Nashik

1. c. 3000 BCE

   Stone Age Footprints

   Archaeologists have found tools and flakes proving people lived around the Godavari here in the early Stone Age. The river gave them water, game, and later the black basalt they would carve into caves. Long before any temple or vineyard, this bend in the river was already home.

2. Treta Yuga

   Lakshman Cuts the Nose

   According to the Ramayana, Lord Ram, Sita and Lakshman lived in the Panchavati grove on the Godavari's left bank. When Ravana's sister Surpanakha tried to seduce Ram, Lakshman sliced off her nose. The place took its name from nasika — Sanskrit for nose. Five ancient banyans still give the neighbourhood its name.

3. 150 BCE

   Silk Market of the Deccan

   By the second century BCE Nashik had become the largest marketplace in the country. It sat on the trade route linking Tagara and Pratishthana to the port of Bharuch. Nashik silk was so prized that the word nasich later appeared in medieval European inventories for gold-brocaded cloth. The smell of dye vats and the clack of looms filled the streets.

4. 1st century BCE

   Nahapana Carves Pandavleni

   Shaka ruler Nahapana ordered Buddhist caves cut into the Trirashmi hill. His son-in-law Ushavadata added more. Monks received rock-cut cells, cisterns and inscriptions promising support. The caves still smell of old stone and bat droppings; their cool interiors once echoed with Pali chants.

5. c. 50 CE

   Gautamiputra Crushes the Shakas

   Satavahana king Gautamiputra Satakarni defeated Nahapana somewhere in Nashik district. He overstruck more than ten thousand of the Shaka's silver coins, found later at Jogal Tembhi. The victory inscription carved in the caves boasts he destroyed Shakas, Yavanas and Pahlavas in one decisive blow.

6. 250 CE

   Ishvarasena Starts an Era

   Abhira king Ishvarasena left an inscription in Cave IX recording gifts to Buddhist monks and began a new calendar later known as the Kalachuri-Chedi era. The investment funded free medicine for sick mendicants. For the next 67 years ten Abhira kings ruled from Nashik.

Who lived here

• Filmmaker · 1870–1944

  Dhundiraj Govind Phalke

  Born in Nashik

  In 1913 Dadasaheb Phalke screened Raja Harishchandra in a Bombay tent and changed India forever. The Sanskrit scholar's son from Nashik had painted stage backdrops before teaching himself film in London. He would probably smile at the giant cutouts of film stars that still line Nashik roads during festival season.

• Freedom fighter and ideologue · 1883–1966

  Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

  Born in Bhagur village, Nashik district

  At 23 Savarkar founded the Abhinav Bharat Society in a Nashik house that still stands. Two decades later he returned from the Cellular Jail to a hero's welcome at the same railway station. Today's Nashik, with its wine bars and quiet temples, would puzzle the man who once declared this soil produced warriors.

• Marathi poet and playwright · 1912–1999

  Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar

  Born and lived in Nashik

  Kusumagraj wrote Vishakha in 1942 from a small Nashik room while the independence movement burned outside. The poetry collection became a rallying cry. He spent the rest of his life here, refusing to leave even when Bombay offered more. Locals still argue which of his plays best captured the city's stubborn soul.

• Revolutionary · 1891–1910

  Anant Laxman Kanhere

  Carried out assassination in Nashik

  On 21 June 1909 the 18-year-old walked into a Nashik theatre and shot British Collector Jackson dead. He acted inside the network Savarkar built here. The gallows came ten months later. Nashik still whispers about that night when a local boy made the empire bleed.