हिंदीOn this day
Excavated

Hastinapura

The capital of the Kuru kings, where Bhishma took his vow and the dice game was played. The Puranas say the Ganga swept it away and Nichakshu moved to Kaushambi; B. B. Lal’s excavation found a flood layer in the right place.

Built: Capital of the Kurus in the Mahabharata; excavated by B. B. Lal, 1950–52Where: Uttar Pradesh (Meerut district)29.16° N, 78.01° E
  1. 1950–52
  2. 2006
Photo: Giridharmamidi · CC BY-SA 3.0

01The city of the Kurus

The Mahabharata names the city after King Hastin of the Chandravansha. Here Shantanu met Ganga, Devavrata took the terrible vow that made him Bhishma, and the Kaurava and Pandava princes learnt arms from Dronacharya. In the sabha of Hastinapura Yudhishthira lost the dice game, and Draupadi was dragged before the elders. After the war Yudhishthira was crowned here, and Parikshit and Janamejaya ruled after him. The Vishnu and Bhagavata Puranas say that in the time of Nichakshu, a descendant of Parikshit, the Ganga carried the city away and the king moved his capital to Kaushambi.

02What the spade found

B. B. Lal dug at Hastinapura from 1950 to 1952. Below the later towns he found a settlement of Painted Grey Ware, the grey pottery painted in black that turns up at many sites named in the Mahabharata. That settlement ended with a heavy flood of the Ganga, after which the site was left empty for a time before people came back with Northern Black Polished Ware. Lal set this beside the Purana’s account of Nichakshu’s move. The town today is also a great Jain tirtha: the birthplace of three Tirthankaras, Shantinath, Kunthunath and Aranath, and the place where Rishabhadeva broke his year-long fast on Akshaya Tritiya.

The life of this place

  1. 1950–52B. B. Lal excavates Hastinapura and finds the Painted Grey Ware town ended by a Ganga flood.
  2. 2006The ASI resumes work at the Ulta Khera mound.
Visiting

About 40 km north-east of Meerut. See the Ulta Khera mound, Draupadi Ghat and the Pandeshwar temple, and the Jain Jambudweep complex.

Nearby

MeerutStanding
Company rule and the war of 1857

Meerut

The cantonment town where, on the evening of 10 May 1857, the sepoys rose, freed their shackled comrades and rode through the night to Delhi. The war of 1857 began here.

SinauliExcavated
The Sindhu–Sarasvati Civilisation

Sinauli

A burial ground in Baghpat district, between the Yamuna and the Hindon, where the Archaeological Survey found chariots, swords and a helmet in royal graves of around 2000–1800 BCE.

Daksheswar Mahadev Temple, KankhalRebuilt
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Daksheswar Mahadev Temple, Kankhal

The temple at Kankhal that marks the place of Daksha Prajapati’s yajna, where Mata Sati gave up her body in the sacrificial fire. Haridwar’s tradition holds that Mahadev spends the month of Shravan here.

Chandi Devi Temple, HaridwarStanding
Renaissance and the struggle for Swaraj

Chandi Devi Temple, Haridwar

The temple of Chandika on Neel Parvat, across the Ganga from Haridwar, where the Devi is said to have rested after slaying Shumbha and Nishumbha. It is one of the three Siddha Peethas of Haridwar.