Indraprastha

Indraprastha (Sanskrit: इन्द्रप्रस्थ, lit. "Plain of Indra" or "City of Indra"), contemporarily in Delhi, is a city cited in ancient Indian literature as a constituent of the Kuru kingdom. It was designated the capital of the Pandavas, a brotherly quintet in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. The city is sometimes also referred to as Khandavaprastha or Khandava Forest, the epithet of a forested region situated on the banks of Yamuna river which, going by the Hindu epic Mahabharata, was cleared by Krishna and Arjuna to build the city. Under the Pali form of its name, Indapatta, it is also mentioned in Buddhist texts as the capital of the Kuru Mahajanapada.

The topography of the medieval fort Purana Qila on the banks of the river Yamuna in Delhi matches the literary description of the citadel Indraprastha in the Mahabharata; however, excavations in the area have revealed no signs of an ancient fortified city to match the epic's described grandeur, as only a limited quantity of Iron Age pottery shards were found, and some few artifacts and structural remains of Maurya to Kushan period settlements (see below). Coordinating material archaeological culture with ancient literature is methodologically extremely difficult.