Janakpur is a city and a holy place (tirtha) in Nepal's western region, seven miles north of the Indian state of Bihar.
In the Ramayana, the older of the two major Hindu epics,
Janakpur is claimed to be the city of King Janaka, a respected sage and the
foster father of the goddess Sita.
Tradition has it that Janaka's city was destroyed and
vanished without a trace during the conflict portrayed in the Mahabharata—the
second major Hindu epic.
Chaturbhuj Giri and Sur Kishor, two Vaishnava followers
(bhakta), are supposed to have identified the current location of Janakpur in
the early eighteenth century.
In a dream, Chaturbhuj Giri saw the deity Rama and was told
to dig under a banyan tree.
He discovered four representations of Vishnu, each in a
different spiritual form, as he did so.
Sur Kishor was a huge Sita fan who located the location via
her agency.
Other ascetics started to visit this place, which is today an
important stop on the Ramanandi ascetics' yearly pilgrimage cycle.
Shepherds and merchants followed the ascetics, and the town
of Janakpur rapidly built up around them.
See Richard Burghart's "The History of Janakpur" in Kailash, Vol. 6, No. 4, 1978, for an in-depth look at this place and the accuracy of these claims.
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