Anoop Verma's Diary: Itihasa & Darshana: The Submergence of Dwaraka

Tuesday, 1 June 2021

The Submergence of Dwaraka

The Mausala Parva, Book 16 of the Mahabharata, describes the events which transpire thirty-six years after the Kurukshetra war: the demise of Krishna, the demise of his brother Balarama and their father Vasudeva, the civil war in which every member of the Yadava clan is killed, and the destruction of the kingdom of Dwaraka. Arjuna arrived in Dwaraka to find out what had happened to Krishna and his clan and he saw the submergence of the kingdom in the sea.

Here’s an excerpt from Arjuna’s description of Dwaraka’s final moments:

“The sea, which had been beating against the shores, suddenly broke the boundary that was imposed on it by nature. The sea rushed into the city. It coursed through the streets of the beautiful city. The sea covered up everything in the city. I saw the beautiful buildings becoming submerged one by one. In a matter of a few moments it was all over. The sea had now become as placid as a lake. There was no trace of the city. Dwaraka was just a name; just a memory.”

The end of Krishna’s clan leads the five Pandava brothers to renounce their own kingdom and begin their march towards heaven.

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Nirad C. Chaudhuri

“In the south the temples have survived, and in the north they have not. Over seven centuries from the eleventh to the end of the seventeenth all the great cities of northern India dating from Hindu times were sacked by the Muslim invaders and conquerors of India. All the temples there and in all other centres of Hinduism were systematically destroyed. None were left standing at Ujjain, Ajmere, Delhi, Mathura, Brindaban, Kanauj, Prayag, or Benares—which were the centres of the political, cultural, and religious life of the Hindus. In most of these places mosques were built on the sites of the temples, and in some with pillars taken from them. This religious vandalism also worked its fury on the Buddhist centres. Moreover, it was not simply that the great temples in the cities were destroyed; so were the village temples. For most of the period of Muslim rule, there was a ban on building new temples and rebuilding the old in the regions the Muslims controlled.” ~ Nirad C. Chaudhuri

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"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim." ~ George Santayana

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“The most radical change in the human condition we can imagine would be an emigration of men from the earth to some other planet. Such an event, no longer totally impossible, would imply that man would have to live under man-made conditions, radically different from those the earth offers him. Neither labor nor work nor action nor, indeed, thought as we know it would then make sense any longer. Yet even these hypothetical wanderers from the earth would still be human; but the only statement we could make regarding their "nature" is that they still are conditioned beings, even though their condition is now self-made to a considerable extent.” ~ Hannah Arendt

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“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.” ~ James Joyce