Varanasi’s name ties two streams to a city of light
On the Ganges in Uttar Pradesh, Varanasi—also called Banaras or Kashi—anchors Hindu pilgrimage, mourning, and craft. Digs near the city push habitation back toward 1800 BCE, while a seventh-century Chinese visitor already found a kilometres-long riverbank of temples and workshops.
Varanasi rises on the left bank of the Ganges in southeastern Uttar Pradesh, where pilgrimage, death rites, and Islamic artisan traditions braid through religious tourism. Its ancient name Kashi linked to a first-millennium-BCE kingdom; nearby Sarnath’s Ashokan lion capital is read as marking the Buddha’s first sermon in the fifth century BCE. Silk, carpets, crafts, and tourism employ many residents alongside industrial works, and the famous ghats—Dashashwamedh, Panchganga, Manikarnika, Harishchandra—step pilgrims down to the water.
Folk etymology joins the river names Varuna and Assi that once framed the old city. Sanskrit root kaś-, “to shine,” yields the “City of Light” title, and scriptures pile on epithets such as Avimukta—“never forsaken by Shiva.” Hindu tradition credits Shiva with founding Kashi; the Mahabharata’s Pandavas are said to have sought him here. Excavations in 2014 recovered material from about 800 BCE, while Aktha and Ramnagar sites nearby yielded finds dated around 1800 BCE.
In the Buddha’s era the place belonged to the Kingdom of Kashi. Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, visiting around 635 CE, described a religious and artistic hub stretching roughly five kilometres along the western bank. Much later, in 1791, East India Company resident Jonathan Duncan founded Benares Sanskrit College, India’s oldest Sanskrit college. Annie Besant’s Central Hindu College (1898) and, with Madan Mohan Malviya, Banaras Hindu University in 1916 cemented the city’s modern educational stature. The city’s genealogy registers and cremation ghats still draw Hindus seeking liberation at one of the Sapta Puri.
Source: Varanasi
