The tradition of visiting sacred spots, places and buildings to attain religious merit, washing off the sins and accomplishment of desire has been a common practice in India and elsewhere in the Old World since time immemorial. Such an act has traditionally been regarded as noble and often equated with purification of body and mind, and achievement of merits. The present work makes an attempt to introduce to the reader various pilgrim centers, sacred shrines and holy sites connected with different faiths and traditions in India, which, in the words of Lord Lytton, were ‘for variety, extent, completeness and beauty unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled in the world’. An account of eighty pilgrim shrines scattered throughout India has been given while many more in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal have been listed. Bamiyan in Afghanistan has been described in an appendix. Some hermitages in India have also been listed. The survey of Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, Jewish, Christian and Sufi pilgrim
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Amar Nath Khanna
Shri Amar Nath Khanna was born at Multan in West Punjab in 1936. He holds a Master's degree in History and a Post Graduate Diploma in Archaeology from the School (presently Institute) of Archaeology, Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi. Shri Khanna has had the rare opportunity of visiting and studying monuments and pilgrim shrines scattered all over the Indian Sub-continent, China, Japan, Nepal and Singapore during the last about half a century. He retired as Senior Technical Officer, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi, in 1996 while earlier he had been working as a Senior Officer with the President of India. In 1998, he was invited again by Shri R. Venkataraman, Former President of India, to work with him even after retirement. He had been the Registering Officer for Antiquities in Himachal Pradesh and was associated with Shri Rajeev Sethi, Padma Bhushan, in the Aditi Exhibition curated by him in the Festival of India, U.S.A., and the Basic Human Need Pavilion set up in Germany in 1998. He was associated with Smt. Pupal Jayakar, Adviser to Prime Minister on Heritage and Cultural Resources, in the Festivals of India held in the U.S.A. and Japan and the Year of India in France. He was a Member of the Presidential Delegations which had visited Japan in 1990 and China in 1992. From 1957, he was a member of the Archaeological Survey of India for about two decades. Shri Khanna's book Archaeology of India was published in 1981. Its revised and enlarged edition which covered Pakistan and Bangladesh also was published in 1992 and was highly appreciated among others by the President of India and Dr. Karl Khandalavala. Shri Khanna's research papers have been published in leading journals in India. Currently, Shri Khanna is Secretary, Indo-Tibetan Art& Culture Study Group, New Delhi, and Executive Member, Rasaja Foundation, New Delhi.
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