Mathura became the capital of the Shurasena Province, which comprised of the modern-day districts of Mathura, Agra, and Firozabad and was ruled by the kings belonging to the Yadava Dynasty. The Yadavas of the Shurasena Province were a confederacy of many clans which included the Vrishnis, Madhavas, Andhakas, and Bhojas, who belonged to the Chandra vamsha ksatriya lineage and ruled from different principalities in and around the province of Shurasena. The Yadavas were all descendents of King Yadu, the illustrious son of Maharaja Yayati, who had ruled from his capital city at Pratisthanpur (Prayag).
The Chandra-vamsha Empire under Yayati stretched from the Narmada River in the south to Hastinapura in the north and all the central regions of Aryavarta lying west of the Ganges were under his control. At the end of Dwapara-yuga, the most prominent King amongst the Yadava clan was Ugrasena Maharaja, who was the king of Mathura at the time of Lord Krishna’s appearance. His eldest son Kamsa, later imprisoned Ugrasena Maharaja and forcibly usurped his father’s throne. The other prominent king at the time was the virtuous Shurasena Maharaja, after whom the Yadava kingdom of Shurasena was named. Shurasena Maharaja ruled from the city of Yadupura, also called Vateshwara (Batasar), located about one hundred kilometers to the south of Mathura and some forty-five kilometers southeast of Agra. The Shurasena kingdom formally covered parts of the modern-day districts of Mathura and Agra in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Maharaja Shurasena’s son was the celebrated Vasudeva, who married Princess Devaki but just after their wedding they were imprisoned by Kamsa, who according to an omen, feared that a son born to them would kill him in the future. While in Kamsa’s prison cell, Devaki gave birth to a number of children who were all immediately slaughtered by the evil Kamsa. Devaki’s eighth child was Lord Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead and immediately after His birth, He was taken by Vasudeva to the safety of Nanda Maharaja’s home in Gokula where Kamsa could not harm Him. The Shrimad Bhagavatam reveals that Lord Shri Krishna spent the first eleven years of His life living in the rural environs of Gokula Vrindavana, under the care of His foster parents Nanda and Yashoda, before eventually returning to Mathura in order to kill Kamsa, deliver Vasudeva and Devaki from persecution, and restore Ugrasena Maharaja on the throne of Mathura.
Subsequently, after numerous attacks on the city of Mathura by inimical kings and their legions, Krishna established the new city of Dwaraka in the midst of the ocean and relocated the entire Yadava Dynasty to the new city. In the course of His life, Krishna vanquished all the evil demons on earth and during the ensuing fratricidal conflict between the royal cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, known as the Mahabharata war, by His divine will, Krishna removed the great burden on earth created by so many kings and their military forces who were all vanquished during the battle, which left no survivors except the five pious Pandava brothers and a few of their loyal followers.
Then some thirty-six years after the Mahabharata war, in the year 3102 BCE, Lord Krishna disappeared from the vision of the world. According to the Surya siddhanta, Kali-yuga began at midnight on the 18 February 3102 BCE, on the very day that Krishna left the world. Sometime after the departure of Lord Krishna, the Pandavas decided to retire from worldly affairs and leave for the Himalayas to pursue spiritual emancipation. In order to continue the rule of the Chandra-vamsha Dynasty, Yudisthira enthroned Parikshit Maharaja at Hastinapur while Arjuna enthroned Lord Krishna’s great grandson Vajranabha Maharaja as the ruler of both Indraprashta and Mathura.
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