Copper vessel with ‘Sanskrit’ letter found in Ayodhya? No, it’s a hoax

A video of a copper vessel with a letter, which is claimed to have been excavated from the Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya, has gone viral on social media.

Several Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and supporters shared the 28-second video social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook claiming that a copper vessel has been recovered from the Ram Janmabhoomi excavation site and contains a letter written in Sanskrit.

A similar tweet by anti-Islamic journalist Pushpendra Kulshrestha received thousands of retweets and likes. Many other users have also shared the same video on Twitter as well as social media platform Facebook, with some calling it a “time capsule” with details of the “original temple”.

What’s the fact?

In fact, the original video doesn’t show a letter excavated from the Ram Janmabhoomi site. It was actually shared by an Instagram account with the handle name ‘Define Avcisi’ on 9 April, i.e., a month before the excavation at the Babri Masjid site started. The account is of a hobbyist, and posts pictures of a number of rare artefacts, coins, among others.

Ironically, the language on the artefact is not Sanskrit as claimed but “Hebrew”. A closer look at the symbols on the document in the video reveals that that they are Jewish and not Hindu.