Chapter 15 — Principal Holy Places of Bharat

Literal. Shri Guru sends his disciples on pilgrimage and lists the principal tirthas of Bharat (India): Kashi on the Ganga, Prayag at the triple confluence, the Yamuna's twenty-five towns, the Saraswati's forty, and a long enumeration of rivers and shrines — Pushkar, Gaya, Setubandha, Rameshwar, Shri Ranga Padmanabh, Purushottam, Naimisharanya, Badri Narayan, Kurukshetra, Shri Shailya, Mahabaleshwar, Pampa Sarovar, Pandharpur, Ganagapur. The chapter is essentially a gazetteer. It also notes that when Guru (Jupiter) is in Sinha (Leo), all rivers unite with the Ganga; when in Kanya (Virgo), the Ganga descends into the Krishna.

Symbolic. The chapter is a map — the sacred geography of the subcontinent compressed into a chapter-length list. Pilgrimage as embodied state-shift through travel; each tirtha has its own type of purification.

Structural. 60 yojans by the Ganga's bank (a yojan = 2 miles); 120 Krichhras at Prayag; 25 grams on the Yamuna; 40 on the Saraswati; 108 lap recitations at Gokarna. The numerical density is unusually high.