Banaras: City of Light

Diana L. Eck is a scholar of comparative religion specializing in Hindu sacred geography, and this book, published by Alfred A. Knopf, is an academic study of Banaras, one of Hinduism's most sacred cities, examining its religious topology, pilgrimage practice and cosmological significance based on Eck's own extended time and fieldwork in the city. Its strength is combining serious textual knowledge of Hindu cosmological and pilgrimage literature with direct on the ground documentation of how the city actually functions religiously for pilgrims and residents. Its limit is that it describes Banaras as it stood at the time of Eck's research, and the city's religious life, like any living tradition, has continued to develop since, so more current claims need more recent sources.