How authentic are the Dwarka arcahaeological findings about Krishna?
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context. So in the Dwarka expedition, Dwarka findings underwater, many things were found. How many of them are actually real? Are some of them supernatural? Or is it really the city was to be taken literally from the Vedic scriptures? Yeah, in the Mahabharata, there is described a place called Dwarka, where Krishna was living.
And it was protected by water from all sides. And it’s also described that towards the end of the Mahabharata, Krishna tells Arjuna that the ocean is going to rise and is going to consume the city. Therefore, you take all its residents.
Krishna says, I am going to depart from this world. You take your citizens, take the citizens away from here. So his queens and other dependents, Arjuna takes them away.
And then as Arjuna is departing itself, he sees the ocean rising. And the ocean covers up the, it takes away the whole city basically. So that location of Dwarka is mentioned to be on the west coast of India.
That much is clear. And it is more or less in that area itself, where currently the city of Dwarka is. So there is currently a city Dwarka, which is not the same as what was Krishna’s city.
It’s basically, Dwarka was a very large place at that time, out of which a small part has survived and the most of it has gone underwater. So now when the researchers, they did some research over there, they have found many remains. Usually when we want to know about ancient history, the past tendency in general was to consider the descriptions in the ancient literature mythological.
So many of the cities like the city of Troy, which is talked about Trojan horse, this was thought of a mythology. But subsequent research in the Middle East found that it was an actual city. So like that, there are cities.
Dwarka was also thought of as a mythology, as described in the Mahabharata. But when they did this underwater survey, they did find three things. One is the seals.
At that time they would have seals. So seals, they had the insignia of Krishna and Balram over there. And that is described in the Mahabharata.
That would be the royal seal of the marking of Yadu dynasty, there are seals there. Secondly, they also found some weapons and some chariots and other such things, whose description is similar to what is given in the Mahabharata. And they also found the remains of a very vast city.
It is not just a small village or small town, it is like a very big city. And Dwarka is described to be a very big city. So in general, through history or through historical search, we cannot verify anything supernatural.
So for example, it is said that Krishna lifted a hill to protect his devotees. Now even if we find that hill, we cannot prove that Krishna lifted the hill. So historical findings can tell us whether some person existed or not, but they cannot tell us specifically what all that person did, especially that person did something miraculous.
So the current understanding academically is about 50 years ago, most mainstream historians considered Krishna to be a myth. But now almost all historians, they accept that Krishna as a person existed. So his historicity is not in doubt.
Now if we look at, there is also a video, another video made, what is it called? Dr. Pandit, Manish Pandit, he has made the video, Krishna History or Myth. It is available on YouTube. Maybe I can just search and give it to you.
So there he actually does research from four different directions to prove, to establish the historicity of Krishna. So one is the same archaeological findings of the most and he talks about cosmology. See, it is described in the Mahabharata that on certain days of the Mahabharata war or certain events, the stars are in a particular alignment.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So all those descriptions are there and now specifically description of eclipses and if say one eclipse and other eclipse occur after a particular days.
So then with computer software, now we can find out how the eclipses must have occurred when. So by that calculation if we go backwards, we found that the exact alignment of eclipses, alignment of constellations in general along with eclipses, that happened at a time around 3000 years in the DC. So broadly what the tradition says that Krishna appeared 5000 years ago, that is more or less now quite strongly, there is strong evidence for this.
But as Professor Rao said that for political reasons that has not been pursued much because basically there is a apprehension that if Krishna’s historicity or Ram’s historicity is proven, then some people fear that the Hindu nationalist will become more assertive. But that is not necessarily true. It is very sad that most countries would study their own national history very deeply.
But in India, in the name of being secular, most of Indian history is neglected or is not studied. I think recently now that study has started again because now current the government that has come is more favorable to the Indian tradition. So the research has started, but no major finding has been made till now.
But still definitely the historicity of Krishna is no longer in doubt. It is very clear that Krishna as a person existed and he lived near Dwaraka, he was a Yadu prince. So those details about his lineage and his location, they are more or less beyond historical doubt now.