Mathura

Mathura stands on the Yamuna at the centre of Braj, the landscape of Krishna, whom tradition says was born here. The city grew up where caravan routes of the Indo-Gangetic plain met roads to Malwa and the west coast, and Buddhist, Jain and Hindu remains lie layered in its mounds. Under the Kushans it was a royal capital and a famed school of red sandstone sculpture.

Mathura's sacred riverbank was hard hit in the age of the Delhi sultans. Sikandar Lodi, who ruled from 1489, razed temples here and banned Hindus from bathing at the river steps. In the early 16th century the Vaishnava teachers Vallabhacharya and Chaitanya came to Braj to recover its lost holy places. When the Jesuit Antonio Monserrate passed through in 1580-82, the temples at Krishna's sites were ruins. Under the Mughals, the Bundela king Vir Singh Deo rebuilt the Keshavadeva temple at a cost of 3.3 million rupees, and it was called a wonder of the age. Aurangzeb ordered it destroyed in 1670 and raised a mosque, the Shahi Eidgah, on its site.