“Ik roz apni rooh se poocha, ki Dilli kya hai, to yun jawab main keh gaye, yeh duniya mano jism hai aur Dilli uski jaan.” The Urdu couplet means, “I asked my soul, ‘What is Delhi?’ It replied, ‘The world is the body, Dilli its soul'”. This is how Agra-born Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, who lived and died within the Walled City, described it.
For Mirza Ghalib, Dilli was not only a capital metropolis. It was a dwelling, respiration entity. The bruised Dilli, the Urdu poet mourned after the 1857 War of Independence, was already many cities outdated. Each king, every dynasty, left behind a legend, a declare on the town, and a reputation.
Earlier this week, Chandni Chowk MP Praveen Khandelwal wrote to the Centre seeking to rename Delhi asIndraprastha. He argued that Indraprastha, the traditional metropolis described within the Mahabharata, displays the capital’s earliest civilisational roots, whereas “Delhi” represented a later historic section.
“Renaming Delhi as Indraprastha would be a historic step toward restoring the civilisational identity of India’s capital. It would strengthen national pride, highlight India’s ancient heritage before the world, and create a powerful cultural narrative linking modern India with its timeless past,” Khandelwal, the BJP MP wrote.
Khandelwal has additionally requested the Centre to rename Old Delhi Railway Station as “Indraprastha Junction”, and the Indira Gandhi International Airport as “Indraprastha Airport”.
However, Khandelwal’s proposal to vary Delhi’s identify to Indraprastha has made manner for a query to be answered: How did Indraprastha, which archaeologists have linked to the Pandavas of Mahabharata, grow to be Delhi within the first place?
Historians hint the identify Delhi to medieval references akin to Dhillika or Dilli, that are related to early Rajput rulers lengthy earlier than the Delhi Sultanate (1206 onwards) entrenched it in imperial information. Through the centuries, the Mughals and ultimately the British, the identify Delhi stayed, at the same time as the town’s expanse and energy centres modified. The medieval Dilli grew to become Delhi for the colonisers, which ultimately grew to become New Delhi in 1926 after they based the new capital after shifting from Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1911.
DELHI’S PREHISTORIC ROOTS. WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE INDRAPRASTHA?
The Indraprastha of Mahabharata is normally put at round 1200-1100 BCE.
Long earlier than Indraprastha, the Delhi area, between the Yamuna and the northern fringes of the Aravalli vary, noticed human presence. Archaeological proof locations habitation right here within the Paleolithic period (early Stone Age), over one lakh years in the past.
In 2021, cave work and Stone Age rock artwork have been found in Mangar Bani hill forest in present-day Faridabad in Haryana, a part of the Aravalli vary skirting Delhi. Haryana Archaeology Department officers described it as the primary main prehistoric discover within the area. The motifs counsel early hunter-gatherer communities as soon as lived right here.
In the Delhi NCR area, Paleolithic instruments akin to hand-axes and scrapers have been unearthed too. Nomadic settlements alongside the Yamuna plains and the invention of prehistoric rock formations and stone instruments, even throughout the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus, stand as witnesses to early historic human habitation in what at this time is India’s capital.
Later within the protohistoric interval, basically the Indus-Saraswati Civilisation, Delhi didn’t witness vital organised human settlements. However, additional north in Haryana’s Rakhigarhi, about 150 km from Delhi, excavations have revealed a major Harappan site dating back around 4,600 years.
In the Vedic interval that adopted, the Yamuna grew to become the cradle of settlements within the Delhi area. The Yamuna basin was fertile. Water meant human settlement.
DID A KING NAMED RAJA DHILLU GIVE DELHI ITS NAME?
The Mahabharata describes Indraprastha because the capital of the Pandavas. Many historians place it round 1400 BCE and find it in what’s now central Delhi, alongside the Yamuna.
Archaeological excavations at Purana Qila have yielded Painted Grey Ware pottery dated to 1200-1100 BCE. This pottery is related to Iron Age Indo-Aryan tradition. Since 1954, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), together with archaeologist BB Lal, has excavated layers from subsequent Mauryan, Kushana and Gupta periods on the web site.
In 2023, the ASI reiterated the invention of Painted Grey Ware sherds at Purana Qila. Some see this as a hyperlink to the Mahabharata period. But archaeologists additionally warning that materials tradition alone can not affirm the town talked about in Mahabharata. Irrespective, the proof reveals continuity of habitation.
According to the Delhi authorities, “the origin of its name is narrated by a King called Raja Dhillu who ruled the area for 14 years at the beginning of the Christian Era [CE]”.
The area was also referred to as Yoginipura in the course of the Gupta (4th-Sixth century) and Pratihara (Eighth-Eleventh century) durations. Inscriptions, together with inscriptions close to the Iron Pillar in Mehrauli, counsel it might need been a sacred or pilgrimage centre, probably related to Jain traditions.
The identify, Yoginipura, has additionally been talked about in a number of Jain texts. And the presence of Jain temples, destroyed by Afghan invaders, attest to the identify of Yoginipura.
DOES DELHI MEAN THRESHOLD OR HEART OF HINDUSTAN?
