Sherring, Matthew A.: The sacred city of the Hindus: an account of Benares in ancient and modern times (London, 1868)

XV111 INTRODUCTION.

familiar to Brahmanical literature.1 The word is crudely
referred, by modem inventiveness, to a combination of
Varana and Asi;3 and all the other explanations that
we have of its source are equally questionable.

Prinsep, but without naming his voucher for the statement, Benares
" was governed by a Eaja Banar, at the time of one of Mahnrud's
invasions, or in a.d. 1017, when one of his generals penetrated to
the province, and defeated the Baja."—Benares Illustrated, p. 9.
General Cunningham states that Baja Banar is traditionally believed
to have rebuilt Benares about eight hundred years ago. Jowrnal of
the Asiatic Society of Bengal, for 1863, Supplementary Number, p. xcvi.

1 Varanasi is specified more than once in Patanjali's Mahdbhdshya.
On the age of that work, see my edition of Professor Wilson's trans-
lation of the Vislinu-purana, Vol. II., p. 189, ad calcem.

2 So allege the Pandits of the present day; repeating, no doubt, a
long-current conceit of their predecessors: see the Asiatic Researches,
Vol. III., pp. 409, 410. This notion, though it has found expression
in the Araish-i-mahfll and other recent Muhammadan books, is, I
believe, only implied in the Puranas. It is said, for instance, in the
third chapter of the Vdmana-purdna, that Varanasi lies between the
Varana and the Asi:

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