Ayodhya

Ayodhya (uyōd'yu) [key]or Ajodhya (ujōd'yu) [key], former town, Uttar Pradesh state, N India, on the Ghaghara River. It is a joint municipality with Faizabad. Ayodhya was the capital of the kingdom of Kosala (7th cent. B.C.). Long associated with Hindu legend of Rama and his father Dasharatha (see Ramayana), the town is a center of pilgrimage and is one of the seven sites sacred to Hindus. In the late 1980s it became the center of Muslim-Hindu tensions, and in 1992 fundamentalist Hindus pulled down the 16th-century Babri mosque that they alleged stood on the site of Rama's birthplace. The site of the razed mosque remains a source of contention; in 2003 the Archaeological Survey of India reported that remains of a structure with features like those of Hindu temple are underneath the mosque. Ayodhya was formerly called Oudh.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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