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It should be obvious, in principle, that a sociology of India lies at the point of confluence of Sociology and Indology.-Dumont (1970:2)

Kashi (Kaśi) is the pious Hindu’s name for Varanasi and is one of the seven sacred cities (puris) of India. This paper arises from fieldwork which focused primarily on the various groups of sacred specialists who earn their living on or around the burning ghāts of the city (see Parry 1980); and represent a preliminary and tentative attempt to describe certain key aspects of its transcendental identity which the specialists promulgate in their dealings with the pilgrims and mourners they serve. My aim is to show how these sacred characteristics can be seen as a logically interconnected set. More specifically, I consider the relationship between the notions that Kashi is both the origin-point and a microcosm of the universe; that it stands outside space and time yet all space is contained within it; and that it provides for the attainment of all the goals of human existence (the puruṣārthas): in life for the realisation of dharma, artha, and kāma and - above all - in death for the realisation of mokṣa or mukti.

Mānikarnika ghāt is the site of the most important of the two cremation grounds of Varanasi, and of the sacred tank beside which Lord Viṣṇu performed his cosmogonic austerities. The ghāt is located at a point roughly midway along the Gaṅgā between the confluence of the Asī and Gaṅgā, which marks the southern boundary of the sacred city, and the confluence of the Varuṇā and Gaṅgā which marks its northern boundary (see map). It stands at the dividing line between two equal divisions of the city - Śiva khanda to its north and Viṣṇu khanda to its south. While in India the cremation ground is generally on the periphery or outside the area of human settlement, in Kashi it is at the very hub. Just as India is said to be the ’navel’ (nābhi) of the world, and Kashi the navel of India, so Mānikarnika is the navel of Kashi. Its centrality, however, is not only of a physical but also of a metaphysical nature, for it was at Mānikarnika that the world was first created.