ABSTRACT
Found in both the Jātaka tales (fables recounting former lives of the Buddha) and in the Mahābhārata (a classical Sanskrit epic), the name Vārānasī is now the official name of the city, although in the past the name has taken the Pali form Bārānasi, which has been corrupted to Banāras and thence, in Muslim and British India, to Benares. Some spec ulate that the name Vārānasī may have come not from the combination of Varanā and Asi, its modern boundary rivers to the north and south, but from the name of the northern river alone, known in ancient times as Vārānasī. Archaeological records show that the city once lay on the Rājghāt Plateau in the north, possibly along the Varanā River where it met the Ganges, and did not continue south to the Asi as it does today.
