But one mystery which began to nag at me on those first two dives, since we were supposedly in the heart of the ancient city, was that there didn’t seem to be enough stone ruins here. This had nothing to do with the stark contrast between Rao’s archaeological reconstructions of the antediluvian city and its actual appearance underwater today. What bothered me more was the almost equally stark contrast with photographs that Rao had shown to me from his personal collection that tracked the NIO’s underwater excavations at the site from 1983 to 1994.29 Although some of the features in those photographs were instantly recognizable on the sea-bed, many others were nowhere to be seen. Most notable by their absence were several partially intact walls of large stone blocks, in some cases up to five courses high, in some cases showing right-angled corners where two walls joined, in some cases extending in straight lines away from the camera as far as the eye could see – and the visibility was far better in those early shots than the fog that I was finning around in now.
So where were the missing walls?
Storms
After I’d surfaced from the second dive and clambered back on board the boat I asked Kamlesh this question and he signalled for Sundaresh and Anuruddh Gaur, two of the NIO’s senior marine archaeologists, to join us. A geologist by training, Kamlesh himself was not then a diver. Gaur and Sundaresh, on the other hand, had been diving at Dwarka since the 1980s.
Their answer was that the majority of the intact walls that had been photographed before 1994 either no longer existed or could not be relocated. Apparently, a series of severe monsoon storms during the past six years had loosened and dislodged the great blocks and tumbled the walls over. Since then sedimentation and weed had covered up the debris which had been scattered over a wide area by the monsoon swells.
I remembered the section of fallen wall that I’d seen early on the first dive and thought no more about it. It was only much later that it struck me how odd it was that a site which had supposedly been submerged for more than three millennia, and at which so many intact structural features had been documented as recently as 1994, could have deteriorated so dramatically in just the last six years.
The rock-cut wharf
Slightly dodgy-looking curries were available for lunch, cooked by the crew on a kerosene stove in the cabin of the fishing boat and served out on a mixture of plastic and tin plates. The wind had come up since the morning and wavelets were freshening in the bay – not enough to stop us diving but potentially enough to stir up the bottom and worsen the visibility.
I wasn’t feeling particularly well – headache, stiff-neck, nausea – and was aware that I had been cold on the last dive, but I didn’t put the two together. I thought that what was making me ill was the exhaust gas from the diesel pump that the NIO had on board to provide air from the surface via long tubes to technical divers working down below. A powerful air-lift system was also operating, sifting silt around the foundations of the ruins in the still unsuccessful search for artefacts that could positively identify their period of construction. All the vibrations and the fumes were a bit much for me but I thought that I’d probably feel better when I got back in the water and could breathe the clean air from my tank.
At this point the voice of reason told me it was time to put my wetsuit on for the afternoon’s work and the voice of stupidity urged me not to bother. The voice of stupidity won.
The dive we did that afternoon was with Gaur on the rock-hewn wharf at a depth of 12 metres about a kilometre out in the bay. Athough this was technically still a shallow dive, there was an oppressive darkness and gloom in the dirty green water and I began to feel more and more cold, weak and exhausted.
We swam east on the seaward side of the ridge. As well as its rock-cut features, including what were presumed to have been holes for mooring-ropes drilled through it at several points, there were a number of hulking megaliths scattered round about it on the sea-bed down to depths of about 18 metres. The official view was that these were natural slabs that had become detached from the rock ridge due to wave action when sea-level had been much lower – and perhaps even before the wharf had been fashioned – but to my eye they looked in places as though they had been dressed and cut.
Quarter of an hour later, still heading east along the ridge, I saw a pattern of other smaller blocks, like large tiles, laid out in a square grid amidst a tangle of boulders. I went down to investigate and found that the regular pattern seemed to continue under the boulders. That was exciting. On the other hand, up close, the little blocks and the joints between looked less regular, less man-made, than I had thought …
I couldn’t make up my mind. And other ambiguous features along the ridge left me, if anything, even more in doubt.
Whitecaps and lentil soup
I spent the next four days in bed in our dingy hotel room paying the price for being a fifty-year-old with no sense and mild hypothermia. A blinding, thudding headache was by far the worst of it and continued without any let-up for more than seventy-two hours. I felt weak, shaky and couldn’t keep down anything I tried to eat.
But I wasn’t missing much diving. The wind that had begun to pick up on that first afternoon grew steadily stronger during the night, whipping the waves in the bay into whitecaps, reducing the visibility to zero and making further diving impossible. The NIO’s chartered boat headed back for the shelter of a nearby fishing port and everyone waited to see if the weather would improve.
By the time I dragged myself out of bed the wind had died down and the boat was anchored over the ruins again. But the underwater conditions, with the transparency of lentil soup, made it impossible to do any serious work. I tried a couple of dives at different locations on the site but could see nothing.
Then the wind came up once more; this time with a forecast that it would continue to blow for more than a week, and it became obvious to all that there would be no further diving that season.
Layer upon layer
How old is the city beneath the waves?
