TIRTHA

     Diana Eck, a Harvard professor much respected in Varanasi, calls them "sacred power points".

     In Sanskrit tirtha literally means to ford, to cross over to the other side. So, it’s not surprising that some (though not all) tirthas are along river banks where one could ford the river more easily. They were real physical fords.

     There are thousands of tirthas in India, not necessarily specific to a river. They can be places where holy men - sages, sanyasis and sahdus - congregate. Tirthas can therefore be formed by the sheer physical concentrated presence of such people. They can also be of the mind. There’s a long passage in the Mahabharata when it talks about tirthas of the heart, the qualities of love, generosity, truthfulness and patience.

     Tirthas never stay constant: there are new ones that appear and ones that have been important in centuries past that most people scarcely know about anymore. Some are purely local, others regional (say Bengal or Maharashtra); a few known all over India. Tirthas can appear because a new goddess has become important, such as Vaishnodevi in Jammu in the last few hundred years. There are brand-new tirthas associated with contemporary religious leaders like Saibaba.