Banaras

Banaras has long drawn sages, artists, poets, musicians and seekers from every part of India. The ancient texts that the sages had passed down by word of mouth were written down and transcribed in its lanes and by-lanes. Over the centuries the city became known for absorbing and blending different religious and cultural traditions.

Vertul Singh offers a many-sided portrait of the city. His account begins with present-day Banaras and its beginnings as Kashi, and runs up to the close of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In that period the city grew, inclusively, into a cultural and pilgrimage centre, a wealthy trading hub and a seat of political power.

Bringing together facts, entertaining anecdotes and little-known stories, the book is an insider's view of the city and a portrait without equal.