156-528: Traditional Yatra ( Sanskrit : यात्रा , lit. 'journey, procession', IAST : Yātrā ), in Indian-origin religions , Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism , generally means a pilgrimage to holy places such as confluences of sacred rivers , sacred mountains , places associated with Hindu epics such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana , and other sacred pilgrimage sites . Visiting
312-541: A Sub-Divisional Magistrate . The DM is Kaushal Raj Sharma. Varanasi district comes under the Varanasi Police Zone and Varanasi Police Range, Varanasi Zone is headed by an Additional Director General ranked IPS officer, and the Varanasi Range is headed Inspector General ranked IPS officer. The ADG, Varanasi Zone is Biswajit Mahapatra, and IG, Varanasi Range is Vijay Singh Meena. The district police up to
468-539: A humid subtropical climate ( Köppen climate classification Cwa ) with large variations between summer and winter temperatures. The dry summer starts in April and lasts until June, followed by the monsoon season from July to October. The temperature ranges between 22 and 46 °C (72 and 115 °F) in the summers. Winters in Varanasi see very large diurnal variations, with warm days and downright cold nights. Cold waves from
624-498: A 48 kos circumambulation parikrama of various Mahabharata -related and other pilgrimage sites, around the holy city of Kurukshetra in the state of Haryana , India. Within Kurukshetra, along with Brahma Sarovar, other important sites are Jyotisar (place of "Gitaupadesha" - the first Upadeśa or discourse of Bhagavad Gita by Krishna) and Sannihit Sarovar ( Hindu genealogy registers of Kurukshetra are kept here). Since this
780-403: A Kashi princess Valandhara and their union resulted in the birth of Sarvaga, who later ruled Kashi. Dhritarasthra's eldest son Duryodhana also married a Kashi princess Bhanumati, who later bore him a son Lakshmana Kumara and a daughter Lakṣmaṇā. The Cakkavatti Sīhanāda Sutta text of Buddhism puts forth an idea stating that Varanasi will one day become the fabled kingdom of Ketumati in
936-516: A centre of activity for intellectuals and theologians during the Middle Ages, which further contributed to its reputation as a cultural centre of religion and education. Several major figures of the Bhakti movement were born in Varanasi, including Kabir who was born here in 1389, and Ravidas , a 15th-century socio-religious reformer, mystic, poet, traveller, and spiritual figure, who was born and lived in
1092-489: A dead language in the most common usage of the term. Pollock's notion of the "death of Sanskrit" remains in this unclear realm between academia and public opinion when he says that "most observers would agree that, in some crucial way, Sanskrit is dead." Varanasi Varanasi ( ISO : Vārāṇasī , Hindi: [ʋaːˈraːɳəsi] ; also Benares , Banaras ( Banārasa [bəˈnaːrəs] ) or Kashi ( Kāśī [ˈka:ʃi] ) )
1248-433: A focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit. Though written in a number of different scripts, the dominant language of Hindu texts has been Sanskrit. It or a hybrid form of Sanskrit became the preferred language of Mahayana Buddhism scholarship; for example, one of the early and influential Buddhist philosophers, Nagarjuna (~200 CE), used Classical Sanskrit as the language for his texts. According to Renou, Sanskrit had
1404-581: A language competed with numerous, less exact vernacular Indian languages called Prakritic languages ( prākṛta - ). The term prakrta literally means "original, natural, normal, artless", states Franklin Southworth . The relationship between Prakrit and Sanskrit is found in Indian texts dated to the 1st millennium CE. Patañjali acknowledged that Prakrit is the first language, one instinctively adopted by every child with all its imperfections and later leads to
1560-643: A limited role in the Theravada tradition (formerly known as the Hinayana) but the Prakrit works that have survived are of doubtful authenticity. Some of the canonical fragments of the early Buddhist traditions, discovered in the 20th century, suggest the early Buddhist traditions used an imperfect and reasonably good Sanskrit, sometimes with a Pali syntax, states Renou. The Mahāsāṃghika and Mahavastu, in their late Hinayana forms, used hybrid Sanskrit for their literature. Sanskrit
1716-454: A natural part of the earliest Vedic language, and that these developed in the centuries after the composition had been completed, and as a gradual unconscious process during the oral transmission by generations of reciters. The primary source for this argument is internal evidence of the text which betrays an instability of the phenomenon of retroflexion, with the same phrases having sandhi-induced retroflexion in some parts but not other. This
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#17328447036101872-479: A negative evidence to Pollock's hypothesis, but it is not positive evidence. A closer look at Sanskrit in the Indian history after the 12th century suggests that Sanskrit survived despite the odds. According to Hanneder, On a more public level the statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is misleading, for Sanskrit is quite obviously not as dead as other dead languages and the fact that it is spoken, written and read will probably convince most people that it cannot be
2028-546: A pan-Indo-Aryan accessibility to information and knowledge in the ancient and medieval times, in contrast to the Prakrit languages which were understood just regionally. It created a cultural bond across the subcontinent. As local languages and dialects evolved and diversified, Sanskrit served as the common language. It connected scholars from distant parts of South Asia such as Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, states Deshpande, as well as those from different fields of studies, though there must have been differences in its pronunciation given
2184-507: A procession, or any festival which figures a procession, such as Kanwar Yatra and Rath Yatra . In Rath Yatra, chariots are pulled in parade down the streets of Puri in Orissa . In modern times the word can be used to denote marches or demonstrations, for political, environmental or societal causes. The terms ' jatra ' and ' zatra ' are derived from yatra. Holy deities: Kuladaivat Hindu families have their own family patron deity. This deity
2340-573: A refined and standardized grammatical form that emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in the most comprehensive of ancient grammars, the Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight chapters') of Pāṇini . The greatest dramatist in Sanskrit, Kālidāsa , wrote in classical Sanskrit, and the foundations of modern arithmetic were first described in classical Sanskrit. The two major Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and
2496-534: A restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded". The Classical form of the language simplified the sandhi rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond
2652-498: A sacred place is believed by the pilgrim to purify the self and bring one closer to the divine. The journey itself is as important as the destination, and the hardships of travel serve as an act of devotion in themselves. A tīrtha-yātrā is a pilgrimage to a sacred site . Yatri is the term for anyone who undertakes the yatra. In present times, yatras are highly organized affairs, with specialized tourism companies catering to yatris. State governments are sometimes involved in
2808-560: A short distance away. Thousands of pilgrims come to Puri during the festival with a desire to help pull Jagannath's chariot with ropes. This is the only day when devotees who are normally not allowed in the temple premises, such as non-Hindus and foreigners, can get their glimpse of the deities. [1] Spiritual Yatra Packages Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )
2964-439: A similar phonetic structure to Tamil. Hock et al. quoting George Hart state that there was influence of Old Tamil on Sanskrit. Hart compared Old Tamil and Classical Sanskrit to arrive at a conclusion that there was a common language from which these features both derived – "that both Tamil and Sanskrit derived their shared conventions, metres, and techniques from a common source, for it is clear that neither borrowed directly from
3120-549: A small stream in the southern part of the city, near Assi Ghat. The old city is located on the north shores of the Ganges, bounded by Varuna and Assi. In the Mahabharata and in ancient India, the city is referred to as Kāśī from the Sanskrit verbal root kaś- "to shine", making Varanasi known as "City of Light", the " luminous city as an eminent seat of learning ". The name was also used by pilgrims dating from Buddha's days. Kashi
