The Lost city of Dwarka
In the process was also established the historicity of a certain gentleman named Krishna Devakiputra also known as the eighth incarnation of Narayana, Lord Vishnu. These two stunning implications of the excavations have not yet been fully appreciated, thanks to a benign neglect of archaeology by the government, the warped revisionism practiced by Marxist historiographers in India, and the Indian's general apathy to history.
This book is the story of those excavations, written by the late S.R. Rao the person who led the excavation project in the 1980s (S.R. Rao also led the archaeology excavation that discovered the Harappan port of Lothal in 1954). This search for an earlier Dvaraka led to excavations in 1963 by Z.D. Ansari, later in 1979-80 by S.R. Rao, and which finally led to the first offshore marine excavations in India, in April 1983 onwards. These culminated in the discovery of a human fortified settlement dating back to approximately 1500 BCE. The book combines an encyclopedic knowledge of history, geography, and mythology with an expert's grasp on archaeology to present this concise book, lavishly produced by Aditya Prakashan, and with more than a hundred color and black-and-white photographs, printed on glossy paper. Given the high cost of this hardcover book - Rs 1800, perhaps a lower priced paperback edition is long overdue.
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Arguably the single most important archaeological excavation of the twentieth century, the offshore marine excavations off Dvaraka began with a humble eighty thousand rupee grant. It helped plug in a thousand-year hole in India's ancient history of what happened after the decline of the Harappan civilization and before the advent of the Buddha in the fifth century BCE.
In the process was also established the historicity of a certain gentleman named Krishna Devakiputra also known as the eighth incarnation of Narayana, Lord Vishnu. These two stunning implications of the excavations have not yet been fully appreciated, thanks to a benign neglect of archaeology by the government, the warped revisionism practiced by Marxist historiographers in India, and the Indian's general apathy to history.
This book is the story of those excavations, written by the late S.R. Rao the person who led the excavation project in the 1980s (S.R. Rao also led the archaeology excavation that discovered the Harappan port of Lothal in 1954). This search for an earlier Dvaraka led to excavations in 1963 by Z.D. Ansari, later in 1979-80 by S.R. Rao, and which finally led to the first offshore marine excavations in India, in April 1983 onwards. These culminated in the discovery of a human fortified settlement dating back to approximately 1500 BCE. The book combines an encyclopedic knowledge of history, geography, and mythology with an expert's grasp on archaeology to present this concise book, lavishly produced by Aditya Prakashan, and with more than a hundred color and black-and-white photographs, printed on glossy paper. Given the high cost of this hardcover book - Rs 1800, perhaps a lower priced paperback edition is long overdue.
History and mythology are so deeply intertwined in Hindu epics like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Puranas that it becomes a difficult job, even for the best of minds, to separate fact from fiction from embellishment. The Mahabharata is called itihaasa, or history. While most scholars agree that the events described in the Mahabharata, or for that matter the Ramayana also, are based on a factual, historical core, there is substantial debate and disagreement over the extent of the embellishment and additions that have taken place over the following thousands of years. For example, the Mahabharata talks about a billion people dying in the war at Kurukshetra, a number which is most certainly an exaggeration. The exaggeration is perhaps meant to remind the reader of the scale of the huge loss of life over the eighteen days of battle on the fields of Kurukshetra. On the other hand, scholars are mostly unanimous that modern day towns and places like Kurukshetra, Indraprastha, Mathura, etc... are the same as those mentioned in the Mahabharata.
It's very very short note to delivery god lived here because The Ramayana and Mahabharata are Hindu's History like Bible and Quran but is not end here...
However, what is one to make of the characters in the epic, especially Krishna? Was Krishna a historical figure? Did he live and die during the Mahabharata period? And what about his divinity? Was he an incarnation of Narayana, the eighth avatar of Vishnu? Did the Yadavas really migrate from Mathura, "founding a new city known as Dvaraka at the former site of Kushasthali in Saurashtra"? Did the city of Dvaraka really get submerged by an angry sea?
