Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c15.38

c15.38

It is said that a person dying in the waters of any part of the Ganges gets salvation; at Banāras salvation reaches him even if he dies on the banks of the river; but at Gaṅgāsāgara salvation is guaranteed whether one dies in the waters or on the land or in the air. The *Viṣṇusamhitā*, a post-Gupta work in its present form, recognises the importance of this *tīrtha* in regard to the performance of funerary rites.² That Gaṅgāsāgara was well known in North-Western India in the eleventh century A.D. is suggested by the reference in Al-Birūnī’s work on India (*circa* 1030 A.D.) to this city ‘where the Ganges flows into the sea’.³