The Lost Kuśasthaḷī

Kuśasthaḷī, we are told, is the original name of modern Kuṭṭhāḷæ or Cortalim, the village on the banks of river Zuari, between Sāṁkhavāḷæ (Sancoale) and Kēḷaśī (Quelossim). Kuśasthaḷī was also the name of the ancient Yadava city at the mouth of river Gomati on the western coast of the Kāṭhīyāvāḍa (Kathiawar) peninsula, just below the gulf of Kaccha. It is here that Kṛṣṇa built his new capital when he moved there from Mathurā. The place was not totally alien to him. According to Bhāgavata Purāna, the city was built by Revata, a descendant of king Śaryātī. [Bhāgavata Purāna, Canto 9, Chapter 3 : 27] Revata’s son Raivata Kāḍakumīṁ married his daughter Revatī to Kṛṣṇa’s elder brother Balarāma.

But here the story becomes a little misleading. It appears that it was this connection that drove Kṛṣṇa to seek asylum in Kuśasthaḷī. What the Bhāgavata Purāna does not make clear is that Kṛṣṇa and king Śaryātī belonged to the same ancestral Yadava lineage; Kṛṣṇa’s ancestors had left Kuśasthaḷī for Mathurā, driven by hostile invaders. So Kṛṣṇa chose “a remote but already known ancestral home-town” for resettling his band of Yadavas; possibly at the invitation of Raivata. [Nayak et al, 1992 : Existence And Location Of Dvaraka City of Mahabharata Era And Its Subsequent Submergence, in New Trends In Indian Art And Archaeology, 480]