Pani

A group of northern Indian people mentioned in a hymn in the Rg Veda (10.108),
the oldest Hindu religious text. This reference speaks poorly of this group, since
it portrays them as cattle thieves. The
hymn is spoken as a dialogue between
the Panis and Sarama, the divine dog
who is the servant of the god Indra and
who has been sent by Indra to recover
the cattle the Panis have stolen. This
hymn may refer to an actual incident
and an actual group of people, but it is
impossible to say. Certainly the Vedas
were not written as a strict historical
record, and it is perilous to read them as
such. At the same time, as the earliest
textual records they preserve references
to the culture and to contemporary
times that can be found nowhere else.