3276-697: Is Mridula Jaiswal, and the municipal commissioner is Nitin Bansal. Water supply and sewage system is operated by the Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam. Varanasi is represented in the Lok Sabha by the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi who won the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and subsequently in 2019 by a huge margin. Hospitals in the city include the Sir Sunderlal Hospital , a teaching hospital in
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#17328447036103432-692: Is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages . It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age . Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism , the language of classical Hindu philosophy , and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism . It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in
3588-525: Is a city on the Ganges river in northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu world . The city has a syncretic tradition of Islamic artisanship that underpins its religious tourism. Located in the middle-Ganges valley in the southeastern part of the state of Uttar Pradesh , Varanasi lies on the left bank of the river. It is 692 kilometres (430 mi) to
3744-618: Is a site associated with the Mahabharata, it is an important place of pilgrimage for Hindus. It is one of 3 main pilgrimage sites related to "Krishna" circuit. The other two being, " Braj parikarma " in Mathura , Uttar Pradesh and " Dwarka parkarma " (Dwarkadish yatra) at Dwarkadhish Temple in Gujarat . The 84-Kosi Yatra is a tradition in Hindu religion that has been there for thousands of years with
3900-448: Is a very popular yatra destination for Hindus; about four lakh people visit during the season. Vraja Parikrama circuit of pilgrimage was formally established by the 16th century sadhus of vaishnava sampradaya with fixed routes, itinerary and rituals. The circuit covers is spread across 2500 km area with 84 kos or 300 km long periphery extending 10 km to east and 50 km to north and west. Braj has two main types of pilgrimage circuits,
4056-508: Is akin to that of Latin and Ancient Greek in Europe. Sanskrit has significantly influenced most modern languages of the Indian subcontinent , particularly the languages of the northern, western, central and eastern Indian subcontinent. Sanskrit declined starting about and after the 13th century. This coincides with the beginning of Islamic invasions of South Asia to create, and thereafter expand
4212-616: Is common to a lineage, a clan or a locality. Samadhis (shrines) of Sadhus (Saints): Alandi , Samadhi of Dnyaneshwar: Mantralayam , samadhi of Raghavendra Tirtha , Belur Math which enshrine that Holy remains of Sri Ramakrishna , Sri Sarada Devi , Swami Vivekananda Puri, and other direct Disciples of Sri Ramakrishna, Tulsi Ghat , Varanasi where Saint Tulsidas left his mortal coil, Samadhi Mandir of Saint Kabir at Gorakhpur , near Varanasi , Panchaganga Ghat, Varanasi where Trailanga Swami lived and left his mortal body, Karar Ashram, Puri where Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri , attained
4368-452: Is found in the writing of Bharata Muni , the author of the ancient Natya Shastra text. The early Jain scholar Namisādhu acknowledged the difference, but disagreed that the Prakrit language was a corruption of Sanskrit. Namisādhu stated that the Prakrit language was the pūrvam ('came before, origin') and that it came naturally to children, while Sanskrit was a refinement of Prakrit through "purification by grammar". Sanskrit belongs to
4524-597: Is headed by SP rank. The development of infrastructure in the city is overseen by the Varanasi Development Authority (VDA), which comes under the Housing Department of Uttar Pradesh government . The divisional commissioner of Varanasi acts as the ex-officio chairman of the VDA, whereas the vice-chairman, a government-appointed Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer , looks after the daily matters of
4680-613: Is held every year in the month of Falgun in Hindu calendar. The Amarnath Temple in Jammu and Kashmir is dedicated to Shiva, one of the trinity of gods. The temple is on Amarnath Peak , and is among the most famous shrines in Hinduism. Every year inside the main Amarnath cave an ice Shiva lingam forms, along with two other ice formations representing Ganesha and Parvati. Amarnath yatra is held every year to pay homage to Shiva and Parvati. The temple
4836-522: Is now being run by the Tata Memorial Centre after intervention by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who represents Varanasi. Sushruta , an ancient Indian physician known as the primary author of the treatise Sushruta Samhita , the Sanskrit text of surgery, lived in Varanasi and practised medicine and surgery sometime during the 5th century BCE. Since 1922, Ayurveda has been a subject of training in
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4992-468: Is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together. Benares became a princely state in 1911, with Ramnagar as its capital, but with no jurisdiction over the city proper. The religious head, Kashi Naresh, has had his headquarters at the Ramnagar Fort since the 18th century, also a repository of the history of the kings of Varanasi, which
5148-412: Is one of the holiest of Hindu pilgrimages that is held four times every 12 years rotating among the four cities of Prayagraj , Haridwar , Nashik , and Ujjain . The Mahamaham in temple town of Kumbakonam is also celebrated once in 12 years. Annual Gita Mahotsav at Kurukshetra , Shravani Mela at Deoghar , and Pitrapaksha Mela at Gaya are also notable holy fairs. Holy temples: Examples are
5304-524: Is rare in the later version of the language. The Homerian Greek, like Ṛg-vedic Sanskrit, deploys simile extensively, but they are structurally very different. The early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language was far less homogenous compared to the Classical Sanskrit as defined by grammarians by about the mid-1st millennium BCE. According to Richard Gombrich—an Indologist and a scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli and Buddhist Studies—the archaic Vedic Sanskrit found in
5460-462: Is regarded as one of seven holy cities ( Sapta Puri ) which can provide Moksha ; Ayodhya , Mathura , Haridwar , Kashi, Kanchipuram , Avanti , and Dvārakā are the seven cities known as the givers of liberation. The princesses Ambika and Ambalika of Kashi were wed to the Hastinapur ruler Vichitravirya , and they later gave birth to Pandu and Dhritarashtra . Bhima , a son of Pandu, married
5616-509: Is situated to the east of Varanasi, across the Ganges. The Kashi Naresh is deeply revered by the local people and the chief cultural patron; some devout inhabitants consider him to be the incarnation of Shiva. Annie Besant founded the Central Hindu College , which later became a foundation for the creation of Banaras Hindu University in 1916. Besant founded the college because she wanted "to bring men of all religions together under
5772-405: Is sometimes epitomised in the history of one of its principal cities. The city of Benaras represents India religiously and intellectually, just as Paris represents the political Sentiments of France. There are few cities in the world of greater antiquity, and none that have so uninterruptedly maintained their ancient celebrity and distinction. Author Mark Twain wrote in 1897 of Varanasi, Benares
5928-516: Is stated to have been the birthplace of the previous Buddha, known as Kassapa Buddha . In the sacred geography of India Varanasi is known as the "microcosm of India". In addition to its 3,300 Hindu religious places, Varanasi has 12 churches, three Jain mandirs, nine Buddhist shrines, three Gurdwaras (Sikh shrines), and 1,388 Muslim holy places. Languages in Varanasi Municipal Corporation and Cantonment Board area, 2011 Census At
6084-473: Is still widely popular. Hindu religious texts use many epithets in Sanskrit to refer to Varanasi, such as Kāśikā ( transl. "the shining one" ), Avimukta ( transl. "never forsaken by Shiva" ), Ānaṃdakānana ( transl. "the forest of bliss" ), Rudravāsa ( transl. "the place where Rudra resides" ), and Mahāśmaśāna ( transl. "the great cremation ground" ). According to Hindu mythology , Varanasi
6240-479: Is taken along with evidence of controversy, for example, in passages of the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka (700 BCE), which features a discussion on whether retroflexion is valid in particular cases. The Ṛg-veda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas 2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas 1 and 10 are relatively the youngest. Yet,
