Hastinapura
Topic: Society in Early India: Kinship, Varna-Jati, Women · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 3 "Kinship, Caste and Class - Early Societies"
Meaning
Hastinapura is the capital of the Kuru kingdom in the Mahabharata. Archaeologists dug up a village of this name to test whether the epic matches what is in the ground. They found only partial agreement. This shows the limits of treating an epic as a factual record.
Example
B.B. Lal excavated Hastinapura in Meerut district (Uttar Pradesh) in 1951–52.
- In the second phase (c. 12th–7th centuries BCE), houses had mud or mud-brick walls, and walls of reeds plastered with mud.
- In the third phase (c. 6th–3rd centuries BCE), houses were of mud and burnt brick, with soakage jars, drains and ring-wells.
Neither phase looked like the grand city full of mansions in the epic. That grand picture may have been added later, when cities grew, or may simply be poetic imagination.
Don't confuse with
- Indraprastha: this was the new capital the Pandavas built for themselves. Hastinapura was the old Kuru seat ruled by the Kauravas.
Related concepts
- Composition of the Mahabharata
- Sutas
- Vyasa
- Narrative and didactic sections
- Itihasa
- Bhagavad Gita
- Draupadi's marriage
- Mahashweta Devi
- Ramayana