Madra Culture
In the epic, the Madra culture is described to be different from the Vedic culture, prevailed in kingdoms of the Gangetic plain like the Kurus and Panchalas. Brahmins had less influence there. Women enjoyed more freedom. They ate cakes of barley mixed with meat, including beef, which was taboo in Kuru and Panchala. Vedic religious rites were less practiced, and castism based on the four castes (Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Shudra) was less rigid. Hence the Kuru, Panchalas considered them to be degraded Kshatriyas.
Bahlika people were considered as "outsiders" of the Vedic culture, as being a foreign tribe of Bharatvarsha. However, one must not consider the Bahlikas as similar to Bahlikas in present Punjab region. The name Bahlika is also used to denote a kingdom different from Madra, Sindhu, Keyeya, Gandhara or Kamboja. The Kuru king Santanu, a forefather of Kauravas and Pandavas, had a brother who ruled the Bahlika Kingdom.
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“The local is a shabby thing. There’s nothing worse than bringing us back down to our own little corner, our own territory, the radiant promiscuity of the face to face. A culture which has taken the risk of the universal, must perish by the universal.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)