Description
The city of Vārāṇasī in North India is one of the most sacred Hindu places. Its unique location on the banks of the Gaṅgā adds to its special claims of holiness. These claims found expression in an extensive body of literature called Māhātmyas, texts composed in Sanskrit with the specific aim of promoting the “greatness” (māhātmya) of the town through the narration of tales of origin of individual sites. The present study presents a little-known Vārāṇasīmāhātmya which has survived in a unique compendium of such Māhātmyas in a palm-leaf manuscript in Nepal. It contains a critical edition of the text with an introduction & annotated English synopsis. In making this material available, this study aims to contribute to an understanding of the location of Brahmanical Hinduism, in particular Saivism.
About the Author
Peter Bisschop is Professor of Sanskrit and Ancient Cultures of South Asia at Leiden University. His main publications bear on the history of Śaivism and include Early Śaivism and the Skandapurāṇa (2006), volumes IIB (with Hans Bakker & Yuko Yokochi, 2014) and IV and V (with Yuko Yokochi, 2018 and 2021) of the critical edition of the Skandapurāṇa, Universal Śaivism (2018), and the edited volume Primary Sources and Asian Pasts (with Elizabeth Cecil, 2021).
