Khandava Forest was an ancient forest

Forest

A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...

 mentioned in the epic Mahabharata

Mahabharata

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....

. It lay to the west of Yamuna

Yamuna

The Yamuna is the largest tributary river of the Ganges in northern India...

 river, in modern day Delhi

Delhi

Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...

 territory. Pandavas cleared this forest to construct their capital city called Indraprastha. This forest was earlier inhabited by Naga

Naga Kingdom

Naga Kingdom refers to the territory of a tribe called Nagas who were a group of hardy and warlike people spread throughout India during far ancient history. They were also considered as one of the supernatural races like Kinnaras and Yakshas...

 tribes led by a king named Takshaka

Takshaka

Takshaka was one of the Nagas mentioned in the epic Mahābhārata. He lived in a city named Takshasila, which was the new territory of Takshaka after his race was banished by Pandavas lead by Arjuna from the Khandava Forest and Kurukshetra, where they built their new kingdom.- The king of...

. Arjuna

Arjuna

Arjuna in Indian mythology is the greatest warrior on earth and is one of the Pandavas, the heroes of the Hindu epic Mahābhārata. Arjuna, whose name means 'bright', 'shining', 'white' or 'silver' Arjuna (Devanagari: अर्जुन, Thai: อรชุน, Orachun, Tamil: Arjunan, Indonesian and Javanese: Harjuna,...

 and Vasudeva Krishna cleared this forest by setting up a fire. The inhabitants of this forest were displaced. This was the root cause of the enmity of the Naga Takshaka towards the Kuru

Kuru Kingdom

Kuru was the name of an ancient kingdom in Vedic India, and later a republican Mahajanapada state. The kingdom was located in the area of modern Haryana, Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh in India. They formed the first political center of the of the Vedic India, with its capital at Hastinapur. It...

 kings who ruled from Indraprastha and Hastinapura

Hastinapura

Hastinapur is a town and a nagar panchayat in Meerut district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.-History:Hastinapur was the capital of the kingdom of the Kauravas, belonging to the Kuru dynasty of kings. The throne of this city was the prize over which the Kurukshetra War of the epic...

.

The Mahabharata states that Indra

Indra

' or is the King of the demi-gods or Devas and Lord of Heaven or Svargaloka in Hindu mythology. He is also the God of War, Storms, and Rainfall.Indra is one of the chief deities in the Rigveda...

 was the protecting deity (deva

Deva (Hinduism)

' is the Sanskrit word for god or deity, its related feminine term is devi. In modern Hinduism, it can be loosely interpreted as any benevolent supernatural beings. The devs in Hinduism, also called Suras, are often juxtaposed to the Asuras, their half brothers. Devs are also the maintainers of...

) of Khandava forest, which is why the region was known as Indraprastha. When the forest was being burned, Indra attacked Arjun with his bolt (vajra), injuring him.

A little known story is that at the time of the great war when Arjun and Karan come face to face with each other, the Naga King Aswasena desirous of avenging the death of his mother from Arjuna, in that battle quietly slips into the quiver of Karna in the guise of an Arrow. It is this Arrow that had almost killed Arjuna had it not been for Krishna who by pressing his feet on the chariot sank it one cubit deep into the earth hence the arrow missing its aim.