6396-800: Is the abode of Shiva and circumambulating Mount Kailash on foot is a holy ritual. Another lake called Lake Rakshastal lying close to the west of Lake Manasarovar and The Great Mount Kailash. These lakes are the source of the Brahmaputra River and the Karnali River , a tributary of the river Ganges. The Kanwar Yatra is an annual pilgrimage of devotees of Shiva, known as Kānwarias , to Hindu pilgrimage places of Haridwar, Gaumukh and Gangotri in Uttarakhand and Sultanganj in Bihar to fetch holy waters of Ganges River. Millions of participants gather sacred water from
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6552-580: Is the predominant language of one of the largest collection of historic manuscripts. The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the Ayodhya Inscription of Dhana and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh) . Though developed and nurtured by scholars of orthodox schools of Hinduism, Sanskrit has been the language for some of the key literary works and theology of heterodox schools of Indian philosophies such as Buddhism and Jainism. The structure and capabilities of
6708-526: The Bhagavata Purana , the Panchatantra and many other texts are all in the Sanskrit language. The Classical Sanskrit with its exacting grammar was thus the language of the Indian scholars and the educated classes, while others communicated with approximate or ungrammatical variants of it as well as other natural Indian languages. Sanskrit, as the learned language of Ancient India, thus existed alongside
6864-443: The 2011 census , the Varanasi urban agglomeration had a population of 1,435,113, with 761,060 men and 674,053 women. The Varanasi municipal corporation and CB had a combined population of 1,212,610 of which 642,882 were males and 569,728 in 2011. The population in the age group of 0 to 6 years was 137,111. The population of the Varanasi urban agglomeration in 2001 was 1,371,749 with a ratio of 879 females every 1,000 males. However,
7020-572: The Banaras Hindu University , Heritage Hospital, Marwari Hospital, Pitambari Hospital, Mata Anand Mai Hospital, Rajkiya Hospital, Ram Krishna Mission Hospital, Shiv Prasad Gupta Hospital, Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital (managed by the state government), and Varanasi Hospital and Medical Research Centre. The urban parts of the Varanasi district had an infant mortality rate of 70 per 1,000 live births in 2010–2011. The Railway Cancer Hospital
7176-434: The Central Hindu College in 1898. In 1916, she and Madan Mohan Malviya founded the Banaras Hindu University , India's first modern residential university. Kashi Vidyapith was established in 1921, a response to Mahatma Gandhi 's non-cooperation movement . Traditional etymology links "Varanasi" to the names of two Ganges tributaries forming the city's borders: Varuna , still flowing in northern Varanasi, and Assi, today
7332-770: The Char Dham of Rameswaram , Dwarka , Puri and Badrinath ; Katra , home to the Vaishno Devi temple; Puri home to Vaishnava Jagannath temple and Rath Yatra celebration; Tirumala - Tirupati , home to the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple ; Sabarimala home to Swami Ayyappan ; the 108 Divya Desams ; the Shakti Peethas ; the twelve Maha Jyotirlingas ; the seven Sapta Puri ; the Pancha Bhoota Stalam . Holy processions: 'Yatra' can also be described as
7488-568: The Dalai Lama , the Sanskrit language is a parent language that is at the foundation of many modern languages of India and the one that promoted Indian thought to other distant countries. In Tibetan Buddhism, states the Dalai Lama, Sanskrit language has been a revered one and called legjar lhai-ka or "elegant language of the gods". It has been the means of transmitting the "profound wisdom of Buddhist philosophy" to Tibet. The Sanskrit language created
7644-760: The Himalayan region cause temperatures to dip across the city in the winter from December to February and temperatures below 5 °C (41 °F) are not uncommon. The average annual rainfall is 1,110 mm (44 in). Fog is common in the winters, while hot dry winds, called loo , blow in the summers. In recent years, the water level of the Ganges has decreased significantly; upstream dams, unregulated water extraction, and dwindling glacial sources due to global warming may be to blame. Varanasi has been ranked 9th best “National Clean Air City” (under Category 1 >10L Population cities) in India. According to provisional data from
7800-613: The Indo-European family of languages . It is one of the three earliest ancient documented languages that arose from a common root language now referred to as Proto-Indo-European : Other Indo-European languages distantly related to Sanskrit include archaic and Classical Latin ( c. 600 BCE–100 CE, Italic languages ), Gothic (archaic Germanic language , c. 350 CE ), Old Norse ( c. 200 CE and after), Old Avestan ( c. late 2nd millennium BCE ) and Younger Avestan ( c. 900 BCE). The closest ancient relatives of Vedic Sanskrit in
7956-602: The Kachwaha Rajput rulers of Amber (Mughal vassals themselves) most notably under Raja Man Singh rebuilt various temples and ghats in the city. The Raja of Jaipur established the Annapurna Mandir, and the 200-metre (660 ft) Akbari Bridge was also completed during this period. The earliest tourists began arriving in the city during the 16th century. In 1665, the French traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier described
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#17328447036108112-784: The Oudh camp, using his troops, forced the Nawab to withdraw his main force. The region eventually ceded by the Nawab of Oudh to the Benares State , a subordinate of the East India Company , in 1775, who recognised Benares as a family dominion. In 1791 under the rule of the British, resident Jonathan Duncan founded a Sanskrit College in Varanasi . In 1867, the establishment of the Varanasi Municipal Board led to significant improvements in
8268-639: The Parliament of India since 2014 . Modi inaugurated the Shri Kashi Vishwanath Corridor project, which aimed to enhance the city's spiritual vibrancy by connecting many ghats to the temple of Kashi Vishwanath, in December 2021. Varanasi is located at an elevation of 80.71 metres (264.8 ft) in the centre of the Ganges valley of North India , in the Eastern part of the state of Uttar Pradesh, along
8424-656: The Ratha Yatra at various sacred sites, the most popular one is Jagannath Rath jatra at Puri in Odisha. Other popular Rath Yatras are Dhamrai Jagannath Roth , Rathayatra of Mahesh , Manipur Ratha Yatra in Manipur which was started in 19th century and ISKCON Ratha Yatra in more than 100 places across the world. The Festival of Chariots of Jagannatha is held every year at Puri in the state of Orissa. The ten-day ratha yatra commemorates Jagannath's annual visit to Gundicha Mata's temple
8580-744: The Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. Gombrich posits that the language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha 's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages. The formalization of the Saṃskṛta language is credited to Pāṇini , along with Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work. Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'), which became
8736-532: The Rigveda , a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from the mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across northern Pakistan and into northwestern India. Vedic Sanskrit interacted with the preexisting ancient languages of the subcontinent, absorbing names of newly encountered plants and animals; in addition, the ancient Dravidian languages influenced Sanskrit's phonology and syntax. Sanskrit can also more narrowly refer to Classical Sanskrit ,
8892-526: The Rāmāyaṇa , however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit. In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language. The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to
9048-406: The sandhi rules, both internal and external. Quite many words found in the early Vedic Sanskrit language are never found in late Vedic Sanskrit or Classical Sanskrit literature, while some words have different and new meanings in Classical Sanskrit when contextually compared to the early Vedic Sanskrit literature. Arthur Macdonell was among the early colonial era scholars who summarized some of