Sitting on the edge of the Gomati Ghat by the Temple of the Sea God on the last evening of our stay in Dwarka, I looked over the agitated waters of the darkening bay and tried to figure out the mystery.
When I’d interviewed Rao at his home in Bangalore, I remembered that he’d told me how he had first become involved with excavations at Dwarka more than twenty years before. In his work for the Archaeological Survey of India he had arranged the demolition of a modern building that stood beside the main Dwarkadish (Krishna) temple, blocking the view:
Rao: It was demolished. When we removed this structure we were surprised to find a temple below it – a temple of Vishnu. [Krishna is considered to be an avatar, or manifestation in human form, of the Vedic god Vishnu]30 … It has beautiful sculptures and all that. We were surprised. You see this is a thirteenth-to fifteenth-century temple, the present one that we visit, but here is a ninth-century temple. How is it? When we dug for that we got two more temples below – below that there are two more temples.
GH: So it’s as though the existing Dwarkadish temple was built on top of an older temple?
Rao: Not the existing one. The one just by the side of it. You see, actually, this temple, I mean the existing one, must have been built on top of an ancient one, because what we got is a small shrine, and the other shrine must be below the present temple.
GH: But your excavation was beside the existing temple and there underneath you found earlier layers?
Rao: Earlier layers. And further when we dug we came across a clear section showing erosion by sea, with pottery and other datable objects of about 1500 BC. So between 1500 BC and 1500 AD there must have been continuous occupation here of which we hardly know anything. But again sometime there is divine help for us. One professor by name of B. R. Rao, a geologist, had come to Dwarka to inspect the site for a proposed university. I showed him the section and he said yes, this is clear evidence for erosion by the sea. I showed him the pottery and he said there must have been a township n
ear by. He said, what will you do? I said we have to excavate in the sea – that’s marine archaeology.31
Rao then successfully arranged government funding for his proposed venture at Dwarka:
But we did not know how to start the work. We had hardly any experience of marine archaeology. Then I thought what we should do now is take a bold step … Where to look for the structures was the question. Fortunately, there is the temple of Samudra Narayana, the sea god. So I said people have been making some offerings here. Maybe ancient times also there may have been some structure there and offerings might have been made. So we straight away started looking there. And then within a few days we got evidence of the structural remains there, underwater.32
An earlier town
Looking over the bay from the Samudra Narayana temple I reflected on Rao’s dating of the underwater ruins to the second millennium BC and the ‘late Harappan’ period. I could see no reasons why the scattered structural remains that I had dived on should be any older than that – and even some to suspect that they might be younger, perhaps much younger. Except for the rock-hewn wharf, which itself was not particularly deep, most of the structures were in shallow water of 7 metres or less and might easily have been submerged relatively recently in land-subsidence caused by the immense earthquakes that periodically afflict Gujerat.33 Besides, what I’d seen of the underwater ruins looked nothing like any of the ‘late Harappan’ settlements I knew of; on the contrary, the distinctive curved bastions and general style of the architectural blocks on the sea-bed looked much more like medieval Indian construction work than anything to do with the Indus-Sarasvati civilization.
But what intrigued me, and what Rao had been entirely open to, was the possibility that there might be other ruins further out to sea which the NIO had not yet found – indeed had not yet even looked for. Rao also reminded me that the ancient texts that seemed to have correctly predicted the presence of the underwater ruins that he had discovered also predict that other older ruins should exist in the vicinity – for Krishna was said to have built Dwarka on the site of an even earlier city called Kususthali:
In fact I used to read the Mahabaratha and also other Puranas like Vishnu Purana and others, where it is clearly states that Dwarka was built at Kususthali in such a way that it was surrounded by the sea … So Krishna comes to Kususthali and then builds a town and calls it Dwarka and there existed an earlier town before Dwarka was built …
What is striking about the story of Krishna’s city being built above an earlier city is the way it resonates with the firm evidence we already have from Rao’s excavations around the Dwarkadish temple – revealing layers and layers of earlier constructions beneath it and around it, going back to a stratum at around 1500 BC that is roughly parallel to modern sea-level. The ruins that Rao then found underwater should, as he reasons, belong to the time-period immediately before 1500 BC – say 1700 to 1800 BC at the earliest – suggesting that the city that today clusters around the Dwarkadish temple and down to Gomati Ghat is where it is because it replaces the earlier city that lies submerged in the bay beneath it.
And that city in turn – the city of Krishna – is where it is, the legends say, because of the earlier city of Kususthali:
GH: Is there a sense in the ancient texts that there had been a sacred centre at Dwarka in the remote past, a long time ago? Or was it absolutely newly established by Krishna?
Rao: Well, you see, it says that [an ancestor of Krishna] had built that town Kususthali and he went to Brahamaloka [a higher world]. So some connection with mythology and all that is already there when Krishna comes to that place. So the earlier township had some sanctity about it …
In an epoch of rising sea-levels the obvious place to rebuild and reconsecrate a submerged shrine or sacred centre would be on the nearest area of coast still above water. When the new shrine was inundated in its turn it would have to be re-established on higher ground – and so on. So maybe this is what we’re seeing at Dwarka: Krishna’s Dwarka was built to replace the antediluvian sacred centre that the texts call Kususthali – and when Krishna’s Dwarka was inundated, modern Dwarka was built to replace it. By inference, if we keep looking further out to sea, beyond what’s left of Krishna’s Dwarka – if it really is Krishna’s Dwarka, as Rao believes – then we should find older, more deeply submerged ruins.
