Lucknow University’s Division of Ancient Indian Historical past and Archaeology included the excavation of Ayodhya in the fourth unit of discipline archaeology in the eighth paper of the fourth semester of Bachelor of Arts (BA), underneath the Nationwide Schooling Coverage (NEP). Together with this, excavations of other ancient sites Bhimbetka, Kalibanga and Hastinapur have additionally been included.
“Within the discipline archaeology paper of ancient Indian historical past and archaeology, the undergraduate and postgraduate college students are taught in regards to the excavation of varied essential archaeological sites. That is half of the identical course of,” mentioned Prof Piyush Bhargava, head of the Division of Ancient Indian Historical past and Archaeology.
He mentioned that Ayodhya is an ancient metropolis in Uttar Pradesh, which finds point out in Ramayana, Mahabharata and varied Puranas. In response to Puranas, this metropolis was established by Manu of the Ikshvaku dynasty. After that, Dashrath and Lord Ram dominated in their generations.
It’s talked about in later texts that Ayodhya, which was often called Kosala, was later divided into two elements – Uttara Kosala and Dakshina Kosala. Shravasti is the capital of North Kosala and Kushavati is the capital of South Kosala. It’s talked about in ancient texts that this metropolis was located on the banks of river Sarayu. It is usually talked about in Raghuvansh, mentioned Prof Bhargava.
Alexander Cunningham, who is named the Father of Indian Archaeology, has mentioned that Ayodhya can be talked about as Saket. He obtained the survey of Ayodhya finished in about 1862-63 and in addition between 1889-91. The Fuhrer had additionally surveyed Ayodhya. Chinese language traveller Fa Hien calls it by the title of Sha-chi.
The earliest archaeological excavations in Ayodhya have been carried out by Awadh Kishore Narayan of Kashi Hindu University in the session 1969-1970 and dated to the seventeenth century BC.
After this, between 1975 and 1985, Prof BB Lal of the Archaeological Survey of India performed archaeological excavations at varied locations associated to Ramayana resembling Bharadwaj Ashram, Nandigram (Ayodhya), Chitrakoot and Shringverpur (Prayagraj).
In 2003, Canadian geophysicist Plot Ravi Lloyd performed a GPR survey and reported that completely different constructions are being detected at a depth of 0.5 m to five.5 m.
Thereafter, in the session 2002-03 itself, Hari Manjhi and BR Mani performed archaeological excavations on behalf of the Archaeological Survey of India.
The archaeological excavations finished right here yielded details about a complete of 9 cultural intervals. Right here the oldest settlement has been obtained from the North Krishna Marjit interval. Whereas the newest settlement was associated to the post-Mughal interval.
Within the excavation, pottery, clay sculptures, stone sculptures, inscriptions, stamps and foreign money impressions and cash and so on associated to the above intervals have been obtained from right here, Prof Bhargava mentioned.