9204-500: The verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- is a compound word consisting of sáṃ ('together, good, well, perfected') and kṛta - ('made, formed, work'). It connotes a work that has been "well prepared, pure and perfect, polished, sacred". According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal—rather than semantic—qualities. Sound and oral transmission were highly valued qualities in ancient India, and its sages refined
9360-414: The 13th century, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared, perhaps in the "fires that periodically engulfed the capital of Kashmir" or the "Mongol invasion of 1320" states Pollock. The Sanskrit literature which was once widely disseminated out of the northwest regions of the subcontinent, stopped after the 12th century. As Hindu kingdoms fell in the eastern and
9516-581: The 20th-century, the Hindi-Urdu writer Premchand and the shehnai player Bismillah Khan were associated with the city. India's oldest Sanskrit college, the Benares Sanskrit College , was founded by Jonathan Duncan , the resident of the East India Company in 1791. Later, education in Benares was greatly influenced by the rise of Indian nationalism in the late 19th-century. Annie Besant founded
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#17328447036109672-521: The 7th century where he established a major center of learning and language translation under the patronage of Emperor Taizong. By the early 1st millennium CE, Sanskrit had spread Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Southeast Asia, parts of the East Asia and the Central Asia. It was accepted as a language of high culture and the preferred language by some of the local ruling elites in these regions. According to
9828-597: The 8th century, when Adi Shankara established the worship of Shiva as an official sect of Varanasi. Chandradeva , founder of the Gahadavala dynasty made Banaras a second capital in 1090. In 1194 CE, the Ghurid conqueror Muizzuddin Muhammad Ghuri defeated the forces of Jayachandra in a battle near Jamuna and afterwards ravaged the city of Varnasi in the course of which many temples were destroyed. Varanasi remained
9984-505: The Bhakti movement were born in Varanasi, including Kabir and Ravidas . In the 16th century, Rajput nobles in the service of the courts and armies of the Mughal emperor Akbar , sponsored the building or further enhancement of the major Shiva temple in the city; they also built other temples, all displaying an empire-wide architectural style. In 1740, the Banaras State , a zamindari estate
10140-425: The Classical Sanskrit language launched ancient Indian speculations about "the nature and function of language", what is the relationship between words and their meanings in the context of a community of speakers, whether this relationship is objective or subjective, discovered or is created, how individuals learn and relate to the world around them through language, and about the limits of language? They speculated on
10296-416: The Dravidian languages borrowed from Sanskrit vocabulary, but they have also affected Sanskrit on deeper levels of structure, "for instance in the domain of phonology where Indo-Aryan retroflexes have been attributed to Dravidian influence". Similarly, Ferenc Ruzca states that all the major shifts in Indo-Aryan phonetics over two millennia can be attributed to the constant influence of a Dravidian language with
10452-417: The Dravidian words and forms, without modifying the word order; but the same thing is not possible in rendering a Persian or English sentence into a non-Indo-Aryan language. Shulman mentions that "Dravidian nonfinite verbal forms (called vinaiyeccam in Tamil) shaped the usage of the Sanskrit nonfinite verbs (originally derived from inflected forms of action nouns in Vedic). This particularly salient case of
10608-444: The Ganga and carry it across hundreds of miles to dispense as offerings in their local Śhiva shrines, or specific temples such as Pura Mahadeva and Augharnath temple in Meerut, and Kashi Vishwanath, Baidyanath, and Deoghar in Jharkhand. At Kashi Yatra , it is customary for every Hindu to undergo Kashi yatra on barefoot. Pilgrims also visit Gaya to do Gaya Shraddha to their ancestors. Details regarding how to perform various rituals,
10764-448: The Himalayas, Dwarka in the west, Jagannath Puri in the east, and Rameshwaram in the south. The Char Dham is often considered the most revered sites for Hindus that have to be visited in one's lifetime. There is a Chota Char Dham as well includes Yamunotri, Gangotri, Badrinath, and Kedarnath situated in Garhwal Himalayas . Deoghar means abode of the gods and goddesses. It is also known as Baidyanath Dham or Baba Dham situated on
10920-412: The Indo-Aryan language underwent rapid linguistic change and morphed into the Vedic Sanskrit language. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit . The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the Rigveda , a Hindu scripture from the mid- to late-second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive, if any ever existed, but scholars are generally confident that
11076-400: The Indo-European languages are the Nuristani languages found in the remote Hindu Kush region of northeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Himalayas, as well as the extinct Avestan and Old Persian – both are Iranian languages . Sanskrit belongs to the satem group of the Indo-European languages. Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of
11232-502: The Mahasamadhi. A yatra or pilgrimage across a much larger area covering multiple faraway cities or sites, related to a specific deity or theme, are called the "circuit". Three most important Hindu-Buddhist "Rahtriya yatra" (national pilgrimage circuit) are related to the important figures such as Rama, Krishna, Buddha, and Guru Nanak, where they had personally visited are as follows. 48 kos parikrama of Kurukshetra , phrase meaning
11388-521: The Muslim rule in the form of Sultanates, and later the Mughal Empire . Sheldon Pollock characterises the decline of Sanskrit as a long-term "cultural, social, and political change". He dismisses the idea that Sanskrit declined due to "struggle with barbarous invaders", and emphasises factors such as the increasing attractiveness of vernacular language for literary expression. With the fall of Kashmir around
11544-489: The Muslim rulers. Hindu rulers such as Shivaji of the Maratha Empire , reversed the process, by re-adopting Sanskrit and re-asserting their socio-linguistic identity. After Islamic rule disintegrated in South Asia and the colonial rule era began, Sanskrit re-emerged but in the form of a "ghostly existence" in regions such as Bengal. This decline was the result of "political institutions and civic ethos" that did not support
11700-488: The Saṃskṛta language, both in its vocabulary and grammar, to the classical languages of Europe. In The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World , Mallory and Adams illustrate the resemblance with the following examples of cognate forms (with the addition of Old English for further comparison): The correspondences suggest some common root, and historical links between some of
11856-616: The South India, such as the great Vijayanagara Empire , so did Sanskrit. There were exceptions and short periods of imperial support for Sanskrit, mostly concentrated during the reign of the tolerant Mughal emperor Akbar . Muslim rulers patronized the Middle Eastern language and scripts found in Persia and Arabia, and the Indians linguistically adapted to this Persianization to gain employment with
12012-504: The Vedic Sanskrit in these books of the Ṛg-veda "hardly presents any dialectical diversity", states Louis Renou – an Indologist known for his scholarship of the Sanskrit literature and the Ṛg-veda in particular. According to Renou, this implies that the Vedic Sanskrit language had a "set linguistic pattern" by the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Beyond the Ṛg-veda, the ancient literature in Vedic Sanskrit that has survived into
12168-451: The Vedic Sanskrit's bahulam framework, to respect liberty and creativity so that individual writers separated by geography or time would have the choice to express facts and their views in their own way, where tradition followed competitive forms of the Sanskrit language. The phonetic differences between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit, as discerned from the current state of the surviving literature, are negligible when compared to
12324-407: The alphabet, the structure of words, and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold" as an integral language they called Saṃskṛta . From the late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic, philosophical and religious literature" in India. Sound
