Ayodhya

The settlement was historically known as Sāketa until it was renamed to Ayodhya during the Gupta period. The early Buddhist and Jain canonical texts mention that the religious leaders Gautama Buddha and Mahavira visited and lived in the city. The Jain texts also describe it as the birthplace of five tirthankaras namely, Rishabhanatha, Ajitanatha, Abhinandananatha, Sumatinatha and Anantanatha, and associate it with the legendary Bharata Chakravarti. From the Gupta period onwards, several sources mention Ayodhya and Saketa as the name of the same city.

The legendary city of Ayodhya, popularly identified as the present-day Ayodhya, is identified in the epic Ramayana and its many versions as the birthplace of the Hindu deity Rama of Kosala and is hence regarded as the first of the seven most important pilgrimage sites for Hindus. The Ayodhya dispute was centred on the Babri mosque, built 1528–29 under the Mughal emperor Babur and said to have been built on top of a Hindu temple that stood at the birth spot of Rama.