Session 3- Tracing Ancient Roots of Mumbai- Visit to Sopara by Dr. Anita Rane-Kothare

First, we stopped at the Chakreshwar lake in Nalasopara West. Outside the temple along the compound wall are a row of stone carvings. Legend has it that these were all retrieved from the lake, presumably as a result of destruction of the original temple by the Portuguese who apparently destroyed most of the temples in the Bassein area after they took it over from the Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat in the treaty of 1533 for helping him to counter the threat posed by the Mughals. The most impressive is this idol of Brahma with four faces that represent the four Vedas.


Later we went to what remains as ruins of a Buddhist stupa. In April 1882, Bhagvanlal Indraji, a noted archaeologist excavated at the Burud Rajache Kot mound in Merdes village, near Sopara. . From the center of the stupa (inside a brick built chamber) a large stone coffer was excavated which contained eight bronze images of Maitreya Buddha which belong to the c. 8th-9th century CE. This coffer also enclosed relic caskets of copper, silver, stone, crystal and gold, along with numerous gold flowers and fragments of a begging bowl. A silver coin of Gautamiputra Satakarni (Satvahans) was also found from the mound.