12480-515: The architectural beauty of the Vindu Madhava temple on the side of the Ganges. The road infrastructure was also improved during this period. It was extended from Kolkata to Peshawar by Emperor Sher Shah Suri ; later during the British Raj it came to be known as the famous Grand Trunk Road . In 1656, Emperor Aurangzeb ordered the destruction of many temples and the building of mosques, causing
12636-456: The area under Varanasi Nagar Nigam has a population of 1,100,748 with a ratio of 883 females for every 1,000 males. The literacy rate in the urban agglomeration is 77% while that in the municipal corporation area is 78%. Approximately 138,000 people in the municipal area live in slums. Religion in Varanasi City (2011). Hinduism is predominantly followed in Varanasi with Islam being
12792-484: The authority. The vice-chairman of the Varanasi Development Authority is Pulkit Khare. The Varanasi Municipal Corporation oversees civic activities in the city; the head of the corporation is the mayor, and the executive and administration of the corporation is the responsibility of the municipal commissioner, who is appointed by the government of Uttar Pradesh and is either an IAS officer or Provincial Civil Service (PCS) officer of high seniority. The mayor of Varanasi
12948-562: The belief that it gives deliverance to the performer from the cycle of 84-Lakh Yonis (the cycle of birth and death). According to Hindu belief, the king of Ayodhya performed the "yagna" in the "treta period" at a place in Makhurha in Basti district of Uttar Pradesh which included circumnavigating the six districts in the region. Some religious leaders believe that the right place to start the parikrama should be Basti instead of Ayodhya. According to some,
13104-508: The calendar in order to revise existing astronomical tables. Tourism in the city began to flourish in the 18th century. As the Mughal suzerainty weakened, the Benares zamindari estate became Banaras State, thus Balwant Singh of the Narayan dynasty regained control of the territories and declared himself Maharaja of Benares in 1740. The strong clan organisation on which they rested, brought success to
13260-440: The capacity to understand the old Prakrit languages such as Ardhamagadhi . A section of European scholars state that Sanskrit was never a spoken language. However, evidences shows that Sanskrit was a spoken language, essential for oral tradition that preserved the vast number of Sanskrit manuscripts from ancient India. The textual evidence in the works of Yaksa, Panini, and Patanajali affirms that Classical Sanskrit in their era
13416-598: The central government and oversees the elections held in the city. The DM is also responsible for maintaining law and order in the city, hence the SSP of Varanasi also reports to the DM of Varanasi. The DM is assisted by a Chief Development Officer (CDO), four Additional District Magistrates (ADM) (Finance/Revenue, City, Protocol, Executive), one chief revenue officer (CRO), one City Magistrate (CM), and four Additional City Magistrates (ACM). The district has three tehsils , each headed by
13572-500: The city and employed in the tannery industry. Numerous eminent scholars and preachers visited the city from across India and South Asia. Guru Nanak visited Varanasi for Maha Shivaratri in 1507. Kashi (Varanasi) played a large role in the founding of Sikhism . In 1567 or thereabouts, the Mughal emperor Jallaludin Muhammad Akbar sacked the city of Varanasi on his march from Allahabad (modern-day Prayagraj ). However, later
13728-474: The city around 635 CE, attested that the city was a centre of religious and artistic activities, and that it extended for about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) along the western bank of the Ganges. When Xuanzang visited Varanasi in the 7th century, he named it "Polonise" ( Chinese : 婆羅痆斯 ; pinyin : Póluó niè sī ; lit. 'Brahma') and wrote that the city had some 30 temples with about 30 monks. The city's religious importance continued to grow in
13884-476: The city include Adampura, Anandbagh, Bachchhaon, Bangali Tola, Bhelpura, Bulanala, Chaitganj, Chaukaghat, Chowk, Dhupchandi, Dumraon, Gandhinagar, Gautam Nagar, Giri Nagar, Gopal Vihar, Guru Nanak Nagar, Jaitpura, Kail Garh, Khanna, Kotwali, Lanka Manduadih, Luxa, Maheshpur, Mahmoorganj, Maulvibagh, Nagwar, Naipokhari, Shivala, Siddhagiribagh, and Sigra. Located in the Indo-Gangetic Plains of North India,
14040-475: The city of Varanasi in this state, the hanging head of Brahma dropped from Shiva's hand and disappeared in the ground. Varanasi is therefore considered an extremely holy site. The Pandavas , the protagonists of the Hindu epic Mahabharata , are said to have visited the city in search of Shiva to atone for their sins of fratricide and brahmahatya that they had committed during the Kurukshetra War . It
14196-595: The city to experience a temporary setback. However, after Aurangzeb's death, most of India was ruled by a confederacy of pro- Hindu kings . Much of modern Varanasi was built during this time, especially during the 18th century by the Maratha and Bhumihar Brahmin rulers. The kings governing Varanasi continued to wield power and importance through much of the British Raj period, including the Maharaja of Benares, or simply called by
14352-404: The city's infrastructure and basic amenities of health services, drinking water supply and sanitation. Rev. M. A. Sherring in his book The Sacred City of Hindus: An account of Benaras in ancient and modern times published in 1868 refers to a census conducted by James Prinsep and put the total number of temples in the city to be around 1000 during 1830s. He writes, The history of a country
14508-517: The close relationship between the Indo-Iranian tongues and the Baltic and Slavic languages , vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages , and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna. The pre-history of Indo-Aryan languages which preceded Vedic Sanskrit is unclear and various hypotheses place it over a fairly wide limit. According to Thomas Burrow, based on
14664-609: The context of a speech or language, is found in verses 5.28.17–19 of the Ramayana . Outside the learned sphere of written Classical Sanskrit, vernacular colloquial dialects ( Prakrits ) continued to evolve. Sanskrit co-existed with numerous other Prakrit languages of ancient India. The Prakrit languages of India also have ancient roots and some Sanskrit scholars have called these Apabhramsa , literally 'spoiled'. The Vedic literature includes words whose phonetic equivalent are not found in other Indo-European languages but which are found in
14820-639: The crystallization of Classical Sanskrit. As in this period the Indo-Aryan tribes had not yet made contact with the inhabitants of the South of the subcontinent, this suggests a significant presence of Dravidian speakers in North India (the central Gangetic plain and the classical Madhyadeśa) who were instrumental in this substratal influence on Sanskrit. Extant manuscripts in Sanskrit number over 30 million, one hundred times those in Greek and Latin combined, constituting
14976-450: The date of 24 March 2021 was headed by a Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), who is an IPS officer, and is assisted by six Superintendents of Police (SP)/ Additional Superintendents of Police (Addl. SP) (City, Rural Area, Crime, Traffic, Protocol and Protocol), who are either IPS officers or PPS officers. Each of the several police circles is headed by a Circle Officer (CO) in the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police. The last SSP
15132-473: The dates for 84-Kosi Yatra are fixed and takes place in the month of Chaitra . Mithila Madhya Parikrama is an annual fifteen days journey of the central part of ancient Mithila . It is the ancient circular circuit of the capital city of Mithila. In Treta Yuga , Lord Rama and Princess Sita took a circle journey of the capital of Mithila after their marriage in the court of King Janaka in Mithila. This Yatra
15288-467: The detailed and sophisticated treatise then transmitted it through his students. Modern scholarship generally accepts that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as Lipi ('script') and lipikara ('scribe') in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī . The Classical Sanskrit language formalized by Pāṇini, states Renou, is "not an impoverished language", rather it is "a controlled and
