Yadava Dynasty

The Yadava dynasty descends from Yadu, eldest son of Yayati, who was denied the primary succession in favor of his younger brother Puru. The Yadavas established their power base at Mathura in the Yamuna region, where the lineage continued through Shurasena (whose name survives in the ancient region of Surasena around Mathura) to Vasudeva, father of Krishna. Krishna's life marks the apex and the end of Yadava power. Born at Mathura, he defeated his tyrannical uncle Kamsa and later led the Yadavas to a new capital at Dwarka on the Gujarat coast — a strategic maritime relocation that placed the Yadavas at the center of Indian Ocean trade routes. Krishna's role in the Mahabharata War (5,561 BCE in the Oak chronology) as Arjuna's charioteer and the speaker of the Bhagavad Gita makes him the most consequential figure in the entire dynasty. After the war, a fratricidal conflict among the Yadavas (the Mausala Parva) destroyed the clan. Krishna departed the mortal world, and Dwarka was submerged by the sea — an event that S.R. Rao's underwater archaeology off the Gujarat coast has partially corroborated. The submersion date in the Oak-Bhaty framework is approximately 5,525 BCE, 36 years after the Mahabharata War. The Yadava identity persisted in later Indian history through various claimant dynasties, but the original Dwarka-based Yadava power ended with Krishna's era.