3102 BC
But are the underwater ruins that Rao discovered at Dwarka the remains of ‘Krishna’s city’ – or of something else?
As I sat there overlooking the darkening waves, with the heady aroma of sacred ganja being exhaled all around me by the orange-robed sadhus who’d gathered to watch the sunset from Samudra Narayana, I remembered feeling that Rao couldn’t have it both ways. He couldn’t have his underwater ruins dating archaeologically to around 1800 or 1700 BC on the one hand and claim on the other that they were the ruins of Krishna’s city – since, apart from one minor variant tradition, Krishna is universally believed in India to have died at a date equivalent to 3102 BC.34 This date (see chapter 4) also marks the onset of the Kali Yuga.
But Rao wasn’t trying to have it both ways:
GH: Another question concerning Krishna. The departure, or death, of Krishna’s incarnation, if I understand correctly, is taken as the end of a previous age, of a yuga, and the beginning of the Kali Yuga. Now in many calculations that I’ve seen – numerous calculations – they all seem to point the beginning of the Kali Yuga to 3100 BC approximately.
Rao: Correct.
GH: Do you regard that as an impossible date? Because you seem to focus on a much later date, in the second millennium BC, for the submerged Dwarka.
Rao: Well, I wouldn’t call it an impossible date. But what evidence we have got so far shows that about 1700 or 1800 BC, by that time this township that is now underwater must have been built. Now if so, how is that date wrong? I mean, the 3100 BC date. We have discussed this matter in a journal where we said that maybe we are yet to find some more antiquities of the same township … So we can’t discard the earlier date totally.
But if the underwater ruins already excavated do really date back to 1700 or 1800 BC, then where is the logical place to search for ruins even older than that – the ruins of the city said to have been engulfed by a great flood at the beginning of the Kali Yuga in 3102 BC?
Further out, in deeper water
The connection of the death of Krishna and the submergence of Dwarka to the onset of the Kali Yuga is a powerful and widespread tradition in India, as is the connection of the Kali Yuga to a start date of 3102 BC.
We know that the city called Dwarka today is built on a mound made up of continuous occupation strata going down to present sea-level at 1500 BC and with ‘a clear section showing erosion by sea’ in the lowest stratum – indicative of a marine incursion (perhaps a tidal wave?) at that date.
We know that ruins have been found under that level beneath the sea and provisionally dated to 1800–1600 BC, though a more recent date is also possible. These ruins extend up to approximately 1 kilometre from the shore.
Therefore, it follows, if we wish to search for the ruins of 3100 BC and earlier that are hinted at in the traditions, that we are going to have to look further out, in deeper water.
In March 2000 I still didn’t have Glenn Milne’s inundation maps and imagined that Gujerat’s Ice Age coastline might have extended 5 or at the most 10 kilometres beyond the modern shoreline of Dwarka. In fact, as the maps show, Dwarka was almost 100 kilometres from the sea 16,400 years ago when it was part of a vast antediluvian landmass around Gujerat that filled in the Gulfs of Kutch and Cambay – and was still 20 kilometres inland as late as 10,600 years ago, just after the rapid rise in sea-level attested in the deep-sea cores between 10,000 and 9000 BC and the sudden appearance of village farming communities along the piedmont of the Himalayas.
If anywhere in the world looks like a potential ‘nucleus region’, or ‘Ice Age refugium’, out of which the first settlers of Mehrgarh and the o
ther ‘aceramic Neolithic’ food-producing settlements in north-west India might have sprung, then, surely, this is it? And doesn’t it make sense that the descendants of those first settlers, who went on, in time, to create the Indus-Sarasvati civilization, might have continued to revere sacred coastal sites and to rebuild them further inland whenever the sea-level rose?
The mystery of the U-shaped structure
That night, over a farewell dinner with the NIO team, I produced the Journal of Marine Archaeology given to me by Kamlesh and opened it at the report on the underwater explorations off Poompuhur in the south-east – about as far away from Dwarka as it is possible to get and still remain in India. Both Sundaresh and Gaur had participated in the 1993 Poompuhur expedition and had co-authored the report with S. R. Rao. Now was my chance to quiz them about the anomalous U-shaped structure that they had found 5 kilometres from the shore and 23 metres deep and to launch the idea of mounting a further expedition with them to Poompuhur at some time in the future.
We began by discussing the less controversial – and for me less interesting – ruins of Kaveripumpattinam in the intertidal zone and the shallows down to 3 metres. These, Sundaresh and Gaur concurred, were in the range of 2000 years old, and I had no reason to doubt them.
‘OK,’ I said, ‘so let’s accept that dating for the inshore structures. Then what do you find as the water gets deeper?’