614: Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [December, 1910. 



that at a very remote period Triveni was celebrated as a sister- 

 town to Prayaga or Allahabad in point of sanctity, though 

 afterwards it became a quarter of Saptagrama, as it has been 

 described in some works of the 16th century. 1 It was celebra- 

 ted as a place of Sanskrit learning, being one of the four 

 samdjes, the other three being Nadiya, Santipura, and Guptipara. 

 The celebrated Jagannath Tarkapanchanana, the compiler of 

 the digest of Hindu laws and Sanskrit tutor to Sir William 

 Jones, was a native of this place. The Triveni Ghat and 

 temple, as mentioned before, were constructed by Mukunda 

 Deo, the last independent sovereign of Orissa, in the 16th 

 century. But as a sacred place its importance centres in the 

 tempie of the Sapta Rishis, who are said to have resided at 

 Saptagrama, and it has already been stated that Triveni was in- 

 cluded in that town. The temple of the Rishis does not at 

 present exist : it was situated near the Triveni-Ghat. It was 

 transformed with some alterations into the tomb of Zaffar 

 Khan Ghazi, the conqueror of Saptagrama,* popularly known 

 as Darab Khan, whose celebrated hymn to Ganga (the river 

 Ganges) is still extant. 3 The figures of Buddha in meditation 

 engraved in a slab of stone affixed to the base of a pillar in 

 a neighbouring mosque and a broken statue of Paras wanatha, 

 the twenty-third Tirthankara of the Jainas, which may be 

 found within the enclosure containing the tomb of Zaffar Khan , 

 indicate that the Brahminical Triveni had passed through the 

 usual stages of Jainism and Buddhism. 



Though Triveni formed a quarter or suburb of Saptagrama, 



Satgaon now ca ^ e( i Satgaon, and though its 



name appears in some of the ancient 

 Purans, yet the name of Saptagrama itself does not appear in 

 any of them. The reason, however, is not far to seek. The 

 sanctity of Triveni in the eyes of the philosophic and religious 

 Hindus was of far greater importance than the prosperity and 

 opulence of Saptagrama as an emporium of commerce, and hence 

 they did not deign even to mention it in their ancient Sanskrit 

 works. We therefore do not know when and by whom the 

 town was founded It is related that the seven sons of Priya- 

 vanta, king of Kanyakubja, whose names were Agnidhra, 

 Ramanaka, Bhapistu, Swarabana, Barata, Sabana and Dyuti- 



1 See Saptagrama (Sahitya-Parishat-Patrika, vol. xv, pp. 35, 36) ; 



Chaitanya-Bhaga va f . 



* Sahitya-Parishat-Patrika, vol. xv :— Saptagr&ma ; J.A.S.B., 1909 

 Saptagrama or Satganw. by Babu Rakhal Das Bandopadhyaya, 



* itrf?i fiT5jg*a^ faro *?^nj i 