By the Eleventh century, the Tomar Rajputs based a fortified city known as Dhillika or Dhilli.
“The first medieval city of Delhi founded by the Tomars was called Dhilli or Dhillika, although among the known records the name Dhillika occurs for the first time in the inscription of 1170 from Bijolia, District Udaipur, which mentions the capture of Delhi by the Chahamanas,” in keeping with historian YD Sharma’s guide, Delhi and Its Neighbourhood.
“The Palam Baolli inscription of 1276 written in the time of [Delhi Sultan] Balban calls it Dhilli and the country in which it lies as Hariyanaka. But an inscription of the reign of Mohdammad Bin Thuglaq (1328) refers to the city as Dhillika… It is also called Dhilli, Dihli and Dhilli in old records, some of which refer to it as Dehal, meaning threshold of the country, though others prefer Dilli, the heart of Hindustan,” added Sharma, within the guide, Delhi and Its Neighbourhood.
King Anangpal II is credited with establishing Lal Kot round 1052 CE close to present-day Mehrauli.
Then, the Chauhans, together with Prithviraj Chauhan, expanded the Tomars’ Lal Kot into Qila Rai Pithora within the twelfth century. The location was the identical, rugged Mehrauli in southern present-day Delhi. The early medieval interval marked the transformation right into a fortified political capital.
“…It is quite possible that Indraprastha lost its status much before the time of Anang Pal II, the Tomar ruler who is credited to have inhabited Delhi…,” historian Upinder Singh wrote in her guide, Ancient Delhi.
UNDER SULTANS, MUGHALS, HOW DELHI BECOME AN IMPERIAL HUB REGARDLESS OF ITS NAME?
The defeat of Prithviraj Chauhan by Muhammad Ghori in 1192 within the Second Battle of Tarain reshaped northern India. Qutbuddin Aibak established the Slave Dynasty in 1206, and the Delhi Sultanate started.
Over the subsequent three centuries, rulers akin to Alauddin Khilji, Ghiyasuddin Tughlak and Firoz Shah Tughlak constructed new cities within the area that had totally different names, like Siri, Tughlakabad, Jahanpanah and Firozabad.
Delhi, the area, regardless of the identify, grew to become an imperial hub.
The identify developed in pronunciation. “Dhilli” and “Dehli” additionally seem in Persian information within the pre-Mughal interval.
The Thirteenth-century Sufi poet-scholar, Amir Khusro, glided by Amir Khusro Dehlavi.
Soon, Ibrahim Lodhi, the final ruler of the Lodhi Dynasty and the Sultanate, was defeated by Babur within the first Battle of Panipat in 1526. He took over the region of Dehli and most of the territories below the Lodhi management. Dehli remained the seat of energy.
After the Mughals captured Delhi, it was Emperor Shah Jahan who took a giant leap in hyping up the capital. In 1638, he based Shahjahanabad within the northern a part of Delhi, alongside the Yamuna. Landmarks, just like the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid, and the Fahethpuri Masjid got here up. Dilli grew to become shorthand for empire, tradition and poetry.
After the loss of life of Aurangzeb in 1707, the Mughal Empire started to say no. While Dilli remained the symbolic centre, the provinces and peripheral kingdoms began breaking away. The Later Mughals nonetheless “ruled” from the Red Fort, however their authority shrank quick. By the time the final Mughal emperor sat on the throne, his efficient management was decreased to Delhi and some villages round Palam.
It was this metropolis that Ghalib inhabited. And it was this metropolis that was shattered in 1857 when the British crushed the sepoys’ rebellion.
HOW DILLI BECAME DELHI UNDER THE BRITISH?
After 1857, the British Crown consolidated management. They anglicised “Dilli” into “Delhi”. In 1911, King George V introduced the transfer of the imperial capital from Calcutta to Delhi.
Historian Swapna Liddle in her guide, Connaught Place and the Making of New Delhi, famous that an Englishman in 1913, in a letter to the Viceroy and Governor-General of India Lord Hardinge, identified that “though the British mostly spelt and pronounced the name as Delhi, this was incorrect. In fact, the name of the place was Dilli or Dehli”.
“… Though indeed Delhi was the wrong spelling and pronunciation, long usage by the British had sanctified it,” added Liddle.
So, in 1926, the brand new capital, south of the Mughal Shahjahanabad, was formally named New Delhi.
After Independence in 1947, Delhi grew to become the capital of the Republic of India. It expanded quickly. It absorbed refugees, migrants, and hopes.
Indraprastha, Dhillika, Dilli, Dehli, Delhi and New Delhi. Each identify marks a shift in energy, not a break in continuous habitation. The metropolis didn’t exchange itself. It added layers. What modified have been the rulers, the town’s names, the scripts through which they have been written and their pronunciation. The geographical area between the Yamuna and the Aravallis stored drawing powers.
The etymological roots of Delhi could be traced again to Raja Dhillu, and are over 2,000 years outdated. Whether MP Praveen Khandelwal’s demand is met or not, Delhi’s energy has at all times been its capacity to hold every thing, together with each identify it has ever been given, and the soul that Ghalib as soon as wrote about.
– Ends
(With inputs from Meenal Sharma)
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