Divers off Dwarka found walls, a jetty and anchors beneath the sea
Legend says Krishna reclaimed land from the sea to build Dwarka, a fortified city of gates on India's western coast. Underwater surveys by the Archaeological Survey of India have since found submerged walls, fort bastions, a big stone jetty and three-holed stone anchors, remains of a port probably lost to coastal erosion.
Dwarka sits in Gujarat where the Gulf of Kutch opens out, on the right bank of the Gomti River where it meets the Arabian Sea. Its Sanskrit name comes from dvāra, meaning door or gate, so it reads as city of gates, and the Mahabharata and Harivamsa describe a walled coastal city with many entrances. Tradition makes it the place Krishna settled after leaving Mathura, and calls it the first capital of Gujarat.
Archaeology gives the legends a layered backdrop. Land excavations began in 1963. Offshore finds point to a thriving port during India's Middle kingdoms, while digs near the main temple uncovered a 9th-century shrine to Vishnu, a settlement from the 1st century BCE and traces possibly reaching back to the 2nd millennium BCE. Nearby Bet Dwarka island is a Late Harappan site, with one thermoluminescence date of 1570 BCE. A copper plate dated 574 CE names a king of Dwarka, and Greek geographers may have known the place as Baraca.
At the centre stands the Dwarkadhish Temple, or Jagat Mandir, a five-storey structure whose spire climbs to 78 metres and flies a huge flag bearing the sun and moon. The earliest temple dates to 200 BCE at the soonest, and the current building to the 16th century. Its turbulent history includes a sacking in 1473 by the Gujarat sultan Mahmud Begada, after which the sacred image was hidden in a stepwell, and damage during British operations against local Vagher fighters in 1859.
Dwarka is one of the four Char Dham pilgrimage seats associated with the philosopher Adi Shankaracharya and one of seven ancient holy cities, so tourism drives its economy. The climate is fierce and fickle: rain falls on about 16 days a year, and annual totals have swung from 15 millimetres in 1987 to more than 1,288 in 2010. The town had 38,873 residents in 2011.
Source: Dwarka
