01The city Krishna built
After the seventeen attacks of Jarasandha on Mathura, Shri Krishna moved the Yadavas to the western sea and built Dwarka, the city of gates, on land the ocean gave back. The Harivamsha and the Bhagavata describe its palaces. When Krishna left the world, the Mahabharata’s Mausala Parva says, the sea rose and covered the city. Between 1983 and 1990 the marine archaeologist S. R. Rao of the National Institute of Oceanography led dives off Dwarka and Bet Dwarka and found stone walls, anchors and structures under the sea.
02Jagat Mandir
Tradition says Vajranabha, Krishna’s great-grandson, raised the first shrine over Krishna’s palace. In 1473 Mahmud Begada, Sultan of Gujarat, sacked Dwarka and its temple, as the Mirat-i-Sikandari records. The temple that stands now, of the 15th and 16th centuries, rises five storeys on seventy-two pillars to a spire nearly 80 metres high. The black murti of Dwarkadhish has four arms. Adi Shankaracharya founded the Dwarka Sharada Peetha, his western matha, beside the temple. Pilgrims enter by the Moksha Dwar and leave by the Swarga Dwar, which opens on fifty-six steps down to the Gomti.
The life of this place
- 1473Mahmud Begada sacks Dwarka and its temple (Mirat-i-Sikandari).
- 1983–1990S. R. Rao’s underwater excavations off Dwarka find submerged structures.
Mangala aarti is at dawn; the flag is changed several times a day, and families sponsor it years in advance. Take a boat from Okha to Bet Dwarka, Krishna’s residence island.
