Dwarka Lord krishna's mighty kingdom

According to the epic of Mahabharata, Krishna established his mighty kingdom off the coast of Gujarat to escape endless deaths and battels between him and Jarasandh. Krishna built a port at Dwarka that made his kingdom very rich and successful. According to the vedas, the city was built and designed by Vishwakarma, the architect of the gods. Originally this place was called Kushasthali but now Krishna named his city Dwaravati. Dwar means a doorway and so Dwaravati was the gateway to moksha.

Krishna and Balarama ruled Dwarka for thirty six years during which krishna would play a prime role in the conflict between the Pandavas and their cousins the Kauravas. After the victory of the Pandavas at the Battle of Kurukshetra Krishna returned to rule at Dwarka. However he carried with him the burden of a great curse. All the hundred Kaurava brothers had been killed in battle and their mother Gandhari, had held Krishna responsible for their death. She cursed him that he would watch his clan destroy itself before his own eyes.

Legends of Dwarka

The awful curse was fulfilled. Krishna watched helplessly as his beloved Dwarka turned into a decadent city populated by haughty, egotistical men. Balarama had to impose a wine ban on the Yadavas because they had amassed enormous wealth and had become so immersed in vice. But they drank wine at a festival in Prabhas Patan, where they soon started killing each other in a drunken brawl.

Krishna and Balarama lost all hope when they had seen the deaths of their children Pradyumna and Aniruddha and fell back into the forest. Balarama passed away here first, and Krishna was then killed by a hunter's poisoned arrow.

Krishna's only weak point was his ankle, which the hunter had mistaken for a deer when he saw his feet. At Krishna’s request, Arjuna took the women and children of Dwarka back to Hastinapur.

He remembers the last moments of Dwarka's destruction in the Mahabharata as Samudra, the ocean god, reclaimed the land he had provided to Krishna. I observed the stunning structures sinking one by one as the powerful waves crashed in. The entire thing was over in a flash. The sea had now calmed down to the level of a lake. The city was completely gone. Dwarka was nothing more than a name or a memory.

Later Krishna’s great grandson Vajranabha, the son of Aniruddha began to rule from Mathura. He came back to the sea coast of Dwarka to build a temple in the memory of Krishna and this was the original Dwarkadhish Temple.

The temple was built at the site of a palace called Harigriha which was Krishna’s personal palace. Here in the sanctum sanctorum, the garbha griha of the temple, Vajranabha installed an image of Krishna as the magnificent king of Dwarka.

Dwarka underwater proof