In Rigveda, which was compiled and organised in its final form around 1000 BCE, the word Bharata refers to a group of people of the Kuru clan, who controlled the land we now refer to as Punjab and Haryana, extending from Indus river basin through Yamuna to the western banks of the Ganga. This makes the Bharatas the earliest kings of India, who played a key role in the establishment of Vedic culture in the Gangetic plains. 

A thousand years later, around 100 BCE, in a royal inscription found in Odisha, a Jain king called Kharavela refers to Gangetic regions as Bharatvarsha.