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Founding
Founding of Ahom Kingdom
former kingdom that was centred in the Brahmaputra Valley in Assam, India
- 1228
- South Asia
Founding
former kingdom that was centred in the Brahmaputra Valley in Assam, India
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
The Ahom kingdom (; 1228–1826), or Kingdom of Assam, was a late medieval kingdom in the Brahmaputra Valley that existed from 1228 until 1826 and came to incorporate large parts of modern Assam. Established by Sukaphaa, a Tai prince from Möng Mao (present-day Dehong, China), it began as a small Mueang in the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra based on wet-rice agriculture. The kingdom expanded under Suhungmung in the 16th century, and became multi-ethnic in character, accelerating a process of social change, ethnogenesis, and inter-ethnic interactions under the ruling Ahom dynasty. During the 17th century, the kingdom defeated multiple attempts by the Mughal Empire to expand into Northeast India. Central authority collapsed following the Moamoria rebellion in the late 18th century. Internal conflicts between dynastic claimants led to Burmese intervention, and the kingdom faced multiple Burmese invasions after 1817. British intervention led to the First Anglo-Burmese War, and the control of the kingdom passed into the hands of the East India Company through the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826.
The kingdom was largely multi-ethnic, with the ethnic Tai Ahom people constituting less than 10% of the population according to the 1872 and 1881 censuses of British India. People from different ethnic groups became a part of the Ahom population due to a process known as Ahomisation. The identity of the Ahom people in the kingdom was fluid, with the king controlling who belonged to it and who did not. The Ahoms initially called their kingdom Mong Dun Shun Kham till 1401 (Assamese: xunor-xophura; English: casket of gold), but adopted Assam in the 15th century. The kingdom maintained close political ties with other Tai states, especially Möng Kawng (Nara), till the end of its rule in the 19th century.
The Ahom kingdom was established in 1228 when Sukaphaa, a Tai prince, entered the Brahmaputra valley having crossed the Patkai mountain range from Möng Mao. Sukaphaa probably started his journey from his homeland with a small number, but he was supported and joined by other Tai chiefs and common followers along the way and entered Assam with approximately 9,000 persons. They arrived in Upper Assam, earlier the domain of the Kamarupa kingdom which had since lapsed into deteriorating conditions. His intention was not to conquer and raid but to permanently settle in fallow land and practice agriculture At the time of their arrival in the Brahmaputra valley, the Ahom practiced forms of Buddhism and the Ahom religion. As Hinduism gained influence in the kingdom during the reign of Suhungmung, the Ahom adapted by identifying their god Lengdon with Indra.
The Ahoms were primarily responsible for converting the undulating alluvial forest and marshy plains in upper Assam to flat rice fields able to hold plain water for rice cultivation via a network of embankments. The Tai Shans had with them the basic political structures for state-building (Mung), surplus producing technologies such as sedentary wet-rice cultivation and hydrology, a patriarchal social organisation based on clans (foid), and a literary form of their language. Whereas the earlier state formations (Kamarupa) borrowed political structures from North India that led to Indo-Aryan domination, the Ahom state formation provided an alternate model built on Southeast Asian political structures, and which provided the space for the development of a distinct political, social and cultural identity. The early kings of the Ahom dynasty claimed descent from Lengdon, the lord of heaven in the Ahom religion. The later Tungkhungia kings converted to Shaktism and the persecution of the shudra Mahantas and their laity that began during the reign of Siva Singha led to the Moamoria rebellion and ultimately to the end of the kingdom.
Sukaphaa (1228–1268) spent a couple of decades moving from place to place establishing colonies and finally settled down in Charaideo in 1253. He established the offices of the Dangarias— the Burhagohain (Chao-Phrungmung) and the Borgohain (Chao-Thaonmung). In the 1280s, these two offices were given independent regions of control; partly hereditary and partly elected, the king and the two counsellors held each other in check and balance. These institutions of checks and balances thus seeded held fast for six hundred years—in the 18th century John Peter Wade, a British officer, observed these unique institutions and novel system of government. Sukaphaa had instructed that events during his rule be chronicled, a practice sustained by his successors; and there emerged the institution of Buranji writing, a practice of historiography rare elsewhere in India. In the late medieval era, the Ahom kingdom was known to be a kaghazi raj (a kingdom with records) just as the Mughal Empire was.
