Ancient Indian chiefdom extant around the fifth century BCE in Mathura, that traced its lineage to an ancestor named Vrishni. The Vrishnis are mentioned in late Vedic textual sources such as Panini’s Ashtadhyayi, the Arthashastra, and the Mahabharata; silver coins bearing marks of Vrishni kings have also been found. The clan worshipped five ancestral or mythical warriors (pancha-vira) which are depicted in art and coinage of the period. The cult of Krishna as the heroic son of Vasudeva, one of the pancha-vira, originated in this tradition before being incorporated into Vedic Brahmanism in the early centuries CE. In general, Vrishni myth and iconography, along with other related non-Vedic theistic cults, supplied much of the material for the development of Vaishnavism.