Tamluk

Tamluk stands on the Rupnarayan River near the waterways leading to the Bay of Bengal. It is generally identified with ancient Tamralipti, a celebrated port known to Indian writers, Greek geographers and Chinese Buddhist pilgrims. Merchants and travellers used its connections between the inland river routes and the sea, and the town became a centre of commerce and religious life.

Tamralipti’s heyday as an international harbour belonged to the centuries before the medieval period. The pilgrim Faxian sailed from the port in the fifth century, and Xuanzang visited it in the seventh. An eighth-century inscription records merchants from Ayodhya who made money there. Changes in the channels linking the town to the sea contributed to the port’s decline; later centres took a larger share of Bengal’s maritime trade. Tamluk nevertheless remained a place of local importance on the Rupnarayan.