Matsya kingdom

The Matsya kingdom was an ancient Indo-Aryan state in what is now north-eastern Rajasthan, India, attested from the Iron Age and mentioned in the Rigveda. Its territory lay west of the Sarasvati river and south of the Chambal hills, with the Kuru kingdom to the north and Surasena to the east. The capital was Viratnagar, identified with modern Bairat in Jaipur district, a walled city with a long archaeological sequence. Matsya appears in the Mahabharata as the kingdom where the Pandavas spent their year of exile at the court of King Virata. In the sixth century BCE it was one of the sixteen mahajanapadas, the great states of northern India, though it was later absorbed by its larger neighbours. The Matsya are first mentioned in the Rigveda, where they appear among the opponents of King Sudas, and the fish is their namesake. Its coins and pottery are among the finds that document early urban life in Rajasthan.