15444-418: The differences between the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Louis Renou published in 1956, in French, a more extensive discussion of the similarities, the differences and the evolution of the Vedic Sanskrit within the Vedic period and then to the Classical Sanskrit along with his views on the history. This work has been translated by Jagbans Balbir. The earliest known use of the word Saṃskṛta (Sanskrit), in
15600-456: The distant major ancient languages of the world. The Indo-Aryan migrations theory explains the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages by proposing that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in South Asia from a region of common origin, somewhere north-west of the Indus region , during the early 2nd millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes
15756-577: The division, is in charge of infrastructure development in his division, and is also responsible for maintaining law and order in the division. The District Magistrate of Varanasi reports to the Divisional Commissioner . The Commissioner is Deepak Agarwal. Varanasi district administration is headed by the District Magistrate of Varanasi, who is an IAS officer . The DM is in charge of property records and revenue collection for
15912-483: The early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture , and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in
16068-461: The eastern side of Jharkhand . The Baidyanath Temple is located here containing one of the twelve Shiva Jyothirlingams in India. The pilgrims carry the holy water of holy river Ganges from Sultanganj 's and offered to the Jyotirlingam of Shiva at Deoghar. These pilgrims called Kanwariya, reciting Bol Bam on the way of walk 109 km, The march of Kanwariya start during the holy month of Shravan
16224-1071: The feminine manifestation of the god, and the important Rama circuit ( Ayodhya , Chitrakoot , Hampi and Rameswaram ) and Krishna circuit ( Braj , Kurukshetra and Dwarka ). Holiest cities: Sapta Puri are Ayodhya , Mathura , Haridwar , Varanasi , Kanchipuram , Ujjain and Dwarka . Kurukshetra , includes Jyotisar where Bhagavad Gita was revealed, is another holy city. Holy rivers: The ghats of holiest rivers are sacred, including Ganges , Yamuna , Sarasvati River ( Ghaggar River ), Narmada etc. Holy mountains: such as Mount Kailash , Badrinath , Kedarnath , Gangotri , and Yamunotri , Sarasvatotri , etc. Holy tirthas (places): such as Char Dham and Himalayan Chota Char Dham ( Badrinath , Kedarnath , Gangotri , and Yamunotri ), and Varanasi , Prayagraj , Haridwar - Rishikesh , Mathura - Vrindavan , Ayodhya , Dwarka and Rameswaram . See also Tirtha and Kshetra . Shakambhari temple Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh Holy fairs and Hindu festivals : The Kumbh Mela (the "pitcher festival")
16380-543: The first language of the respective speakers. The Sanskrit language brought Indo-Aryan speaking people together, particularly its elite scholars. Some of these scholars of Indian history regionally produced vernacularized Sanskrit to reach wider audiences, as evidenced by texts discovered in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Once the audience became familiar with the easier to understand vernacularized version of Sanskrit, those interested could graduate from colloquial Sanskrit to
16536-412: The foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a Vedānga . The Aṣṭādhyāyī was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full, and the culmination of a long grammatical tradition that Fortson says, is "one of the intellectual wonders of the ancient world". Pāṇini cites ten scholars on the phonological and grammatical aspects of the Sanskrit language before him, as well as
16692-537: The gods Varuna, Mitra, Indra, and Nasatya found in the earliest layers of the Vedic literature. O Bṛhaspati, when in giving names they first set forth the beginning of Language, Their most excellent and spotless secret was laid bare through love, When the wise ones formed Language with their mind, purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan, Then friends knew friendships – an auspicious mark placed on their language. — Rigveda 10.71.1–4 Translated by Roger Woodard The Vedic Sanskrit found in
16848-588: The greatness of Kashi Kshetra. Importance of Kashi yatra is said in Kasi-Khand of Skanda Purana . Pandharpur yatra is one of the most popular festivals in India. The annual yatra to the famous Vithoba temple at Pandharpur is held every year during the month of June and July. Thousands of pilgrims come to Pandharpur carrying litters with the images of Jñāneśvar from Alandi , Tukaram from Dehu , Eknath from Paithan , and Nivruttinath from Trimbakeshwar . These pilgrims are referred to as Varkaris . Among
17004-431: The historic Sanskrit literary culture and the failure of new Sanskrit literature to assimilate into the changing cultural and political environment. Sheldon Pollock states that in some crucial way, "Sanskrit is dead ". After the 12th century, the Sanskrit literary works were reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity was restricted to hymns and verses. This contrasted with
17160-535: The ideal of brotherhood in order to promote Indian cultural values and to remove ill-will among different sections of the Indian population." Varanasi was ceded to the Union of India in 1947, becoming part of Uttar Pradesh after Indian independence. Vibhuti Narayan Singh incorporated his territories into the United Provinces in 1949. Narendra Modi , prime minister of India since 2014, has represented Varanasi in
17316-478: The intense change that must have occurred in the pre-Vedic period between the Proto-Indo-Aryan language and Vedic Sanskrit. The noticeable differences between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit include the much-expanded grammar and grammatical categories as well as the differences in the accent, the semantics and the syntax. There are also some differences between how some of the nouns and verbs end, as well as
17472-499: The land is very fertile because low-level floods in the Ganges continually replenish the soil. Varanasi is situated between the Ganges confluences with two rivers: the Varuna and the Assi stream. The distance between the two confluences is around 2 miles (4 km), and serves as a sacred journeying route for Hindus, which culminates with a visit to a Sakshi Vinayak Temple. Varanasi experiences
17628-432: The largest cultural heritage that any civilization has produced prior to the invention of the printing press. — Foreword of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics (2009), Gérard Huet, Amba Kulkarni and Peter Scharf Sanskrit has been the predominant language of Hindu texts encompassing a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama , scientific , technical and others. It
17784-535: The largest minority. Nearly 70% of the population follows Hinduism. The city also agglomerate different religions such as Christianity, Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism. The city is also a centre for Buddhist pilgrimage. At Sarnath , just northeast of Varanasi, the Buddha gave his first teaching ( Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta ) after attaining enlightenment . According to the Buddhavaṃsa , a hagiographical Buddhist text, Varanasi
17940-576: The left crescent-shaped bank of the Ganges, averaging between 15 metres (50 ft) and 21 metres (70 ft) above the river. The city is the headquarters of Varanasi district . By road, Varanasi is located 797 kilometres (495 mi) south-east of New Delhi , 320 kilometres (200 mi) south-east of Lucknow , 121 kilometres (75 mi) east of Prayagraj , and 63 kilometres (39 mi) south of Jaunpur . The "Varanasi Urban Agglomeration" – an agglomeration of seven urban sub-units – covers an area of 112 km (43 sq mi). Neighbourhoods of
18096-449: The lesser known Hindu princes. There were as many as 100,000 men backing the power of the Benares rajas in what later became the districts of Benares , Gorakhpur and Azamgarh . This proved a decisive advantage when the dynasty faced a rival and the nominal suzerain, the Nawab of Oudh , in the 1750s and the 1760s. An exhausting guerrilla war , waged by the Benares ruler against
18252-412: The linguistic expression and sets the standard for the Sanskrit language. Pāṇini made use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology and lexicon. This metalanguage is organised according to a series of meta-rules, some of which are explicitly stated while others can be deduced. Despite differences in the analysis from that of modern linguistics, Pāṇini's work has been found valuable and
18408-451: The literary works. The Indian tradition, states Winternitz , has favored the learning and the usage of multiple languages from the ancient times. Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the Ramayana , the Mahabharata ,
