Amazon Quiz: This visual shows which city?
Lucknow
Varanasi
Prayagraj
Bhopal
Answer: Varanasi
Varanasi is a city on the Ganges river in northern India. Its a central place in pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu culture.
The name Varanasi was officially so revived after 1947, but the city is still widely known by its earlier name Banaras or Benares. 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 430 miles to the southeast of India’s capital New Delhi, 200 miles southeast of the state capital, Lucknow, and 75 miles east of Allahabad, another Hindu pilgrimage site.
Varanasi is one of the world’s oldest continually inhabited cities. Kashi, its ancient name, was associated with a kingdom of the same name 2,500 years ago.
The Buddha is recorded in the Pali canon to have given his first sermon, “The Setting in Motion of the Wheel of Dharma,” at nearby Sarnath in 528 BCE.
In the 8th century, Adi Shankara established the worship of Shiva as an official sect of Varanasi, a cultural centre of northern India that has been closely associated with the Ganges.
Hindus believe being cremated along the Ganges river banks allows the cycle of rebirth to be broken and salvation to become possible.
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