{"id":2642,"date":"2018-11-07T09:45:13","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T09:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iskconeducationalservices.org\/HoH\/?p=2642"},"modified":"2018-11-07T10:23:33","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T10:23:33","slug":"art-0531-varanasi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iskconeducationalservices.org\/HoH\/further-information-and-teaching-resources-secondary\/articles\/art-0531-varanasi\/","title":{"rendered":"ART-0531 Varanasi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Varanasi: The City of Lord Shiva<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Varanasi is perhaps the most important place of pilgrimage and is closely connected so Shiva. It also relates to the funeral ceremony .<\/p>\n<p>Varanasi is situated on the bank of the River Ganges. The name \u201cVaranasi\u201d comes from the two rivers, Varna and Assi, which join the Ganges on the northen and southern borders of the city. The city was originally called Kashi, or \u201cthe city of lights\u201d and is mentioned as the foremost city of Lord Shiva in the <em>Mahabharata, Ramayana<\/em>, <em>Bhagavat Purana<\/em> and the <em>Puranas<\/em>, which date back five thousand years.<\/p>\n<p>Many older people come to Varanasi to die and be cremated at the burning ghats (places) along the river. Anyone who dies in Varanasi is said to attain moksha (liberation). Being cremated at Varanasi is considered to add to the pious credits of the individual, and for this reason, many corpses are brought here.<\/p>\n<p>Many saints and sages have come to Varanasi including Budhha, Chaitanya, Shankaracharya and Shri Ramanuja.<\/p>\n<p>A five mile parikrama (circumambulation) path encircles this sacred city. There are 81 bathing ghats and other holy kundas or sacred lakes. The three most important ghats are Manikarnika, Dasaswamedha and Panch-ganga. According to the Kasi-Khandha, if one gives up one\u2019s body at Manikarnika, one is liberated simply by remembering Lord Shiva\u2019s name.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Varanasi: The City of Lord Shiva Varanasi is perhaps the most important place of pilgrimage and is closely connected so Shiva. It also relates to the funeral ceremony . Varanasi is situated on the bank of the River Ganges. The name \u201cVaranasi\u201d comes from the two rivers, Varna and Assi, which join the Ganges on [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[300,296],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-further-information-and-teaching-resources-primary","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iskconeducationalservices.org\/HoH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iskconeducationalservices.org\/HoH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iskconeducationalservices.org\/HoH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iskconeducationalservices.org\/HoH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iskconeducationalservices.org\/HoH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2642"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/iskconeducationalservices.org\/HoH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2644,"href":"https:\/\/iskconeducationalservices.org\/HoH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2642\/revisions\/2644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iskconeducationalservices.org\/HoH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iskconeducationalservices.org\/HoH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iskconeducationalservices.org\/HoH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}