INTRODUCTION :
THE HISTORICAL CITY
The famous temple called Dwarakadish, dedicated to Lord Krishna, the king of Dwaraka, is found in the city called Dwaraka on the west coast of India in the state of Gujarat. It is considered to be one of the seven Holy Cities of India. The others are Ayodhya, Mathura, Haridwar, Varanasi, Kanchipuram and Ujjain. According to tradition, the original temple of Dwarakadish was built by Krishna's great-grandson, Vajranabha, over the ruins of Lord Krishna's own palace, which was the only building that was not washed away by the tsunami.
However, the ancient, famed city of Dwaraka existed five thousand years ago during the time of the Krishnavatara. It is no more to be seen now since it lies at the bottom of the sea. Dwaraka's majesty and beauty have been described by many poets and writers, saints and sages of ancient India. It is referred to as Golden City in the Srimad Bhagavatam, Skanda Purana, Vishnu Purana, Harivamsha and the Mahabharata. One of the verses in the Bhagavatam says: "The yellow glitter of the golden fort of the Dwaraka City in the sea, throwing yellow light all round, looked as if the flames of Vadavagni (the fire of eternity) came out, tearing asunder the sea."
It was a bustling port and had an island close by which also served as a harbor. If the number, size and variety of stone anchors are any indication of the size of the port, it can be said that Dwaraka must have been the largest port of the third millennium B.C. on the Indian Coast. As many as 50 stone anchors are still visible. But several hundred must have been buried in the sediment. This was probably one of the reasons why the city got its name. "Dwara" means gate in Sanskrit and the port of Dwaraka was perhaps the gate which enabled the ancient sea-faring cities of the west to enter the great subcontinent of India.
The Sanskrit word 'Ka' also stands for Brahma so perhaps it was a city dedicated to Brahma, the creator in the trinity.
Mathura had been the capital of the Surasenas (one of the clans of the Yadavas), but it was fully exposed and could not defend itself from the continued attacks of King Jarasandha of Magadha. Krishna decided that his clan would have to shift if they wanted a peaceful life without the threat of constant attacks from enemies. By a series of forced marches, he took all his people to the west coast of India to the ancient city of Kushasthali (Gujarat), which had the sea as one of its boundaries, and decided that it was best suited for their needs. He then proceeded to reclaim land from the ocean. There he built a wonderful city called Dwaravati. His kingdom included many of the islands along the shore as well as the Anarta kingdom of the mainland. This is the Dwaraka about which mention has been made in all our Puranas. There are many stories written about Krishna's early life in Gokulam and Vrindavana, but very little about his sojourn in Dwaraka, even though this is the place he spent the major portion of his life.
He had foretold that the part which had been reclaimed would return to the sea seven days after his departure from this planet and that is exactly what happened. The ocean has hidden its secrets well, and for many years the descriptions of the famed Dwaraka were thought to be only a myth and not based on anything real.
However, in the 20th century, archaeological and astronomical studies, as well as many maritime explorations, have established the historicity of the city of Dwaraka and have helped to date many of the events narrated in the epic, Mahabharata. They have also helped to bring to light the history of ancient India. These have led to the conclusion that the Mahabharata War was actually fought in 3126 BCE and that the city of Dwaraka was submerged in the sea 36 years later.
Underwater explorations also unearthed the remains of a city which has been dated to have existed 21000 years ago. Six other cities had been built over this and Lord Krishna's Dwaraka was the last. Archaeological excavations in more than ten thousand sites scattered over major parts of India prove beyond doubt the existence of a flourishing culture now known as the Indus civilization during 3400 BC to 1500 BC. This proves that the cradle of human civilization is not Sumeria in Mesopotamia as western scholars believe, but the Sapta Sindhu, the land of the seven rivers, in northwest India. From the densely populated Sapta Sindhu, our ancestors, the Vedic Aryans travelled from India to various parts of Asia and Europe and spread the knowledge of the Vedic civilization and the Sanskrit language. Sanskrit-speaking people migrated to Iran, Greece, and further west.
The Vedic culture which has come to be known as Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world. The real name of this religion is the Sanatana Dharma (the ancient way of righteousness). It was born and nurtured on the soil of this holy land of Aryavrata or Bharatavarsha. Unfortunately our history books, which have been written by western scholars, say that a tribe of people known as the Aryans came to India from Central Asia in their war chariots in the 15th century Be. According to this fictitious theory, both the Vedas and the Sanskrit language were brought into India by these Aryan invaders. The most influential proponents of this theory were Max Mueller, the famous German Indologist and William Jones who was also a linguist. They arrived at this brilliant conclusion since they were struck by the affinities between Sanskrit and the European languages, not realising that the exodus of Sanskrit as well as so much other mathematical and scientific information went from India to the west and not vice versa. That is how the European languages had their basis in Sanskrit and not the other way round as Max Muller and William Jones would have us believe. The fact is that both these Indologists had a secret desire to undermine the faith of this country and impose Christianity on the so-called heathens! It is a well- known fact that history written by the conquerors always records the view point of the conqueror, and is an attempt to prove the superiority of their own culture and the inferiority of the culture of the country they have subjugated.