18564-768: The local population, as do the Banaras Locomotive Works and Bharat Heavy Electricals . The city is known worldwide for its many ghats , steps leading down the steep river bank to the water, where pilgrims perform rituals. Of particular note are the Dashashwamedh Ghat , the Panchganga Ghat, the Manikarnika Ghat , and the Harishchandra Ghat, the last two being where Hindus cremate their dead. The Hindu genealogy registers at Varanasi are kept here. Among
18720-501: The modern age include the Samaveda , Yajurveda , Atharvaveda , along with the embedded and layered Vedic texts such as the Brahmanas , Aranyakas , and the early Upanishads . These Vedic documents reflect the dialects of Sanskrit found in the various parts of the northwestern, northern, and eastern Indian subcontinent. According to Michael Witzel, Vedic Sanskrit was a spoken language of
18876-429: The more advanced Classical Sanskrit. Rituals and the rites-of-passage ceremonies have been and continue to be the other occasions where a wide spectrum of people hear Sanskrit, and occasionally join in to speak some Sanskrit words such as namah . Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini , around the fourth century BCE. Its position in the cultures of Greater India
19032-401: The most advanced analysis of linguistics until the twentieth century. Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit. His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia. It is unclear whether Pāṇini himself wrote his treatise or he orally created
19188-593: The most archaic poems of the Iranian and Greek language families, the Gathas of old Avestan and Iliad of Homer . As the Rigveda was orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity, as a single text without variant readings, its preserved archaic syntax and morphology are of vital importance in the reconstruction of the common ancestor language Proto-Indo-European . Sanskrit does not have an attested native script: from around
19344-592: The notable temples in Varanasi are the Kashi Vishwanath Temple of Shiva , the Sankat Mochan Hanuman Temple , and the Durga Temple . The city has long been an educational and musical centre : many prominent Indian philosophers, poets, writers, and musicians live or have lived in the city, and it was the place where the Benares gharana form of Hindustani classical music was developed. In
19500-469: The numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language. Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule . Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants . In Sanskrit,
19656-403: The oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they are ceremonial literature, where the exact phonetic expression and its preservation were a part of the historic tradition. However some scholars have suggested that the original Ṛg-veda differed in some fundamental ways in phonology compared to the sole surviving version available to us. In particular that retroflex consonants did not exist as
19812-987: The organization of annual yatras, stipulating numbers, registering yatris, and regulating yatri traffic. The Hindu sacred month of Shravan is also the time of the annual Kanwar Yatra , the annual pilgrimage devotees of Shiva , known as Kanwaria , make to Hindu pilgrimage places of Haridwar , Gaumukh and Gangotri in Uttarakhand to obtain water from the Ganges River . In 2003, 55 lakh (5.5 million) pilgrims visited Haridwar. Other Tirtha pilgrimages are Char Dham Yatra, which involves Badrinath , Kedarnath , Gangotri , and Yamunotri ; Amarnath yatra in Jammu and Kashmir . There are numerous pilgrimage sites in India and elsewhere . In order of importance, in India there are 7 Sapta Puri holy cities, 4 Dhams ( Char Dham ) and 12 Jyotirlings devoted to Shiva , 51 Shakti Pithas devoted to
19968-431: The other." Reinöhl further states that there is a symmetric relationship between Dravidian languages like Kannada or Tamil, with Indo-Aryan languages like Bengali or Hindi, whereas the same relationship is not found for non-Indo-Aryan languages, for example, Persian or English: A sentence in a Dravidian language like Tamil or Kannada becomes ordinarily good Bengali or Hindi by substituting Bengali or Hindi equivalents for
20124-486: The people of Benares as Kashi Naresh . The Kingdom of Benares was given official status by the Mughals in 1737, and the kingdom started in this way and continued as a dynasty-governed area until Indian independence in 1947, during the reign of Vibhuti Narayan Singh . In the 18th century, Muhammad Shah ordered the construction of an observatory on the Ganges, attached to Man Mandir Ghat, designed to discover imperfections in
20280-414: The possible influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is only one of many items of syntactic assimilation, not least among them the large repertoire of morphological modality and aspect that, once one knows to look for it, can be found everywhere in classical and postclassical Sanskrit". The main influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is found to have been concentrated in the timespan between the late Vedic period and
20436-439: The previous 1,500 years when "great experiments in moral and aesthetic imagination" marked the Indian scholarship using Classical Sanskrit, states Pollock. Scholars maintain that the Sanskrit language did not die, but rather only declined. Jurgen Hanneder disagrees with Pollock, finding his arguments elegant but "often arbitrary". According to Hanneder, a decline or regional absence of creative and innovative literature constitutes
20592-480: The problems of interpretation and misunderstanding. The purifying structure of the Sanskrit language removes these imperfections. The early Sanskrit grammarian Daṇḍin states, for example, that much in the Prakrit languages is etymologically rooted in Sanskrit, but involves "loss of sounds" and corruptions that result from a "disregard of the grammar". Daṇḍin acknowledged that there are words and confusing structures in Prakrit that thrive independent of Sanskrit. This view
20748-596: The regional Prakrit languages, which makes it likely that the interaction, the sharing of words and ideas began early in the Indian history. As the Indian thought diversified and challenged earlier beliefs of Hinduism, particularly in the form of Buddhism and Jainism , the Prakrit languages such as Pali in Theravada Buddhism and Ardhamagadhi in Jainism competed with Sanskrit in the ancient times. However, states Paul Dundas , these ancient Prakrit languages had "roughly
20904-543: The relationship between various Indo-European languages, the origin of all these languages may possibly be in what is now Central or Eastern Europe, while the Indo-Iranian group possibly arose in Central Russia. The Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches separated quite early. It is the Indo-Aryan branch that moved into eastern Iran and then south into South Asia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Once in ancient India,
21060-558: The role of language, the ontological status of painting word-images through sound, and the need for rules so that it can serve as a means for a community of speakers, separated by geography or time, to share and understand profound ideas from each other. These speculations became particularly important to the Mīmāṃsā and the Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy, and later to Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, states Frits Staal —a scholar of Linguistics with
21216-579: The same name of 2,500 years ago. The Lion capital of Ashoka at nearby Sarnath has been interpreted to be a commemoration of the Buddha's first sermon there in the fifth century BCE. In the 8th century, Adi Shankara established the worship of Shiva as an official sect of Varanasi. Tulsidas wrote his Awadhi language epic, the Ramcharitmanas , a Bhakti movement reworking of the Sanskrit Ramayana , in Varanasi. Several other major figures of
21372-491: The same relationship to Sanskrit as medieval Italian does to Latin". The Indian tradition states that the Buddha and the Mahavira preferred the Prakrit language so that everyone could understand it. However, scholars such as Dundas have questioned this hypothesis. They state that there is no evidence for this and whatever evidence is available suggests that by the start of the common era, hardly anybody other than learned monks had
21528-551: The semi-nomadic Aryans . The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the " Mitanni Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and Mitanni people, carved into a rock, in a region that now includes parts of Syria and Turkey. Parts of this treaty, such as the names of the Mitanni princes and technical terms related to horse training, for reasons not understood, are in early forms of Vedic Sanskrit. The treaty also invokes