At the time of their arrival in Assam, the Ahoms came with advanced technologies of rice cultivation, and it was their belief that they were divinely ordained to turn fallow land to agriculture and also to absorb stateless and shifting agriculturists to their own ways. The Ahom called non-Ahom who practiced shifting cultivation Kha, meaning "slave" or "culturally inferior foreigner". Kha could become part of Ahom culture by switching to wet-rice cultivation, and being ritually adopted into Ahom clans, in a process known as Ahomisation. The process of the Ahom assimilating neighboring ethnic groups was facilitated by similarities in religion between them and the Ahom. Sukaphaa befriended those among the Morans and Barahi who were willing to join him and killed those who opposed him. Many others were incorporated into Ahom clans. The Ahoms were aware of their smaller numbers, and avoided confrontations with larger groups. Ahomisation increased the Ahom numbers significantly. This process of Ahomisation was particularly significant till the 16th century when under Suhungmung, the kingdom made large territorial expansions at the cost of the Chutiya and the Kachari kingdoms.
At this stage the kingdom was still not fully sovereign. Sukaphaa sent his word of allegiance and tributes to Möng Mao, a practice that was continued by some of his successors till about the early 14th century when the power of Möng Mao faded to be replaced the power of Möng Kawng, at which point the Ahoms stopped the tributes. The Ahoms began to call their domain Mong Dun Sun Kham ("a country of golden gardens"). Though Sukaphaa had avoided the Namdang region, being mindful of the numerically small Ahom contingent, during the reign of his son Suteuphaa, the Kacharis withdrew from the region and the Ahoms expanded into it; but no further expansions of the Ahom domain occurred for the next two hundred years. The Ahom kingdom, for most of its history, had been closed and population movement closely monitored. The kingdom did have relations with Chutia kingdom that turned into a conflict, and a marriage alliance with the Kamata kingdom. At the end of the 14th century, the nascent Ahom polity faced crises of succession, two regicides, and three interregnum periods when the kingdom was without a king.
Sudangphaa Bamuni Konwar (r. 1397–1407), born and raised in a Brahmin household in Habung, was identified as a descendant of a past king and installed on the throne by the Burhagohain and Borgohain to end the period of crisis. He established Brahmin officers, advisors and communities near the capital and the Brahmin influence, though negligible, was felt for the first time. A number of rebellions erupted purportedly against this influence but Sudangphaa was able to suppress them and solidify his rule. One of the rebels invited a military expedition from Mong Kwang (called Nara in the Buranjis, the successor state of Mong Mao to which the early Ahom kings used to send tribute) resulting in a clash in 1401—but Sudangphaa defeated the expedition and concluded the conflict with a treaty that fixed the boundary between the two polities at Patkai. This event was significant since it moved the Ahom polity from implicit subordination to explicit sovereignty, and this was accompanied by the transition of the name of the polity from Mong-Dun-Sun-Kham to "Assam", a derivative from Shan/Shyam. Sudangphaa established a new capital at Charagua, broke the clan allegiances that held the Ahom polity together earlier replacing it with political authority of the king, and introduced the tradition of the singarigharutha ceremony, the state coronation of the Ahom kings that symbolised royal Ahom sovereignty, authority and legitimacy.
Sudangphaa settled Habung brahmins close his capital, settled the sons of his adopted Brahmin family in frontier areas, dismantled the tribal allegiances that held the polity together earlier and brought the Ahom kingdom very close to a full-fledged state.
