The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.70

v1.c15.70

If there be one part of India which we may think of as the shrine of shrines in a land where religion rules all life, it is to be found in the triangle of cities—Benares and Patna on the Ganges, and Gayā some fifty miles south of Patna. Benares has been a focus of Hinduism from very early times. Patna was the capital of the chief Gangetic kingdom more than two thousand years ago when the Greek ambassador Megasthenes, first of the westerns, travelled thus far into the east. Gayā was the spot where Buddha, seeking to reform Hinduism some five hundred years before Christ, obtained ‘enlightenment,’ and then migrated to teach at Benares, or rather at Sārnāth, now in ruins, three or four miles north of the present Benares. The peoples of all the vast Indian and Chinese world, from Karāchi to Pekin and Tokyo, look to this little group of cities as the centre of holiness, whether they be followers of Brahmā or of Buddha.