History of Assam

The history of Assam is the history of a confluence of people from the east, west, south and the north; the confluence of the Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman (Sino-Tibetan), Tai and Indo-Aryan cultures. Although invaded over the centuries, it was never a vassal or a colony to an external power until the third Burmese invasion in 1821, and, subsequently, the British ingress into Assam in 1824 during the First Anglo-Burmese War.

Quotes

• Since time immemorial, Assam has been a part of the Indian civilizational axis. It is a continuation of a connected history of the ancient kingdom known as Pragjyotishpura and Kamarupa. In his monumental work Early History of Kamarupa, Rai K. L. Barua Bahadur argues that Pragjyotisha, which was then a powerful kingdom, is often mentioned in the epics and Puranas. Long before Bengal was even fit for habitation, Kamarupa underwent the process of Aryanization at an earlier time than central and lower Bengal.
  • Nani Gopal Mahanta - Citizenship Debate over NRC and CAA_ Assam and the Politics of History (2021, SAGE Publications India)

• In the Mahabharata, the extent of Pragjyotisha was up to the Bay of Bengal in the south and to the Karatoya (which stretches from the Tista, the Koshi to the Mahanadi) in the west. The Kalika Purana mentions that the temple of Kamakhya near Guwahati was the centre point of Kamarupa. The Purana deals with the story of Kamarupa and Naraka. Naraka was born from the earth through its impregnation by Vishnu (in the Treta Yuga) and was brought up by Janaka, the king of Videha, in present-day north Bihar. He married the daughter of the king of Vidarbha. He came under the influence of Bana Asura and as a result became irreligious and presumptuous. Bana Asura ruled over Sonitpura and is believed to have built the Mahabhairava temple that contains a huge linga.
  Naraka was eventually slain by Vishnu in his incarnation as Krishna. In present-day North Guwahati, there now stands the temple of Aswaklanta, which means jaded horses. While invading Pragjyotisha to destroy Narakasura, Lord Krishna is said to have halted there, after his horses became tired, and a large number of small holes in the rocks near the river are believed to be the footprints of his horses. Bhagadatta, the son of Naraka and the successor Pragjyotisha, took part in the Mahabharata battle on the side of the Kauravas and died in the hands of Arjuna.5 The Vishnu Purana says that the country extended around the temple in all directions for 100 yojanas (about 450 miles). Its domain included the present-day territories of eastern Bengal, Assam and Bhutan. According to the Yogini Tantra, the king- dom of Kamarupa extended from the Karatoya river on the west to the Dikhou on the east, and from the mountains of Kanjagiri on the north to the confluence of Brahmaputra and Lakhya rivers on the south. It included the Brahmaputra valley, Bhutan, Rangpur, Cooch Behar, the north-east of Mymensingh and the Garo Hills.
  • in Nani Gopal Mahanta - Citizenship Debate over NRC and CAA_ Assam and the Politics of History (2021, SAGE Publications India)

• The Aryan influence became so widespread and penetrating that even minor Vedic customs and rituals deep rooted in the life of the common people... Aryanisation led to a unification of the innumerable tribal groups particularly in the Brahmaputra valley primarily through the development of a language which was a direct descendant of Magadhi Apabhramsa’.
  • B. K. Baruah’s A Cultural History of Assam, in in Nani Gopal Mahanta - Citizenship Debate over NRC and CAA_ Assam and the Politics of History (2021, SAGE Publications India)

• The physical features of the Assamese people are a mixture of the racial characteristics of both the Aryan and the Mongoloid races, with traces of the Dravidian and the Austric people as well …. The Ahoms, descendants of the Shan community from China’s Yunan province, played a major role in bringing the Assamese-speaking people within a common political umbrella and gave the people the name Assamese, a derivative of the word Ahom.13
  • Harekrishna Deka,in Nani Gopal Mahanta - Citizenship Debate over NRC and CAA_ Assam and the Politics of History (2021, SAGE Publications India)

• a process of Aryanisation in which even some tribes like the Kacharis, the Lalungs, the Mikirs and others were converted to a new caste, the Koch. Thus the linguistic community which took shape in Brahmaputra valley and came to be known as the Assamese underwent a process of Aryanisation and in the process brought Assam culturally so close to the rest of India that by the 15th century Sankardeva who took pride in the fact that he was born in the ‘Bharatabarsha’.
  • Professor A. K. Baruah, in Nani Gopal Mahanta - Citizenship Debate over NRC and CAA_ Assam and the Politics of History (2021, SAGE Publications India)

• [A] cultural community developed into a political people with Assamese- ness as the core element of unity. They offered a heroic resistance to the superior force of the Mughals, who invaded the Ahom kingdom a number of times but were defeated. The finest example of this spirit was witnessed in the battle of Saraighat where a heroic leader, Lachit Borphukan, inspired the Assamese to rise as one against an alien invasion. The Mughal invasions were a litmus test for the Assamese spirit. Their unified resistance against an alien power led to the consciousness of an identity, the birth of a kind of nation-ness, without the concept of naturalism.
  • Harekrishna Deka quoted in Nani Gopal Mahanta - Citizenship Debate over NRC and CAA_ Assam and the Politics of History (2021, SAGE Publications India)