The next hundred years saw the kingdom mostly suppressing rebellious Naga groups, but a conflict with the Dimasa kingdom in 1490 saw the Ahoms, not strong enough to take them on frontally, suing for peace. The Ahom royalty continuously improved their relationship with the Brahmans which enabled them to gain goodwill with the Indo-Aryanized tribal groups and consolidate power.
The Ahom kingdom transitioned into a full state rather dramatically in a short period during the reign of Suhungmung Dihingia Raja (r. 1497–1539). It began first with a consolidation of the militia in 1510, followed by an expansion into the region of Panbari at Habung (a Chutia dependency) in 1512 probably with the help of the descendants of the Habungia Brahmans settled during Sudangpha's time. A clash with the Hinduized Chutia kingdom began in 1513, followed by its annexation in 1523 and the kingdom's nobility, commanders, professional classes, warriors and technologies were absorbed into the Ahom kingdom. In 1527, the Baro-Bhuyans ruling in central Assam region of Rowta-Temoni were relocated to the north-bank of Upper-Assam and absorbed into the lower echelons of the growing state as scribes and warriors. It was this formation of the Ahom kingdom that met the aggression from Bengal under Turbak in 1532 and it was able to eliminate the aggressive leadership (with significant loss to itself) and pursue the retreating invaders to the Karatoya river. In 1536, after the series of contacts with the Kachari kingdom, the Ahom rule extended up to the Kolong River in Nagaon; and by the end of Suhungmung's reign, the size of the kingdom had effectively doubled.
These expansions created significant changes in the kingdom—the Assamese-speaking Hinduized subjects outnumbered the Ahoms themselves; and the absorption of the Chutia kingdom meant a wide range of artisan skills became available to it increasing the scope for division of labour. To provide legitimacy to the rule of the Ahom kings among the new subjects Suhungmung assumed the title Swarganarayana (Swargadeo), though nothing like the Rajputisation process occurred with the Ahoms. The nature of the kings institutional relationship to the ministers changed with the creation of a new position, the Borpatrogohain, named after a Chutia office; and the creation of the offices of Sadiyakhowa Gohain (frontier region acquired from the Chutia kingdom) and the Marangikhowa Gohain (territories acquired from the Kachari kingdom), both of which were reserved for the Borgohain and Burhagohain lineages. The traditional nobles (Chao) now aligned with the Brahmin literati and an expanded ruling class developed. And when the Ahoms under Ton Kham Borgohain pursued the invaders and reached the Karatoya river they began to see themselves as the rightful heir of the erstwhile Kamarupa kingdom.
The Ahom kingdom became more broad-based and took many features of its mature form under Pratap Singha (r. 1603–1641), primarily to meet the sustained attacks from the Mughals. The Paik system was reorganized in 1609 under the professional khel system, replacing the kinship-based phoid system; and paiks could be permanently alienated to non-royal institutions via royal grants. Under the same king, the offices of the Borphukan (viceroy of territories acquired from the Koches and the Mughals), and the Borbarua (the "secretary" of the royal government) were established to increase the number of Patra Mantris to five, along with other smaller offices. The practices of using Brahmins solely for diplomatic missions, the Ahom kings adopting a Hindu name in addition to their Ahom names, and patronising Hindu establishments began with Pratap Singha, though formal initiation of the Ahom kings into Hinduism did not occur till 1648. The Assamese language entered the Ahom court for the first time and briefly coexisted with and eventually replaced the Ahom language.
After the division of the Koch kingdom between two branches of the Koch dynasty in 1581, the Ahoms allied with their immediate western neighbor, the Koch Hajo branch, from 1603 to prop them as a buffer against the Mughals who had extended their rule to Bengal by 1576. The collapse of the Koch Hajo power in 1614 resulted in the Mughals coming to power up to the Barnadi River. The Mughals attempted further ingress to the east in 1616 with the Battle of Samdhara which marked the beginning of the Ahom–Mughal conflicts which lasted the till 1682 in the Battle of Itakhuli, when the Ahoms were able to push the Mughals back to the west of the Manas River permanently.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Ahom kingdom”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.