Place · city

Mathura

Mathura is a city on the Yamuna in Uttar Pradesh, India, revered by Hindus as the birthplace of Krishna. In antiquity it was the capital of the Surasena kingdom, then a seat of the Indo-Scythian Northern Satraps and the southern capital of the Kushan Empire, when its workshops produced some of the earliest Buddha images in red sandstone. Mahmud of Ghazni sacked it in 1018, and it remains one of India's main pilgrimage centres.

Mathura
Image: Umang108 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Mentioned in 4 profiles

Kushan EmpireSocioeconomy, Military, Governance, Impact, Decline, SummaryGhaznavid EmpireMilitaryBuddhismLegacyJainismTexts

Mentioned in 6 state histories

SurasenaIndo-ScythiansNorthern SatrapsKushan EmpireNagas of PadmavatiBharatpur State

See also

Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Mathura. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/mathura
MLA
“Mathura.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/mathura. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Mathura.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/mathura.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Mathura’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/mathura (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