History of Varanasi

Kashi was the name of a kingdom and its city in the first millennium BCE. Excavations in 2014 found artefacts from around 800 BCE, and digs at Aktha and Ramnagar nearby reached about 1800 BCE. The Buddha gave his first sermon at Sarnath, and in the 3rd century BCE the emperor Ashoka raised a pillar there crowned by the Lion Capital, now India's national emblem. In the 8th century Adi Shankara established the worship of Shiva as an official sect of the city.

In 1090 the Gahadavala king Chandradeva made Banaras a second capital. In 1194 the Ghurid ruler Muizzuddin Muhammad defeated Jayachandra, and many temples of the city were destroyed, the original Vishwanath temple among them. Kardameshwar (6th or 7th to 13th century) is held to be the only major temple of the area to have survived intact. The poet-saints Kabir and Ravidas lived and taught here in the 15th century.

Under Akbar, Rajput nobles in Mughal service rebuilt temples and ghats: Raja Man Singh of Amber began rebuilding the Vishwanath temple, Raja Todar Mal continued it in 1585, and Man Singh built the riverside palace of Man Mahal around 1600. In this period Tulsidas wrote the Ramcharitmanas in Varanasi. Encyclopedic sources record that in 1669, under Aurangzeb, the Vishwanath temple was destroyed and the Gyanvapi Mosque built on its site; the Alamgir Mosque above Panchganga Ghat stands on the plinth of the Bindu Madhav temple, demolished in 1673.

Much of modern Varanasi was built in the 18th century with money from Maratha and Bhumihar rulers; Maratha houses such as the Scindias, Holkars, Bhonsles and Peshwas built many ghats. The Mughals gave the Kingdom of Benares official status in 1737, and in 1740 Balwant Singh declared himself Maharaja of Benares; he built Ramnagar Fort on the opposite bank. In 1775 the region passed to the East India Company under the Treaty of Faizabad. In 1780 Ahilyabai Holkar built the present Kashi Vishwanath temple.

In 1791 the Company's resident Jonathan Duncan founded the Sanskrit College. In 1835 Maharaja Ranjit Singh gave gold to plate the Vishwanath dome. Annie Besant founded the Central Hindu College in 1898, and in 1916 she and Madan Mohan Malaviya founded Banaras Hindu University. In 1911 Benares became a princely state with Ramnagar as its capital. After independence in 1947 the state merged into the United Provinces in 1949, and Varanasi became part of Uttar Pradesh in 1950.

The Sarnath ruins with the Dhamek Stupa, which marks the place of the first sermon, and the Sarnath Archaeological Museum (ASI, 1910), which keeps the original Lion Capital of Ashoka.

Kardameshwar Mahadev Temple in Kandwa, about 8 km from Assi, first halt of the Panchakroshi parikrama.

The Alamgir Mosque on the plinth of the Bindu Madhav temple above Panchganga Ghat, and the Kashi Vishwanath temple of 1780 with its gilded dome.

Ramnagar Fort, the 18th-century seat of the Kashi Naresh, with its museum; the Tomb of Lal Khan at Rajghat (1773), built for a minister of Balwant Singh.