Why Tirtha in Hindu Pilgrimage Is About an Inner Crossing, Not a Sacred Destination

The word itself is the argumentTirtha comes from the Sanskrit root tri, meaning to cross. A tirtha was, first and literally, a ford, a shallow place in a river where you could get to the other side without drowning. The word carried no mysticism at the start. It was practical geography. The river was real, the crossing was real, and the other bank was the point.What happened over centuries is that the word migrated inward.