Ayodhya

Ayodhya (əyōd`yə) or Ajodhya (əjōd`yə), 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.

---

Ayodhya

 or Oudh

Town (pop., 2001: 49,417), Uttar Pradesh state, northern India. Lying on the banks of the Ghaghara River just east of Faizabad, of which it is now a suburb, Ayodhya in ancient times was one of India's greatest cities; today, it is one of the seven holy cities of Hinduism. It was the capital of Kosala, as described in the Ramayana. It became an important Buddhist centre in Buddhism's early years (6th–4th century BC), and the Buddha is said to have lived there. In the 16th century the Mughal emperor Babur built a mosque on a site traditionally associated with an ancient Hindu temple marking the birthplace of the god Rama. The storming of the mosque by Hindus in 1990, amid religious tensions, was followed by riots, and the ensuing crisis brought down the government. In 1992 the mosque was demolished by Hindu fundamentalists, and hundreds of people died in the rioting that subsequently swept through India.