 Varanasi as a sacred pilgrimage site is documented in the "Varanasimahatmya" text embedded inside the "Skanda Purana", and the oldest versions of this text are dated to 6th to 8th-century CE.The idea of twelve sacred sites in Shiva Hindu tradition spread across the Indian subcontinent appears not only in the medieval era temples but also in copper plate inscriptions and temple seals discovered in different sites.According to Bhardwaj, non-Hindu texts such as the memoirs of Chinese Buddhist and Persian Muslim travellers attest to the existence and significance of the pilgrimage to sacred geography among Hindus by later 1st millennium CE.