Pune: Secret of a 4,000 Years Old Chariot Revealed In Gokhale Institute

Pune, 10th February 2024: The second day of the History Literature Festival being held at the Gokhale Institute featured the Manjul couple, who have made archaeology’s most important discovery of the 21st century. They had an open conversation about their work experience in Sinauli, its importance and the criticism they received after their research.

There is an archaeological excavation site located in the village of Sinauli in Uttar Pradesh. A war chariot was found here during the excavations in 2018. The discovery of a chariot found at this site, which is associated with the Indus Civilization, has been compared to the 20th century Harappan archaeological excavations. Sanjay Kumar Manjul and his wife Arvin Manjul discussed the detailed challenges they came across during this chariot’s discovery, while they were speaking in a session regarding archaeology.

“A chariot holds great importance in Indian culture. There are mentions of the chariots in the Vedas and epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata. However, there was no historical evidence of these chariots. That’s why the Western intellectuals claimed that we took the concept of a chariot from them. But after this discovery, it was proved that the chariots existed in the Indian subcontinent,” said Sanjay Kumar Manjul while explaining the importance of his discovery.

Arvin Manjul briefly defined what archaeology is and shared their challenges regarding their research with the audience. She said, “Excavation in archaeology is a systematic destruction. At first, we thought that it was a throne while we were excavating the site. But as we went deeper, we realised that we’ve discovered something really important. Guessing that it might be a chariot, while getting it out safely without a minuscule amount of damage was also a big challenge.”

Some intellectuals argued that this discovery was a bullock cart and not a chariot. But Sanjay Kumar Manjul rejected these allegations. For the same reasons, he showed a lot of information about the chariot to the audience through the medium of a presentation. Informing that the research was expected to be questioned, he said that the statements made by the intellectuals were tailor-made. Speaking of the upcoming plans, he said that the excavations of the Indus Valley and the Ganges are still remaining. He expressed the belief that if such excavations are carried out in other parts of India, bigger discoveries can be made. He also appealed to the youth to participate in archaeology, while increasing the research in this field.