Archaeology is rewriting Mahabharata history — and the evidence is buried in UP’s soil. Dr. S.K. Manjul, ASI’s Additional Director General, reveals what decades of excavation have uncovered.

The 2018 dig at Sinauli — just 18 km from Barnawa, the Mahabharata’s Lakshagriha site — yielded India’s oldest known chariot, dated to around 2000 BCE. This single find upended the Aryan migration narrative, which had used chariot evidence as its cornerstone. Dr. Manjul also connects fire altar discoveries across Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, and Binjore to Vedic ritual culture, challenging the textbook sequence that placed Vedic and Harappan civilisations as separate and successive. His core argument: if archaeological interpretation is wrong, the entire historical narrative built on it collapses — and India’s interpretation has been wrong for a century.

The session also covers ASI’s conservation protocols, the criteria for national monument protection, and the possibility of bringing sites like Abhinavagupta’s cave under protected status — making this as much a policy discussion as a historical one.

About the Speakers

Dr. Sanjay Kumar Manjul is a Joint Director General at the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). He is an archaeologist, educator, and expert in the Indus Saraswati Civilization and Chalcolithic Sites.

Namrata Wakhloo is a photographer and chronicler with a 25-year-long career in Customer Services and Human Resources. She is currently heading CSR for a Fashion Retail MNC in Gurgaon, India.