21684-594: The social structures such as the role of the poet and the priests, the patronage economy, the phrasal equations, and some of the poetic metres. While there are similarities, state Jamison and Brereton, there are also differences between Vedic Sanskrit, the Old Avestan, and the Mycenaean Greek literature. For example, unlike the Sanskrit similes in the Ṛg-veda, the Old Avestan Gathas lack simile entirely, and it
21840-459: The southeast of India's capital New Delhi and 320 kilometres (200 mi) to the southeast of the state capital, Lucknow . It lies 121 kilometres (75 mi) downstream of Prayagraj , where the confluence with the Yamuna river is another major Hindu pilgrimage site . Varanasi is one of the world's oldest continually inhabited cities . Kashi, its ancient name, was associated with a kingdom of
21996-515: The time of Maitreya . Excavations in 2014 led to the discovery of artefacts dating back to 800 BCE. Further excavations at Aktha and Ramnagar , two sites in the vicinity of the city, unearthed artefacts dating back to 1800 BCE, supporting the view that the area was inhabited by this time. During the time of Gautama Buddha , Varanasi was part of the Kingdom of Kashi . The celebrated Chinese traveller Xuanzang , also known as Hiuen Tsiang, who visited
22152-526: The time of the 2011 Census of India , 83.87% of the population of Varansi Municipal Corporation and Cantonment Board spoke Hindi , 9.03% Urdu , 4.81% Bhojpuri , and 0.92% Bengali as their first language. Varanasi division which consists of four districts, and is headed by the Divisional Commissioner of Varanasi, who is an IAS officer of high seniority, the Commissioner is the head of local government institutions (including Municipal Corporations) in
22308-473: The traditional longer "Braj Yatra" encompassing the whole circuit, and the other shorter significantly modified contemporary point-to-point pilgrimage to visit the main sites at Mathura, Vrindavan, Gokul , Govardhan . The former, longer traditional pilgrimage route, also includes additional sacred sites Nandgaon and Barsana with travel on foot. The Chardham or "four divine abodes" includes four major pilgrimage places in India. These include Badrinath in
22464-641: The turn of the 1st-millennium CE, it has been written in various Brahmic scripts , and in the modern era most commonly in Devanagari . Sanskrit's status, function, and place in India's cultural heritage are recognized by its inclusion in the Constitution of India 's Eighth Schedule languages . However, despite attempts at revival, there are no first-language speakers of Sanskrit in India. In each of India's recent decennial censuses, several thousand citizens have reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue, but
22620-408: The variants in the usage of Sanskrit in different regions of India. The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Āpiśali, Kaśyapa , Gārgya, Gālava, Cakravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja , Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka and Sphoṭāyana. In the Aṣṭādhyāyī , language is observed in a manner that has no parallel among Greek or Latin grammarians. Pāṇini's grammar, according to Renou and Filliozat, is a classic that defines
22776-564: The vernacular Prakrits. Many Sanskrit dramas indicate that the language coexisted with the vernacular Prakrits. The cities of Varanasi , Paithan , Pune and Kanchipuram were centers of classical Sanskrit learning and public debates until the arrival of the colonial era. According to Lamotte , Sanskrit became the dominant literary and inscriptional language because of its precision in communication. It was, states Lamotte, an ideal instrument for presenting ideas, and as knowledge in Sanskrit multiplied, so did its spread and influence. Sanskrit
22932-562: The wet season each year in India. Shravani Mela is the most celebrated 30-day festival in Baidyanath Temple Temple of Jharkhand. Mansarovar is a fresh-water lake in Tibet near Mount Kailash , and both are places of pilgrimage attracting religious people from India and neighboring countries. The mountain is considered a sacred place in four religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism , and Bon . According to Hindu mythology mount Kailash
23088-497: The Ṛg-veda is distinctly more archaic than other Vedic texts, and in many respects, the Rigvedic language is notably more similar to those found in the archaic texts of Old Avestan Zoroastrian Gathas and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . According to Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton – Indologists known for their translation of the Ṛg-veda – the Vedic Sanskrit literature "clearly inherited" from Indo-Iranian and Indo-European times
23244-498: Was Amit Pathak. On 25 March 2021 the Government of Uttar Pradesh passed an order to divide the Varanasi police into Varanasi City Police and Rural Police. Since then City Police is headed by the Commissioner of Police (CP) , who is an IPS officer of ADGP rank, and is assisted by two additional commissioners of police (Addl. CP) who is of DIG rank, and two deputy commissioners of police (DCP) who are of SP rank. And Rural Police
23400-408: Was a spoken language ( bhasha ) used by the cultured and educated. Some sutras expound upon the variant forms of spoken Sanskrit versus written Sanskrit. Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang mentioned in his memoir that official philosophical debates in India were held in Sanskrit, not in the vernacular language of that region. According to Sanskrit linguist professor Madhav Deshpande, Sanskrit
23556-427: Was a spoken language in a colloquial form by the mid-1st millennium BCE which coexisted with a more formal, grammatically correct form of literary Sanskrit. This, states Deshpande, is true for modern languages where colloquial incorrect approximations and dialects of a language are spoken and understood, along with more "refined, sophisticated and grammatically accurate" forms of the same language being found in
23712-472: Was adopted voluntarily as a vehicle of high culture, arts, and profound ideas. Pollock disagrees with Lamotte, but concurs that Sanskrit's influence grew into what he terms a "Sanskrit Cosmopolis" over a region that included all of South Asia and much of southeast Asia. The Sanskrit language cosmopolis thrived beyond India between 300 and 1300 CE. Today, it is believed that Kashmiri is the closest language to Sanskrit. Reinöhl mentions that not only have
23868-722: Was also the language of some of the oldest surviving, authoritative and much followed philosophical works of Jainism such as the Tattvartha Sutra by Umaswati . The Sanskrit language has been one of the major means for the transmission of knowledge and ideas in Asian history. Indian texts in Sanskrit were already in China by 402 CE, carried by the influential Buddhist pilgrim Faxian who translated them into Chinese by 418 CE. Xuanzang , another Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, learnt Sanskrit in India and carried 657 Sanskrit texts to China in
24024-637: Was established in the city. Under the Treaty of Faizabad, the East India Company acquired Benares in 1775. The city was later annexed under the Benares Division of the Ceded and Conquered Provinces in 1805, the North-Western Provinces in 1836, United Provinces in 1902, and after India's independence of Uttar Pradesh in 1950. Silk weaving , carpets, crafts and tourism employ a significant number of
24180-478: Was founded by Shiva , one of three principal deities along with Brahma and Vishnu . During a conflict between Brahma and Shiva, one of Brahma's five heads was torn off by Shiva. As was the custom, the victor carried the slain adversary's head in his hand and let it hang down from his hand as an act of ignominy, and a sign of his own bravery. A bridle was also put into the mouth. Shiva thus dishonoured Brahma's head, and kept it with him at all times. When he came to
24336-442: Was visualized as "pervading all creation", another representation of the world itself; the "mysterious magnum" of Hindu thought. The search for perfection in thought and the goal of liberation were among the dimensions of sacred sound, and the common thread that wove all ideas and inspirations together became the quest for what the ancient Indians believed to be a perfect language, the "phonocentric episteme" of Sanskrit. Sanskrit as
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