Mar: पुणे puṇē
‘Auspicious City’ [Punya-Visaya, Punyangari, Pumawadi, Poona].- City/District, Maharashtra
From Skt: puṇya, ‘auspicious’, ‘virtuous’, ‘holy’, ‘sacred’; Skt: viṣaya, ‘kingdom’, ‘province’, ‘region’; Skt: nagar, ‘city’; Mar: vāḍā/vāḍi, ‘settlement’].
Pune sits at the point where the Mula and Mutha rivers meet. A confluence of two rivers like this is supposed to be ‘sacred’ or ‘auspicious’. By the 13thC it was called Punawadi.
It is the second largest city in Maharashtra (after Mumbai) and the seventh most populous city in India,
The modern city is a centre for educational institutions, the ‘Oxford of the East’ (nearly half of India’s foreign students study here).
City of Pune (aerial view) pixabay