Places and geography · Mahabharata questions
Where was Dwarka, the city of Krishna?
Dwarka is placed on the Gujarat coast at the western tip of the Saurashtra peninsula, where the modern pilgrimage town of Dwarka stands. The epic says the sea took the city after Krishna died, and marine archaeologists have found submerged stone structures offshore whose dating is disputed.
Krishna and the Yadavas leave Mathura under pressure from Jarasandha and build a fortified island city in the western sea. The epic describes Dwaraka, the city of gates, as unassailable from land, and it serves as Krishna base for the rest of the story: Arjuna carries off Subhadra from there, the Pandavas take refuge there, and Duryodhana and Arjuna both come there to ask for help before the war.
The Mausala Parva ends it. After the Yadavas destroy one another at Prabhasa and Krishna dies, Arjuna evacuates the surviving women and children, and as the last of them leave, the sea rises and swallows the city.
The traditional site is Dwarka in Devbhoomi Dwarka district, Gujarat, one of the four principal pilgrimage seats of the Hindu tradition, with the Dwarkadhish temple at its centre; the nearby island of Bet Dwarka carries its own set of associations. Marine archaeological surveys led by S. R. Rao for the National Institute of Oceanography in the 1980s reported submerged walls, stone blocks and anchors off the coast. The finds are real; their date is argued over, with proposals ranging from the second millennium BCE to the medieval period, and stone anchors in particular are hard to date.
What can be said without overreaching: the coast has been settled and used as a harbour for a very long time, sea levels and shorelines have changed, and a submerged structure is not by itself a Mahabharata city.
The epic own description is worth keeping in view while reading those claims. It gives Dwaraka gates of gold, twelve yojanas of walls and a population beyond counting, which is the same register as its eighteen armies. The city is drawn as a wonder, not as a survey.