Max Muller wrote in a letter to his wife, "My translation of the Vedas will affect the fate of India and the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel, the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3,000 years."
In fabricating a date for the so-called Aryan Invasion, Muller was strongly influenced by the Christian belief that the creation of the world had taken place at 9 am on 23rd October, 4004 BC. Assuming this date to be true for the creation of the world, as Muller did, leads us to the conclusion that the Biblical flood came in the year 2248. If another thousand years are allowed for the waters to subside and the soil to get dry enough for the Aryans to begin their invasion of India, we are left with 1400 BC. Adding another two hundred years before they could begin composing the Rig Veda brings us right up to Muller's date of 1200 BC of the composition of the Rig Veda!! How objective can you get!
David Frawley, truly a great lover of the Veda, says, "Max Muller, with his hidden agenda, lifted metaphorical passages from the Rig Veda to buttress his 'Aryan-invasion-from-Europe' theory. The literary evidence taken in its entirety shows that the Vedic civilization was an indigenous development."
Monier Williams, in a speech given at Oxford to the Missionary Congress on 2nd May, 1877, said, "When the walls of the mighty fortress of Brahmanism are encircled, undermined and finally stormed by the soldiers of the cross, the victory of Christianity must be signal and complete!!" These are the people who were supposed to be objective scholars!
These so-called Indologists also proclaimed that the Aryans defeated the Dravidians who were the original inhabitants of the continent. Modern research has proved that there was neither an Aryan invasion nor a conflict between the Aryans and Dravidians. The term "arya" means noble and good. It refers to a quality of behaviour and not of a race. Likewise the word "dasyu" which was used to refer to the Dravidians, means misconduct and does not denote a race. The arguments over a separate Dravidian language have also been solved by our own scholars. They have identified some twenty Dravidian words in the Rig Veda and the so-called Dravidian language has borrowed at least fifty percent of its vocabulary from Sanskrit. Many Dravidian scholars credit the creation of Tamil, the oldest Dravidian tongue, to the great sage, Agastya who figures in the Rig Veda as one of the prominent sages of his era. The Dravidian kings have always referred to themselves as Aryans and have traced their descent from Manu. Shiva clearly is the Vedic god, Rudra. Sanskrit has been shown to include some elements from the language of the tribes called Munda. All three languages are indigenous developments. Thus north and south India share a common culture and religion. The whole ofIndia is irrevocably bound together by our common heritage which is the Vedic culture.
When the ruins of the great Indus Valley civilization were discovered, the proponents of the Aryan invasion theory suggested that the invading Aryans had defeated the Dravidian inhabitants of the Indus valley, thus suggesting that the invading Aryans, instead of being the bringers of civilization to the poor barbarians as they had been trying to prove, were instead the destroyers of a great civilisation and culture developed by the native Indians! Moreover, had such an exodus existed it would surely have found mention in the Vedas themselves, which are a vast store-house of information about everything we can think of. They could never have failed to record such an important event. Unfortunately, our history books which are still being used in Indian schools have not yet removed this bit of false information from their texts.
Luckily with modern equipment, the science of Archaeology has been able to prove the truth of the Vedic culture as being totally indigenous, having existed in an unbroken line from the ancient Indus Valley Civilization to the present day. Sri Rajaram records a continuous and original development of the great Vedic civilization going right back to 5000 BC at sites like Mehrgarh and Koldi. He gives a chronological account of this ancient civilization as beginning with the Mehrgarh site in the NW around 6,500 BC. This is the largest urban site of that period known in the world. There is evidence of the domestication of animals, the existence of agriculture, as well as arts and crafts. Mergarh, Harappa and Mohenjadaro bordered the great Saraswati River and made up what is now known as the Indus Valley civilization. The river had more than five hundred sites along its banks. By the time of the Mahabharata, the Saraswati had lost its chief tributary, the Yamuna because of a tectonic plate shift. This was the beginning of the Kali Yuga, 3000 BC. In 1900 BC another tectonic plate shift made the Saraswari lose its next big tributary, the Sutlej. This dried up the river which was the artery of the civilization and caused a massive exodus of the people to the Gangetic plains in the east, whence arose the classical period of Indian civilization. There was another exodus towards the west. These people carried their knowledge of Sanskrit and mathematics and other sciences with them and that is why so many Sanskrit words are found in the European languages. It is said that the first Egyptian king was from India. That is why they worshipped the sun and declared that their kings come from the sun (Surya Vamsa). So much of our history has been buried by the sands of time that even now it is doubtful whether we know even a fraction of our ancient culture. Detailed factual data has been given in our ancient texts and Sanskrit manuscripts, which have been totally ignored by the western scholars. It is only now that the Indian scholars have woken up to the fact that all the proof that they would ever need is to be found in our scriptures themselves. The Mahabharata mentions the names of countless kings and warriors who had come to Kurukshetra to participate in the war. All of them were born and brought up on the soil of India and came from kingdoms that had experienced thousands of years of prosperous and advanced civilization. |
