TAl CULTURE Vol. III, No. 1 article ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Chatthip Nartsupha Ranoo Wichasin * THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE OF AHOM HISTORY This article discusses five topics: 1. The importance of the knowledge of Ahom history; 2. The state of knowledge of Ahom history at present: the English and the Assamese schools; 3. The state of knowledge of Ahom history at present: the Tai school; 4. The knowledge of Ahom history from reading the Ahom Buranji and other Ahom documents in the Tai language; 5. A direction for the study of Ahom history in the future. I. The importance of the knowledge of Ahom history At present there are about 2 million Ahom people. They are the largest group of population in the Upper Assam region of India, which in total has approximately 7 million people.1 The Tai Ahom people migrated from Muang Mao north of the Shall state in the 13th century. They crossed over the Patkal mountain range to settle in the Brahmnaputra river valley.2 A study of this group of people is important in at least three ways: 1. This group of Tai people did not have much contact with other Tai groups over a long period. Therefore their historical documents reflect many archaic elements of the Tai tribe, which have been lost or obscured among other Tai groups. They belong to a Tai society and culture which does not have Buddhism. They retain beliefs in natural and ancestral spirits. Their class * A paper submitted to the 'International Seminar on Tais of North East India and Their Relation to Other Tais of Southeast Asia and China', organized by Ban Ok Pub Lik Muang Tai (Eastern Tai Literary Association), February 7-8, 1995, Dispur, Assam, India. 1 This is an estimate made by the Ban Ok Pup Lik Muang Tai Association. The exact figure is unknown, because the Indian government had not made a population census categorized by Ahom ethnicity since 1931. Professor Nomal Gogol estimated that the Ahom population was 1.3 million, see Nomal Gogoi. Tai People of India: Their Language and Culture. in The Tai. Vol. 1, Chu-Ka-Fa Year 766 (A.D. 1994), p. 21. Nang Pratashlata Buragobain estimated that in 1989 there were 1.07 million Ahom, see Nang Pratashlata Buragohain. Spatial Distribution of the Ahom Population. in The Tai. Vol. 1, Chu-Ka-Fa Year 766, p. 64. In 'The Ahom Population in Assam: A Spatial Analysis of Growth and Distribution', a paper presented to the 5th International Conference on Thai Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, London 1993, Nang Buragohain mentioned that the Ahom were concentrated in the districts of Sibsagar, Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Golathat, Dhemaji, Tinsukia and Lakhimpur. 2 Sir Edward Gait. A History of Assam. 1926; 2nd edition reprint, Guwahati: Lawyer's Book Stall, 1992, p. 73. 16 TAl CULTURE Vol. III, No. 1 article ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ division depends much on ethnicity. A study of this group of Tai people will help us to search for the original roots of Tai society and culture. 2. This group of Tai people was able to establish a large kingdom. They created a state of which the Tai tribe was the ruler. At one time their kingdom had an area approximately half of the present-day Thailand. The kingdom was independent for 600 years from the 13' to the 19' century. This Ahom kingdom was the largest Tai kingdom besides Ayutthaya. As the kingdom was in existence for a long time, it because the depository of a highly developed culture in the forms of manuscripts, buildings, rituals and customs. The Ahom were different from other Tai groups which had attained only the level of development of principalities. The Ahom people had their own writing and they liked to record their history. Their chronicles are mines of knowledge of ancient Tai society and culture. 3. At present the Ahom and other Tai tribes in Assam are very active in the study of Tai history and language. The government of Assam has a policy to teach the Tai language. A budget has been allocated to hire 200 Tai language teachers for elementary schools in Upper Assam. The revival of the Tai language, both spoken and written, and the promotion of Tai culture has been going on forcefully in the Upper Assam area. The spearhead of this movement is the 'Eastern Tai Literary Association' (Ban Ok Pup Lik Muang Tai). The Association arranges cultural meetings, researches and publishes books. Its aim is to establish the Upper Assam area as an Ahom state, separate from Assam, within the federation of India.3 Research on Tai history and culture in Assam has significance beyond its academic role. It contributes to the foundations of a new Tai nation in India on an age-old heritage. II. The state of knowledge of Ahom history at present: the English and Assamese schools. Knowledge of Ahom history has come mostly from works by the British and the Assamese. These works have the following characteristics: 1. They consider Ahom history as only a part or a period of the history of Assam. 