Cite
MLA
“Is the drowned city off Dwarka Shri Krishna’s Dvaraka?.” Hindu History, 2026, https://www.hinduhistory.in/vimarsha/dwarka-underwater/. Accessed .
APA
Hindu History. (2026). Is the drowned city off Dwarka Shri Krishna’s Dvaraka?. Retrieved , from https://www.hinduhistory.in/vimarsha/dwarka-underwater/
What defines it
- 01
Dressed stone blocks on the seabed
- 02
Triangular three-holed stone anchors
- 03
Conch-shell seal with a three-headed animal, Bet Dwarka
- 04
Mausala Parva: the sea covers Dvaraka
- 05
ASI underwater exploration, 2025
01What lies under the water
S. R. Rao, the excavator of Lothal, led the marine archaeology unit of the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, in diving off Dwarka and around Bet Dwarka from 1983 into the early 1990s. In poor visibility and strong currents his divers mapped lines of dressed blocks that Rao read as fort walls and bastions, and recovered many stone anchors, some triangular with three holes. On Bet Dwarka a seal of conch shell carved with a three-headed animal came to light. Rao set out his case in The Lost City of Dvaraka (1999). The ASI’s underwater archaeology wing worked off Dwarka in 2005–2007, and, revived under Alok Tripathi, began fresh exploration there in February 2025.
02What the Itihasa says
The Mausala Parva tells that after Shri Krishna left the world, Arjuna led the women and children of the Yadavas out of Dvaraka, and as they went the sea rose and covered the city behind them. The Harivamsha describes how the city was first raised on land the ocean gave up. Dwarka today is one of the Char Dham and one of the seven Moksha-puris, and the Dwarkadhish temple stands over the Gomti creek. A drowned city at this spot is the exact claim of the Itihasa, which is why every block on the seabed matters so much, and why the dating has to be got right.
The positions
Shri Krishna’s Dvaraka, c. 15th century BCE
S. R. Rao (The Lost City of Dvaraka, 1999)
Rao dated the walls to about the 15th century BCE from the pottery found with them and from thermoluminescence dates. The triangular three-holed anchors match Bronze Age types known from the Mediterranean and the Gulf. The Bet Dwarka seal, with its three-headed animal of bull, unicorn and goat, recalls Harappan seals and fits a late Harappan settlement. A walled coastal town, now drowned, at the very place the Mahabharata names, fits the account of Dvaraka swallowed by the sea.
Thermoluminescence dates on pottery carry wide margins, and pottery near blocks on a moving seabed may not belong to them. Anchor shapes stayed in use for centuries, so they date poorly. Later work by Rao’s own institute found that the blocks are not all of one period.
A port of the historic period
A. S. Gaur, Sundaresh and Sila Tripati of the NIO (Current Science, 2004, and later papers)
Rao’s successors at the NIO accepted the structures and the anchors but read them differently. In 2004 they described the stone structures as the remains of an ancient jetty, and concluded from the anchor types that Dwarka was an important port from the early historical period, with the Gomati creek serving as a safe harbour until the 19th century. Studies of similar anchors elsewhere in Okhamandal, once dated to about 1400 BCE by comparison with Mediterranean finds, placed them no earlier than the historical period, as at Vijaydurg and Malwan on the Konkan coast.
A historic port does not rule out an older settlement beneath or beside it. The surveys covered only part of the seabed, much of it in poor visibility, and nothing they found disproves an earlier drowned layer. The finds on Bet Dwarka itself, including the shell seal, still point to an older occupation.
Scientific dating of the structures themselves, from wood, mortar or organic matter sealed beneath the blocks rather than from loose pottery; a complete map of the seabed off Dwarka and Bet Dwarka; and full publication of the ASI exploration that began in 2025.
Great masters
In the texts
- Mahabharata, Mausala Parva
- Harivamsha
- S. R. Rao, The Lost City of Dvaraka (1999)
