Geography Atlas

Where Everything Happened

Geography Atlas

Open Questions

Things this atlas does not know. Each entry is a question that specialists have posed and not settled, recorded with what would actually resolve it and which expertise the answer needs.

These are kept deliberately, rather than quietly omitted. An atlas that shows only what it is sure of implies a confidence it has not earned, and the gaps are often where the interesting work is. Several sit exactly where two fields fail to meet: identifying the hyssop of the Hebrew Bible needs a botanist and a philologist of Biblical Hebrew, and neither one settles it alone.

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Sacred Sites 1
Amarnath Cave How far back does continuous veneration at Amarnath Cave extend beyond the documented mid nineteenth century pilgrimage?

Open Amarnath Cave

Why It Is Open The cave is named in the Nilamata Purana and in Kalhana's Rajatarangini, but neither text's date of composition is settled, so their references cannot fix how far back the site's veneration actually runs.

What Would Settle It A codicological or paleographic dating study of the manuscript traditions of the Nilamata Purana and the Rajatarangini, or an independently dated inscription or record naming the cave before the nineteenth century.

Expertise Needed Indology, manuscript studies, Sanskrit philology

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.).