Eternal India Encyclopedia

ARCHAEOLOGY

Eternal India encyclopedia

Discovery of Dwaraka Before describing the discovery of Dwaraka, it is necessary to state briefly why it is of great importance. This is because Krishna is said to have founded the city. The very mention of the name of this God-hero brings to one’s memory his teachings in the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna was born to Vasudeva and Devaki who were kept pris- oners in the jail by Kamsa at Mathura (Uttar Pradesh). The child was carried to Gokula for safety and brought up by Yasoda as her own child. Mathura, the place where Krishna is believed to have been born, is presently known as Krishna Janma Bhumi. The exploratory work done here by archaeologists from 1950 to 1980 revealed some traces of proto-historic (PGW) settlements heavily eroded by the frequently changing course of the river Yamuna. To mark the holy site of Krishna’s birth a subterranean temple at the proto-historic habitation level has been built and a cultural centre is established by the Sri Krishna Janmabhumi Trust. In the land known as Vraj especially in the villages around Vrindavana near Mathura Krishna, in exercise of his supreme yogic lila, decided to play and dance the great rasa in the autumnal moon- light which attracted the gopis (cowherdesses) or Vraj. It is an ex- pression of love — a love that binds him to the gopis who symbol- ize the individual souls, Jivatmas : he is the Supreme Soul, par- amatmw, their love is the longing of the individual for the divine. The music flowing from Krishna’s flute is much more than simple melody; it is the call of the Divine which pervades the magic landscape of Vrindavana inviting all creatures to rejoin God in eternal bliss. Even as a lad Krishna revealed his quality of leader- ship by rescuing the residents of Gokula to the rock shelters of Govardana hill. The Mahabharata (Sabha Parva 13.65) clearly states that the Yadavas migrated to Dwaraka from Mathura as they were har- assed by the attacks of Jarasandha who was infuriated by the death of his son-in-law Kamsa at the hands of Krishna. A question often asked by historians and archaeologists is why did Krishna choose to take the Yadavas to a far off place like Dwaraka on the west coast instead of going to the Himalayas or the Vindhya mountains? The answer is simple. Anarta, the ancient name of Gujarat, was one of the provinces of the Yadava Kingdom where his Yadava ancestor Raivata had founded the capital Kusasthali sometime before, to which there is a reference in the Mahabharata itself (Sabha Parva 13,49-52). He did not want the Yadavas to live in misery in the forest or desert. The Rig Veda makes mention of the Yadavas in Anarta, the country named after Anarta, the son of Manu. Thus Krishna pre- ferred a remote but already known ancestral home for resettling the Yadavas. Dwaraka being open to the sea commerce brought wealth to the new settlers. Saurashtra has, throughout history, acted as a refugee colony. For instance, the Harappans migrated in several waves from the Indus estuary when Mohenjo-Daro, Chanhu-Daro and other prosperous towns and cities were de- stroyed by floods in 1900 B.C. In the early historical period Ksha- trapas sought shelter in Saurashtra. The persecuted Parsees migrated from Iran to Gujarat in the 8th century A.D. After the partition of India the Sindhis from Pakistan also came in very large numbers to Saurashtra and North Gujarat.

Krishna is said to have founded a city near Kusasthali which was in ruins and named it Dvaravati or Dwaraka. It was well fortified and made impregnable. Krishna belonged to the Vrishni clan, a branch of the Yadavas. There is copious reference in the Mahabharata , Harivamsa and other texts to the prosperity and impregnable character of Dwaraka city. But its prosperity did not last long. Immediately after Krishna left his mortal frame the city was swallowed by the sea. At Prabhasa, Vasudeva (Krishna) warned Arjuna that Dwaraka would be submerged and asked him to get it vacated. The Mausala Parva of the Mahabharata says that as the city was being vacated by the residents the sea went on encroaching on it. , The historians and archaeologists were greatly concerned about the historicity of the Mahabharata which has been dubbed as a myth. A seminar arrived at the conclusion that there is a core of truth in the epic (Lai and Gupta). The date of the Mahabharata has been discussed by S.B. Roy, Pusalkar and N. Mahadevan after taking into account the archaeological, astronomical and literary evidences. The conclusion was that it should be the latter half of the 15th century B.C. The generally accepted date of the Ma- habharata war is 1424 B.C. The first attempt to determine the antiquity of Bet Dwaraka which is also associated with the Krishna legend was made in the thirties by Hirananda Sastry. He could date it to 2nd century B.C. on ceramic evidence. In 1963 the Deccan College of Poona exca- vated the present Dwaraka town. In their report “Excavations at Dwaraka” (1963) the excava- tors M.S. Mate and Z.D. Ansari observed that “one can definitely say that this is the Dwaraka mentioned in the Mahabharata, the Dwaraka Mahatmya of Skanda Purana and Ghata Jataka (Mate and Ansari 1966). In particular one can say that the Dwaraka described in such a great detail as a sacred tirtha by the Harivamsa probably came into existence after the second submergence in the sea of two earlier Dwarakas because it gives very minute descrip- tions of so many temples and this could have been only by a writer who had probably visited Dwaraka and seen the temples”. This statement runs counter to all known historical evidence because the Mahabharata War took place long before the birth of the Buddha in the 6th century B.C. and Krishna had been deified by the 8th century B.C. according to the Chandogya Upanishad, and the great grammarian Panini explains a sutra in which the suffix Vun is used for Vasudeva and Arjuna to indicate divinity. Lastly, there are several Late Harappan sites within a radius of 20 km from Dwar- aka, some of which were inhabited in the post-Harappan period, that is, in the 15th-14th centuries B.C. It is inconceivable that the port town of Dwaraka with a great tradition would have been left uninhabited in the 15th century B.C. or even earlier. The modern town of Dwaraka is situated at the mouth of the Gomati river. Ancient texts also refer to the same location. Another site known as Mul Dwaraka which is considered by some as original Dwaraka was explored by S.R. Rao and Sankalia but no evidence of habita- tion earlier than 1st century B.C. has been found. Hence its claim as Krishna Dwaraka could not be sustained. It was felt necessary to excavate Dwaraka on the nearby island of Bet Dwaraka in order to establish or reject their identity as Krishna’s Dwaraka. An incident that took place gave an opportunity to ascertain the antiquity of modern Dwaraka. In 1979 a modern two-storied