"To Kashi, its pre-eminence was really the gift of the Puranas which undertook to spread the cult of Shiva. Beginning by stressing (as did the later Bhakti mārga) the inferiority of Vedic sacrifices as compared to devotion to God (Shiva), they ended by making ‘the city of Shiva’ (Shivapuri, i.e. Kashi) the best place for the performance of those sacrifices. In this syncretism of Vedic and non-Aryan cults at Kashi lay the secret of its wide appeal and its rise as the first place among our tirthas."