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Updated: June 17, 2025
We were to see Nassik, one of the few towns mentioned by Greek historians, its caves, and the tower of Rama; to visit Allahabad, the ancient Prayaga, the metropolis of the moon dynasty, built at the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna; Benares, the town of five thousand temples and as many monkeys; Cawnpur, notorious for the bloody revenge of Nana Sahib; the remains of the city of the sun, destroyed, according to the computations of Colebrooke, six thousand years ago; Agra and Delhi; and then, having explored Rajistan with its thousand Takur castles, fortresses, ruins, and legends, we were to go to Lahore, the metropolis of the Punjab, and, lastly, to stay for a while in Amritsar.
Then, O king, should one proceed to Prayaga, whose praises have been sung by Rishis and where dwell the gods with Brahma at their head, the directions with their presiding deities, the Lokapalas, the Siddhas, the Pitris adored by the worlds, the great Rishis-Sanatkumara and others, stainless Brahmarshis-Angiras and others, the Nagas, the Suparnas, the Siddhas, the Snakes, the Rivers, the Seas, the Gandharvas, the Apsaras, and the Lord Hari with Prajapati.
This sacrificial place is worshipped by the gods themselves. If a man giveth there ever so little, it increaseth, O Bharata, a thousandfold. O child, let not the texts of the Veda, nor the opinions of men dissuade thy mind from the desire of dying at Prayaga. O son of the Kuru race, the wise say that six hundred million and ten thousand tirthas exist at Prayaga.
It is there that the soul of all things, the Grandsire, had, in olden days, performed his sacrifice, and it is for this, O chief of the Bharata race, that the place hath come to be called Prayaga. In this direction, O foremost of kings, lieth the excellent asylum of Agastya, O monarch, and the forest called Tapasa, decked by many ascetics.
There also in the Ganga is the tirtha famed over the three worlds, called Ramaprapatana, which conferreth the merit of ten horse-sacrifices. O son of the Kuru race! Wherever may a person bathe in the Ganga, he earneth merit equal to that of a trip to Kurukshetra. An exception, however, is made in favour of Kanakhala, while the merit attaching to Prayaga is the greatest.
I have before mentioned that Allahabad, the ancient city of Prayaga, is doubly sanctified because it is at the junction of the Jumna and the Gauges, and these two streams are affluents of its sanctity as well as of its trade. The great plain of white sand which is enclosed between the blue lake-like expanses of the two meeting rivers is the Plain of Alms.
Proceeding next, O lord of earth, to the sacrificial region of the gods known by the name Prayaga, they bathed in the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna and residing there practised ascetic penances of great merit. And the Pandavas, of truthful promises, bathing in the tirtha, cleansed themselves of every sin.
Hiuen-Tsang, who spent fifteen years in India during Harsha's reign, searching for the relics of early Buddhism in a land from which it was steadily disappearing, has given us a wonderful picture of a religious state-pageant which makes Prayaga, at the triple confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna with the sacred but invisible river, Saraswati, near to the modern city of Allahabad, stand out as another striking landmark in Indian history.
As he proceeds in his aerial car, he notices the countries of Orissa, Bengal, Behar, Oude or Ayodhya, Prayaga, Hastinapur or Delhi and Kurujangal or Tahneser, whence he comes to Jwalamukhi.
The tirthas Prayaga, Pratisthana, Kamvala, Aswatara and Bhogavati are the sacrificial platforms of the Creator. There in those places, O foremost of warriors, the Vedas and the Sacrifices, in embodied forms, and the Rishis endued with wealth of asceticism, adore Brahma, and there the gods and rulers of territories also celebrate their sacrifices.
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