Calls to rename India’s cities are once again stirring public debate, with arguments anchored in civilisational memory and epic heritage. Against this backdrop, the idea that Delhi may once have been the legendary Indraprastha has returned to the centre of political and cultural discourse. The question, however, is larger than nomenclature. It touches upon archaeology, mythology, layered histories, and the enduring power of collective memory.
What follows is an exploration of that deeper legacy.
The Lost City Beneath Delhi: Unraveling the Legend and Legacy of Indraprastha
*A City Born of Myth and Memory*
Few cities in the world carry as many layers of myth, memory, and material history as Delhi. Its shifting names—Indraprastha, Dhillika, Dehli, and Delhi—tell stories not just of dynasties and empires but of enduring civilizational continuity. Among these, Indraprastha, the fabled city of the Mahabharata, occupies a special place in the Indian imagination—a symbol of ancient grandeur, divine favour, and tragic destiny. As debates intensify over whether modern Delhi should reclaim this mythic name, the question arises: was Indraprastha a historical reality, and if so, does it lie beneath the city we now inhabit?
The Mahabharata’s Urban Ideal
The Mahabharata, composed over centuries between roughly 400 BCE and 400 CE, presents Indraprastha as the grand capital of the Pandavas, established with divine assistance and architectural brilliance. According to the epic, the city was founded after the Pandavas were granted a barren land called Khandavaprastha by their cousins, the Kauravas. With the blessings of Lord Krishna and the craftsmanship of the celestial architect Vishwakarma, the wasteland was transformed into a glittering metropolis—filled with palaces, gardens, assembly halls, and lakes that rivalled Indra’s own heaven.
The Sabha Parva of the epic describes the royal court of Indraprastha as a marvel of illusionary architecture, designed by the Asura Maya, where water appeared as glass and glass as water. It was within this very hall that the fateful dice game took place, leading to Draupadi’s humiliation and the Pandavas’ exile—events that set the stage for the cataclysmic Kurukshetra war. In literature, therefore, Indraprastha represents both the zenith of civilization and the moral decline that followed hubris and ambition.
Tracing the City in Archaeology
The quest to locate Indraprastha in the real world has intrigued archaeologists for more than a century. The most widely accepted theory identifies it with the ancient settlement at Purana Qila. Excavations carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India in 1913–14, 1954–55, 1969–70, and again in 2014 have yielded pottery shards, Painted Grey Ware, and fragments of Northern Black Polished Ware—artefacts typically dated to around 1000 BCE to 600 BCE. This material culture coincides with what scholars often call the “Mahabharata period,” suggesting an overlap between legend and archaeological evidence.
Excavations led by B. B. Lal in the 1950s were particularly significant. Lal, who also directed excavations at Hastinapur, argued that the Painted Grey Ware culture corresponded to the epic’s later Vedic society. Based on continuity in settlement patterns and material finds, he proposed that Purana Qila could indeed be the site of ancient Indraprastha. Later surveys in the 21st century have uncovered additional occupational layers from the Mauryan, Sunga, Kushan, Gupta, and Mughal periods—establishing Delhi’s continuous habitation for nearly three millennia.
Yet definitive proof linking the archaeological site to the epic city remains elusive. As historian Romila Thapar has cautioned, archaeology can establish antiquity but not confirm mythic identity. The epic itself underwent centuries of redaction and interpolation, blending history, theology, and moral philosophy into a narrative of cosmic scale. Thus, while Purana Qila may plausibly be ancient Indraprastha, the evidence remains circumstantial rather than conclusive.
Delhi Through the Ages: A Palimpsest of Civilizations
Even if Indraprastha once stood where Delhi now spreads, it was only the first in a succession of cities layered upon the same terrain. From the 8th-century Lal Kot of the Tomars to Qila Rai Pithora of Prithviraj Chauhan; from the Sultanate’s Siri, Tughlaqabad, and Firozabad to the Mughal Shahjahanabad, each successive regime built upon earlier foundations. Delhi became, in effect, a living archaeological mound—its geography shaped by continuity and reinvention.
When the British designed New Delhi in the early 20th century, architects such as Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker consciously aligned their imperial capital near Raisina Hill, within sight of Purana Qila. Even colonial urban planning acknowledged, if only symbolically, the aura of ancient sovereignty associated with Indraprastha.
The Politics of Naming and the Power of Myth
In recent years, the name Indraprastha has re-emerged in political discourse as a proposed act of cultural reclamation. Proponents argue that such a renaming would restore a Vedic identity and reconnect the capital to its epic past. Yet this view risks overlooking Delhi’s layered evolution. The city has been shaped by Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Islamic, Sikh, and colonial influences—each leaving indelible marks on its architecture, language, and civic life.
Scholars such as Sunil Kumar and Upinder Singh have emphasised that Delhi’s vitality lies in its multiplicity. It is not the monument of a single epoch but a mosaic of civilizations. To privilege one mythic identity over others may flatten the city’s rich historical complexity. As historian Irfan Habib has argued, legend and history must be carefully distinguished, particularly when invoked for contemporary political ends.
Yet the symbolic resonance of Indraprastha remains powerful. For many, it evokes an imagined golden age of dharma and prosperity—a yearning for moral clarity in turbulent times. Like Troy in Greek memory or Babylon in Mesopotamian lore, Indraprastha survives less as an excavated site than as a civilisational metaphor.
The Eternal City Beneath Our Feet
Whether Indraprastha and Delhi are materially identical may never be conclusively established. Archaeology can reveal habitation layers; literature can evoke splendour. But the bridge between them lies in collective imagination. Every shard unearthed at Purana Qila, every inscription in Mehrauli, every dome rising over Shahjahanabad contributes to a palimpsest in which myth and memory intermingle.
Indraprastha, in that sense, is less a fixed location than an enduring idea. It survives not merely in ruins but in the stories a civilisation tells about itself.
Myth as History, History as Myth
The debate over Delhi’s ancient identity ultimately transcends archaeology. It invites reflection on how nations remember, reinterpret, and sometimes reinvent their past. Delhi’s consciousness—its temples beside mosques, its forts beneath flyovers, its epics echoing through modern institutions—mirrors the layered narrative of the Mahabharata itself: creation, destruction, renewal.
To invoke Indraprastha today is to acknowledge that myth and history have always coexisted in Delhi’s soil. Beneath the metro lines and ministerial corridors lingers the ghost of a city born in epic imagination and sustained by memory. Whether one calls it Delhi or Indraprastha, what endures is the deeper truth of continuity—a civilisation’s dialogue with its own past, written into the very ground beneath its feet.
~Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai
~Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai
