Prayagraj: The City at the Confluence, for a First Visit

Prayagraj sits in Uttar Pradesh where the Ganga and the Yamuna meet, about 90 metres above sea level. Most people come for one reason: the Triveni Sangam and the rites performed at it. The city around it is older than the rites are recorded, and this is what is worth knowing before you arrive, whether you are here for Pind Daan at the Sangam or to see the place.

The names, and why there are several

The oldest is Prayag, from pra and yaga, the place of the foremost sacrifice. That is the name in the Rigveda supplement, dated roughly 1200 to 1000 BCE, which is the earliest written mention of the city and the pilgrimage to it.

Akbar came in 1575, judged the confluence strategically important, and had a fort built there in 1584. He called the settlement Ilahabas, the abode of God. Shah Jahan later rendered it Allahabad, and both forms appear on city coins from Akbar’s reign onward. In 2018 the city was renamed Prayagraj, restoring the older name.

You will still meet all of these. The railway station is Prayagraj Junction, the university is Allahabad University, and older residents say Allahabad without thinking about it. None of it indicates confusion about where you are.

How old the city actually is

The question is genuinely contested, and the argument is worth following because it turns on the pillar you will walk past inside the fort.

Northern Black Polished Ware found at the site dates to between 700 and 600 BCE, and excavation since the 1950s has found human settlement around the Sangam from about 800 BCE. Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti argued that Jhusi, across the confluence, was the old town of Prayag rather than the modern city.

The Ashoka pillar is the other half of the argument. Alexander Cunningham held that a Muslim Sultan moved it to the site from Kaushambi. Krishnaswamy and Ghosh disputed that in 1935, on three grounds: the inscription dates, the absence of any mention of such a move in Muslim records, and the sheer difficulty of lifting it. John Irwin agreed in papers published around 1979 and went further, arguing from archaeological and geological work that the pillar’s origins were pre-Ashokan and it had always stood here.

One detail from that work matters to a visitor. The smaller inscriptions scratched onto the pillar over centuries are dated between 1319 and 1575 CE, and they overwhelmingly fall in the month of Magha. People were coming here for the Magh Mela seven hundred years ago and carving the date into the stone.

What the record says about the Sangam

The Agni Purana names Prayaga among the places Brahma performed a homa, and makes the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati the king of pilgrimage destinations, Tirtha Raj. The many versions of the Prayaga Mahatmya, the earliest from the late first century CE, describe the Sangam as busy with pilgrims, priests, sellers, beggars, guides and residents, which is more or less what you will find. The Ramayana places the ashram of the sage Bharadwaj near the town.

The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang reached it in the seventh century and recorded it as a great city at the junction of the two rivers, with hundreds of deva temples and two Buddhist institutions to the south, a stupa built by Ashoka and a monastery. His memoir of 644 CE describes people fasting near the confluence and then bathing in the belief that it wipes away their sins, and the rich and the rulers arriving to give away charity. There is more on the confluence itself in our guide to the Triveni Sangam.

The colonial century, briefly

The city passed to the British in 1801. A major uprising took place here during the revolt of 1857, and Queen Victoria’s proclamation transferring the government of India from the East India Company to the Crown was read out in the city in 1858. The Allahabad High Court was established in 1866 and remains one of the oldest in the country.

Civil Lines dates from this period and was the largest town-planning project in India before New Delhi: a gridiron layout north of the railway line, in contrast to the older quarters south of it. Much of the colonial building stock is designated heritage; a good deal of the rest is deteriorating. The city later became closely associated with the independence movement through the Nehru family, whose house is here.

How the city is laid out

The east-west railway divides it. South of Prayagraj Junction are the older quarters: Chowk, Johnstongunj, Dariyabad, Khuldabad. North of it are the newer ones: Civil Lines, Georgetown, Tagoretown, Lukergunj, Allahpur, Ashok Nagar, Mumfordgunj, Bharadwaj Puram. Civil Lines is the commercial centre.

The city sits in the Ganga-Yamuna Doab on alluvial soil, with Pratapgarh to the north, Bhadohi east, Rewa south, Chitrakoot west and Kaushambi north-west. A UN Development Programme assessment places it in a low damage risk zone for wind and storm.

One thing worth knowing before you book: air quality here is poor. The WHO’s Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database ranked the city third of 2,972 cities surveyed for mean PM2.5 concentration. If anyone travelling has a respiratory condition, plan around it.

The weather, and what it does to a visit

Humid subtropical, Cwa in the Köppen classification, with three distinct seasons and an annual mean of 26.1°C.

The fog is the part visitors underestimate. It is thickest in December and January, which is also Magh Mela season, and it routinely delays arrivals by hours. Build a buffer day if your rite is fixed to a tithi.

Getting here

A piece of aviation history belongs to this city: in February 1911 Henri Pequet flew 6,000 cards and letters from here to Naini, the first airmail flight anywhere in the world.

What else is here

• The Sangam and the fort. The confluence, the Akshayavat inside the Allahabad Fort, and the Ashoka pillar in the fort gateway.
• The twelve Madhav temples. A circuit around the whole Prayag Kshetra, set out in our guide to the Dwadash Madhav.
• Allahabad Museum. One of four national museums in India, and the body recording the flora and fauna of the two rivers.
• Allahabad University. Founded in the colonial period and long central to the city’s character.
• The New Yamuna Bridge. The cable-stayed crossing, and the usual route to Arail.

The riverine landscape still holds a good deal: doves, peacocks, junglefowl, black partridge, parakeets, quails and bulbuls are common, deer are found across the trans-Yamuna area, and Siberian migrants arrive at the Sangam marshes in winter. A turtle sanctuary and a river biodiversity park at the Sangam were approved under the Namami Gange programme, and the Meja Forest Division is developing a blackbuck conservation reserve.

If you are coming for a rite

Most families who contact us are here for two or three days and want the ceremony settled before they arrive, so the trip is about the rite rather than about finding someone to perform it.

A booking covers the pandit, the boat to the confluence, all samagri and the Sankalp with your gotra and your ancestors’ names. Travel and accommodation are yours. A pandit calls within two hours to fix the tithi.

Common questions

Is it Prayagraj or Allahabad?

Both refer to the same city. Prayag is the oldest name, Allahabad dates from the Mughal period, and Prayagraj was restored in 2018. Signage, tickets and residents use a mixture.

When is the best time to visit?

December to February for the weather, though that is also fog season. Magh Mela falls in January and February and Pitru Paksha in September or October, and both bring crowds the city otherwise does not have.

How many days are enough?

Two nights covers one rite at the Sangam without hurry. Three adds the fort, the Akshayavat and part of the Madhav circuit. More than that only if you are adding Varanasi or Ayodhya.

Is the air quality really a problem?

It can be, in winter especially, when fog and smoke combine. Anyone with asthma or a respiratory condition should carry their medication and avoid early mornings outdoors in December and January.

Whatever brought you, the city arranges itself around the water. If a rite is the reason, tell us the names and the dates and we will have the pandit and the boat ready: Pind Daan at the Triveni Sangam.