formations, shifting alliances, conflicts and aspirations, and the philosophical stirrings emerging across the river valleys of the north-western subcontinent, remembered in the Rigveda as Saptasindhu.

This book does not claim to resolve the enduring debates surrounding chronology, ethnicity or historicity. Nor does it seek to reduce the Rigveda to a historical document in the modern sense. Instead, it offers an invitation-to enter a formative moment of our civilisation, and to experience its people, landscapes, conflicts and ideas through a blend of textual fidelity and imaginative engagement.