The Sunken Walls of Dwarka: Marine Archaeology, Marine Transgressions, and the Epic Tradition

In the Mausala Parva (Book of the Iron Club) of the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, the writer describes a dramatic coastal event: as Krishna departs the mortal realm, the sea rises to submerge his capital city (Swaveda). Tradition holds that this lost city of Dwarka lies off the Okhamandal peninsula in modern Gujarat, buried under the waves of the Arabian Sea.

Over the past four decades, underwater archaeological expeditions led by the Marine Archaeology Unit (MAU) of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have mapped underwater stone structures, submerged walls, and dozens of heavy stone anchors in the coastal waters off modern Dwarka and Bet Dwarka (NIO/Current Science). These physical discoveries have sparked ongoing public and academic debate regarding whether the seabed features represent the literal city of epic narrative or the physical remnants of an ancient regional trade port submerged by natural coastal changes.

What Marine Archaeology Shows

Systematic underwater surveys off the Saurashtra coast began in the early 1980s under the leadership of marine archaeologist S.R. Rao (NIO/Current Science). Exploring depths ranging between 3 and 12 meters in Gomati Creek and the nearby waters off Bet Dwarka, survey teams documented underwater stone masonry, dressed blocks, circular structure bases, and a large concentration of composite and grapnel-type stone anchors (NIO/Current Science).

Evidence shows that the submerged site functioned as a bustling ancient harbor and anchorage (NIO/Current Science). The typology of the recovered stone anchors—specifically the triangular three-hole composite anchors and Indo-Arab style grapnel anchors—indicates active maritime trade connecting the Gujarat coast to Western Asia and the Persian Gulf (NIO/Current Science).

Subsequent field explorations led by ASI's Underwater Archaeology Wing (UAW) under Professor Alok Tripathi confirmed the presence of submerged wall alignments and masonry blocks along the paleochannel of Gomati Creek (Times of India). However, evidence shows that attributing a single unified date to all underwater remains is chronologically complex. Thermoluminescence and relative pottery dating from terrestrial trenches at Dwarka indicate multiple occupational phases spanning from the Late Harappan period down through early historical and medieval times (NIO/Current Science).

Geomorphology and Marine Transgressions

To understand why structural ruins exist below modern sea level, geologists and oceanographers examine post-glacial marine transgressions (episodes when sea levels rise relative to the land) along the western coast of India.

Regional coastal geomorphology reveals that global sea levels rose rapidly following the Last Glacial Maximum (around 20,000 years ago) as continental ice sheets melted (ResearchGate). During the mid-Holocene period, regional sea levels along the Saurashtra-Kutch margin fluctuated, periodically submerging low-lying coastal shelf areas and paleo-estuaries (ResearchGate).

Furthermore, the Kathiawar peninsula of Gujarat is tectonically active. Geological studies document periodic seismic events that caused localized coastal subsidence, coupled with high-energy coastal erosion and storm surges (Current Science). Rather than a single sudden cataclysm swallowing an entire inland city overnight, evidence shows a pattern of gradual marine transgression punctuated by coastal erosion, which routinely drowned harbour jetties, breakwaters, and intertidal structures constructed close to the shoreline.

⚖ Scholarly Debate

Scholars debate how to correlate the material evidence on the seabed with the literary tradition of the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa (the appendix to the epic).

On one side of the debate, early explorers like S.R. Rao argued that the submerged stone structures and associated Late Harappan pottery sherds off Bet Dwarka directly match the textual descriptions of Krishna's fortified city (Current Science). Proponents of this view hold that the epic account preserves an authentic historical memory of a late Bronze Age coastal settlement destroyed by sea-level rise or high-energy tsunami waves (Current Science).

Conversely, mainstream archaeologists and textual historians caution against conflating medieval or early historical port structures with epic geography. Comparative analysis shows that the anchor typologies recovered off Dwarka belong predominantly to historical and medieval maritime trade networks ranging from the 1st millennium BCE to the 1st millennium CE (Current Science). Textual scholars point out that the epic narrative layers in the Mausala Parva were composed and revised over several centuries by redaction teams working within an established oral tradition (Swaveda).

Scholars debate whether the literary imagery of a city swallowed by the ocean represents a mythologized memory of real Holocene sea-level changes along the Saurashtra coast, or a poetic metaphor common to ancient coastal literature. What marine archaeology firmly establishes is that the waters around modern Dwarka conceal genuine, multi-period coastal infrastructure—a physical record of India's ancient maritime history resting beneath the sea (Current Science).