Uttara Kuru was an ancient kingdom located north of the India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. The name Uttara Kuru means the Northern Kurus. The Kurus were an Indo-Aryan

Indo-Aryans

Indo-Aryan is an ethno-linguistic term referring to the wide collection of peoples united as native speakers of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages...

 tribe living near the Himalayas

Himalayas

The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...

 during the Vedic civilization of India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. The Uttara Kuru were therefore a population to the north of the Kurus, or north of the Himalayas.

Some historians identify this kingdom as Kyrgistan, a Central Asian Republic. This identification is based on the Mahabharata epic which describes a Kuru warrior Bhishma

Bhishma

Bhishma or Bheeshma or Devavrata or 'Bhishma Pitamah' was the eighth son of Kuru King Shantanu who was blessed with wish-long life and had sworn to serve the ruling Kuru king. He was one of the most prominent characters of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata. He was the grand uncle of both the...

 abducting three brides from the Kasi kingdom for making them wives of his half-brother Vichitravirya

Vichitravirya

Vichitravirya in the Hindu epic Mahabharata is the younger son of queen Satyavatī and king Śaṅtanu. His elder brother, Chitrāngada, had initially succeeded their father to the throne of Hastinapura, but when he died childless, Vichitravirya succeeded him.Vichitravirya was still a child when he was...

. This same custom of abduction of brides by bridgegroom or his allies for marrying them, still prevails in Kyrgistan. At some point during the reign of Pururavas

Pururavas

Pururavas was the first king of the Aila dynasty or the Somavamsha. According to the Vedas, he is a mythological entity associated with the Surya and Usha , and is believed to resided in the middle region of the cosmos. The Rig Veda states that he was a son of Ila and was a pious king...

-Aila

Aila

-Places:*A region occupied by the Legio X Fretensis*Aila, Estonia, village in Estonia*A special kind of alcoholic beverage made by the Newa community of Nepal.-Other:*Ailas, a dynasty of kings of ancient India...

 (the first king mentioned in the line of lunar dynasty of Indian kings) Uttara Kuru and the Kurus of India could have belonged to the same Kuru Empire. 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,...

 collected tribute from Uttara Kuru during his northern military campaign for Yudhisthira

Yudhisthira

In the great Hindu epic Mahabharata, Yudhisthira , the eldest son of King Pandu and Queen Kunti, was king of Indraprastha and later of Hastinapura. He was the leader of the Pandava side in the Kurukshetra War...

's Rajasuya

Rajasuya

Rajasuya was a sacrifice, described in detail in the Mahabharata, performed by the ancient kings of India who considered themselves powerful enough to be an emperor...

sacrifice. The epics also mention that they followed a republican constitution with no monarchy.