Indraprastha (Sanskrit: इन्द्रप्रस्थ, literally "Plain of Indra" or "City of Indra") is a city mentioned in ancient Indian literature as a constituent of the Kuru kingdom. According to the Hindu epic Mahabharata, it was established as the capital of the Pandavas, the five brothers central to the narrative. The city is traditionally located within the area of present-day Delhi.
The site is sometimes also referred to as Khandavaprastha, taking its name from the Khandava Forest, a wooded tract on the banks of the Yamuna river. As narrated in the Mahabharata, this forest was cleared by Krishna and Arjuna to make way for the new city. In Buddhist literature, the same place appears under the Pali form Indapatta and is described as the capital of the Kuru Mahajanapada, one of the sixteen great realms of early historical north India.
In modern times, the topography of the medieval fort of Purana Qila, situated on the banks of the Yamuna in Delhi, has often been associated with the literary description of the citadel of Indraprastha in the Mahabharata. However, archaeological excavations carried out at the site have not produced evidence of an ancient fortified city matching the grandeur described in the epic. Only a limited quantity of Iron Age pottery shards has been recovered, along with a few artefacts and structural remains attributable to settlements of the Maurya and Kushan periods.
Scholars note that correlating material archaeological cultures with descriptions found in ancient literary sources is methodologically very difficult. As a result, Indraprastha remains primarily a city of textual tradition, prominent in the Mahabharata and in Buddhist sources, while its precise historical and physical identification continues to be a subject of academic discussion. Its memory persists in the cultural and religious imagination associated with Delhi, and its name is invoked in various institutional and place-name contexts in the region.