Mark Twain said Varanasi is "older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend — and looks twice as old as all of them put together." When he reached the Ganges by boat in 1896, what he saw had been there for thousands of years: stone steps descending into the river, temples on every rooftop, cremation fires burning nonstop for centuries. Many cities claim to be the oldest on Earth. Varanasi's claim is different — it never stopped being itself.
0%
How Places Got Their Names·2/3·1′
The place
Varanasi (Kashi — City of Light)
The Oldest Living City
Older than history, older than legend -- the city that has burned its dead and prayed to the same river for three thousand years without pause
c. 1800 BCE – present (over 3,000 years of continuous habitation)Varanasi (Kashi — City of Light)
Moral of the Story
“A city does not endure for three thousand years because of its walls or its armies but because of what it means to the human soul -- and the places that survive the longest are not those built on stone but those built on an idea so profound that every generation chooses, freely and fiercely, to rebuild it.”
Characters
M
Mark Twain (American author who visited in 1896)T
The Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama, who preached at nearby Sarnath)X
Xuanzang (Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, 7th century CE)U
Ustad Bismillah Khan (shehnai maestro, 1916-2006)K
Kabir (mystic poet-weaver, c. 1398-1518)T
Tulsidas (author of the Ramcharitmanas, c. 1532-1623)Source
Twain, Mark. Following the Equator, 1897, Ch. LVIII; Eck, Diana L. Banaras: City of Light, Princeton University Press, 1982; Narain, A.K. and Roy, T.N. Excavations at Rajghat, Banaras Hindu University, 1976; Skanda Purana, Kashi Khanda (12th-14th century CE); Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 56.11); Xuanzang, Da Tang Xiyu Ji (Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, 7th century CE)