Several hundred cities across the world have been founded by adding the prefix “New” to an existing name, in various languages. Yet some cities possess a far more unusual, almost biblical pattern of etymology. The Greek emperor Alexander the Great established several settlements and attached the name Alexandria to them, of which one survives to this day in Egypt. Rome, another immensely influential city, held such symbolic power over rulers of the past that when a new Roman capital was established at the tip of the Bosphorus, it was called Roma Constantinopolitana, which gradually simplified to Constantinople and eventually became Istanbul. In a similar manner, a rare and largely unknown phenomenon unfolded on the Indian subcontinent in the 17th century, linked to one of the holiest and oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world — Varanasi.
The holy city of Varanasi has had many names over time, the most popular — and still occasionally used — being Banaras, or as the British spelled it, Benares. Another ancient name was Kashi, which provides a useful starting point here. Cities such as Uttarkashi, Kashipur, Kashipura, Kashigarh, and Kashigaon all originate from the root word “Kashi,” reflecting not merely a place name but a supreme spiritual identity. Its influence remains so profound that it continues to appear in personal names such as Kashibai, Kashiram, and Kashinath. By the 17th century, however, the word Banaras gained prominence and was used in a similar fashion for two cities situated at opposite ends of the subcontinent. One lay near Peshawar along the Indus River, known in the colonial era as Campbellpur and today as Attock, while the other stood at the mouths of the Mahanadi on the ancient Kalinga coast — the city of Cuttack. The figure connecting these two cities through the name Banaras was the Mughal emperor Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar.
Cuttack, or Katak as it is natively spelled, was already a well-established town long before the Mughals arrived on the subcontinent. In the 13th century, when Anangabhima III of the Eastern Ganga Empire shifted his capital from Kalinganagara to this new city, it was named Abhinaba-Baranasi-Katak, which translates to “New Varanasi Capital.” In effect, the medieval city at India’s eastern coast was consciously envisioned as a “New Varanasi.” Even when the name later evolved into Bidanasi Katak, its roots still traced back to Varanasi, Baranasi, or Banaras. By the time the Mughals consolidated power, they were well aware of this association, and Akbar is known to have referred to the town as Katak-Banaras.
Turning to the other city, Attock — or Atak — it was established by Akbar in the 16th century as a strategic frontier settlement. The word “Atak” derives from the idea of a barricade or blockade, reflecting its position at the northern boundary of the Mughal Empire. The attachment of Banaras or Varanasi to Atak appears to have stemmed from Akbar’s vision of it as a “divine frontier,” giving rise to the name Atak-Banaras. This symbolic pairing effectively marked the empire’s extreme frontiers, and since the eastern limit already carried a historical association with Banaras, extending the same suffix to the northern boundary created a conceptual symmetry.
Over time, however, the Banaras suffix disappeared from both cities. Atak was renamed Campbellpur in 1908 and later restored and standardized as Attock in 1978. Meanwhile, Katak was anglicized in the early 19th century to Cuttack, a name that has endured. Yet unlike Attock, a small town named Varanasi still exists roughly 337 kilometers south of Cuttack in Odisha’s Gajapati district.
Below is a recreated portion of a map originally sketched by Daniel Lizars in 1818. Notably, it depicts Attock and Banaras as two adjacent settlements at the northernmost edge of the Lahore province, situated near the confluence of the Kabul and Indus rivers close to Peshawar.
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