page_title: Tribeni, Hooghly
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Tribeni, Hooghly / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The Bathing Ghat in Tribeni beside the Hindu cremate area. The place is frequented by many people for a holy dip; currently facing issues of river bank deposits
context_page_description: Tribeni is a locality in Bansberia Municipality of Hooghly district in the Indian state of West Bengal and is currently a part of the area covered by Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority. It is an old holy place for the Hindus, the sanctity of which has been recognized for many centuries and had been mentioned in Pavana-Dutam, a Sanskrit piece of the last quarter of the 12th century. The Muslims took it over during early phases of their conquest of Bengal, also referred to as Turkish conquest in the thirteenth century. The place retains its holiness for multiple centuries, even beyond that which was primarily due to the rivers it hosted, corroborated by records of the bathers at different timelines, who thronged during the festival of Makar Sankranti. Of the many odes written on the Ganges in various Indian languages, one that was recited and entered as a ritual offering to the river by the Brahmins during the medieval period, was presumably written in Sanskrit by Gaji Jafar Khan during his stay in Tribeni.
context_section_description: Tribeni is located at 22.99°N 88.40°E.
  Tribeni is believed to get its name from the divergence of three rivers, Yamuna, Ganga and Saraswati. The probable earlier names were "Muktaveni", which distinguished it from Prayag, Allahabad, known as Yuktaveni; it also featured in James Rennell's map of Bengal in 1781 where it was spelled as "Terbonee". The river Saraswati surfaces from the south of the famous Hindu cremate area, commonly known as ‘Shashan ghat’, westwards into Saptagram. The Yamuna, commonly pronounced as Jamuna in Bengali, had earlier branched off from the Ganges towards south east, but the confluence has silted up with course of time. This leaves the river Ganges, variedly known as Hooghly or Bhagirathi to descend to the sea. The Ghat in Tribeni which lies beside the confluence was built by a Hindu king of Orissa, Mukunda Dev and that left an influence of Odisha in Tribeni apparent from the temples near the ghat.
  The town is on the western banks of the Ganges with no plateau or hills in its close vicinity and hosts one of the earliest surviving monuments of Muslim in West Bengal, Zafar Khan Gazi's Mosque. The mosque bears an Arabic chronogram, 1298 though there remains evidence that suggests it was remodeled over time. The date is further corroborated by the fact that Tribeni along with nearby areas were occupied by Zafar Khan in 1267, after around 60 years from the conquest of Bengal. Its doorways have Hindu Vaishnavite sculptures inscribed along with Sanskrit scripts on its walls which can be associated to a temple from where the slabs were procured or as well could be a temple on which the mosque probably was built. 
  Tribeni had been of great importance during the Pala and Sena periods, and after the Muslim incursions, Saptagram became a major administrative center for the Sultans of Bengal. During the sixteenth century, Portuguese and French settlements in the Hooghly District were presumably looking to the possibility of trade across the Saraswati River at the port of Saptagram. Around 1536–37, the King of Bengal had given the Custom houses in Satgaon, today's Saptagram, along with Chittagong, the major port, to the Portuguese to set up trading centers, which ultimately extended their land occupation. During 1579–80, Antonio Tavares founded Ugolim (Hooghly) which outshone Satgaon, and had around five thousand Portuguese inhabitants. Their settlement was highly curtailed during the Mughal assault, where they appeared relatively ill-equipped for such an attack. For the same vulnerability of Mughal threats and the lack of available defense along with depleting trade prospects through Saraswati due to its drying up, Job Charnock, chief agent of East India Company in Hugli, along with his team decided to move further south to Sutanuti in 1690, where several local villages were populated by local merchants and a trading center was available, which later became part of Calcutta. Tribeni was also a host to the British army during WWII in Nissen huts which can still be seen near Shibpur. Though these didn't have much enduring socio-economic impact, as they did at Bandel and Chandernagore, the town was however revived by many factories in the 20th century, e.g. jute mills, the Bandel Thermal Power Station, the paper factory for ITC and the tire and rayon factories nearby the town.
  Tribeni thus differentiated itself from its neighbors, who were relying more on agriculture due to the available fertile land, as an industrial belt. There is no absolute evidence of an old trading center or market place, though with the advent of industries newer market places came into existence.  Post independence, the town has witnessed many economic ups and downs due to the economic changes in the industries it houses. The downfall of Jute mills across the Ganges post Partition of India, which had flourished during the late 19th century and once unseated Scotland Jute mills at Dundee, preceded the economic drain from West Bengal and the Ganges Jute Mill at Tribeni was no exception. The annual demand for Indian Jute mills of 6 million
caption: The Ganges Bathing Ghat at Tribeni
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