2. They utilize Assamese, Persian and English documents as source materials. 3. They consider Assam to be within the culture area of India. They see only the dominance of the Hindu religion especially that of the Vaisnavite school. In brief, they tend to view Ahom history as a part of Indian history especially in terms of culture, religion and language. 3 From interviews with members of the Ban Ok Pup Lik Muang Tai Association. 17 TAl CULTURE Vol. III, No. 1 article ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The first and the most classical work on the history of Assam is Sir Edward Gait (1863-1950)'s A History of Assam4, published in 1905. Gait was an Englishman, holding the position of honorary director of the ethnographical works of Assam. He divided his book into 18 chapters, chapters 1-4 on the pre-Ahom history of Assam, chapters 5-9 on Assam under the Ahom, chapters 10-13 on other kingdoms in the hill areas on the border of Assam, and chapters 14-18 on the history of Assam from the Burmese conquest to British rule. Gait considered Ahom history a period in Assam history, spanning from 1228 when Sukapha (reigned 1228-68) led Tai soldiers from Muang Mao to settle in the Brahmaputra valley, to 1826 when Assam came under British rule. Even though Gait had no other historical studies to draw on, his book was remarkably thorough and mature. For primary sources, he utilized mainly Assamese chronicles, supplemented by Persian documents from the Mogul dynasty which fought against the Ahom, and by English documents of the Fast India Company. In particular, Gait used the Ahom Buranji chronicle in the Tai language, which he had translated by a team of learned Ahom priests. Gait gave weight to the role of the Ahom in the history of Assam. He pointed out that the Ahom unified the Brahmaputra valley under one single administration, a situation never before achieved. The Ahom also were successful in defending their country against the Mogul. They stopped the Mogul from conquering further to the East. However, Gait's primary objective was to write a history of the land of Assam, not a history of the Tai Ahom. Therefore he started the book by recounting the influence of Brahmanism and Aryan culture in the land of Assam before the advent of the Ahom. He then went on to narrate the interaction of various ethnic groups after the arrival of the Ahom, the domination of Hindu culture and the Sanskrit-based Assamese language from the 16th century onwards, and finally the establishment of British rule in the 19th century. All these periods form one historical sequence. After the work of Sir Edward Gait, the most important research work on the history of Assam belongs to Professor Suryya Kumar Bhuyan (1894-1964) of Cotton College, Guwahati. He was a founder of the Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies (DHAS). He was moving force behind the work of this department in the collection of historical chronicles. He became the director- general of the department in 1933 and remained in this position until 1957 except for a period when he was on study leave at the School of Oriental and African Studle in London. In England, Professor Bhuyan studied the documents on Assam kept at the India Office Library, and wrote a thesis under the supervision of Professor H. H. Dodwell. 4 Sir Edward Gait. A History of Assam. 18 TAl CULTURE Vol. III, No. 1 article ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Professor Bhuyan wrote in total 40 works including histories and edited collections of chronicles in English and Assamese.5 His important works in English were his thesis Anglo-Assamese Relations 1771-1826 (1947)6, Lachit Barphukan and His Times (1947)7, Studies in the Literature of Assam (1955)8, Atan Buragohain and His Times (1957)9, and Studies in the History of Assam (1965)10. He also translated the Tungkhlungia Buranji11, an Assamese chronicle on the 1681-1826 period when Assam was under the last Ahom dynasty named Tungkhungia. The translation (from Assamese to English) was first published in 1933. Bhuyan's works in Assamese were also very valuable. They included editions of the Assam Buranji, a collection of chronicles in the Assamese language; the Deodhai Asam Buranji, a chronicle of Assam under the early period of Ahom rule; chronicles of the lands on the border of Assam including the Kachari Buranji, the Jayantia Buranji, and the Tripura Buranji; and the Kamrupar Buranji which narrated the wars between Assam and the Mogul.