www.galaxyimrj.com Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research journal ISSN 2278-9529 P ik System: The Backbone of Ahom Administration 퐚� Lakhya Pratim Nirmolia Assistant Professor Dept. of History Kakojan College Kakojan, Jorhat, Assam Situated in the north-eastern part of India, Assam is the land of the red river and the blue hills. Down the ages she received people of different strains, particularly the Indo- Chinese Mongoloids, pouring into, India, who added new elements to the country’s population and culture-complex. Assam is surrounded by the hill states of Bhutan, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya in the vicinity of China and Tibet on the north, of Burma on the east and the south and of Bangladesh on the west. Assam’s extraordinary fertile soil, rich natural and mineral resources always attracts the foreigners since ancient time. Assam is divided by two valleys i.e. the Brahmaputra and the Barak valley. Assam is a land of great antiquity. But her history was not recorded and preserved properly. The system of keeping regular records of the contemporary events was introduced after the establishment of Ahom kingdom in eastern Assam in the thirteen century. The Ahoms are the members of the Shan branch of great Tai or Thai family of South-East Asia. The Shans were so called because they first inhabited a land named Tyai-Shan on the bank of the river Tarim which flowed to the north of Mongolia and China. From Tyai-Shan they first migrated to China in about the 5th century AD and thence to Mungrimungram in Yunan. Sukapha, a family member of this branch, left his homeland in about 1215 A.D. to seek his fortune elsewhere and he arrived at Khamjang in Assam in 1228 AD. In dealing with the scheduled tribes i.e. Moran and Barahis; who had been in possession of the eastern part of the valley, Sukapha adopted a policy of appeasement and conciliation. Those among them who challenged Sukapha were ruthlessly killed. Sukapha and his followers had left their womenfolk in their Shan homeland as being incapable of adventure, and they were therefore, compelled to marry from among the women of the conquered tribes, the Morans, the Barahis and the Chutias. The Ahoms could soon assimilate themselves with the local people of the valley. It is these tribes which called Sukapha and his followers as “unequalled” or “unparalleled” or Ahom or Assam. The kingdom founded by these alien conquers become well-known in medieval times as “Asam” and in modern times as Assam. During the time of Ahom rule the Assamese society was based on agriculture. Each and every tribe of Assam engaged in their traditional method of agriculture. After establishing his kingdom in Assam Sukapha turned his mind to reconstruct the Assamese society with new enthusiasm. The Marans and the Barahis, who were the earliest of the tribes to be subjected, had not yet passed the stage of tribalism. They tilled their communal land with more or less primitive equipments and supplemented their living by fishing, hunting etc. The Ahoms came there with a knowledge of an improved mode of production (wet rice cultivation or sali kheti), which superseded the existing one. The Ahoms were also eager to exploit the conquered and therefore, established a sort of tributary relation with them, sometimes by agreement and sometimes by application of force, which assumed the form of virtual slavery. Thus Sukapha introduced a system of exacting personal service from the members of the tribal communities, who were to serve the ruling tribe as fuel-suppliers, water-drawers, honey-suppliers etc. With the extension of the Ahom power, the load of administration also increased, which necessitated the appointment of different new officers. Vol. I. Issue. IV 1 October 2012 www.galaxyimrj.com Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research journal ISSN 2278-9529 In order to meet the internal exigencies, they now elaborated the existing system of exacting personal service from the subjects. In 1510 during the time of Suhungmung, the paiks were organized according to families and lineage called phoids and resettled according to their skills. The number of paiks rendering royal service at any time followed the principle ghar muri e-powa or one-fourth the number of paiks in a household. The paik rendering service was rotated and the other paiks in his household tended to his gaa mati during his absence. In 1609 AD the P ik System was systematically implemented by Momai Tamuli Barbarua under the patronage of King Pratap Singha. Under the Paik system every adult male between the age 16 to 50 was푎� registered as a p ik for State service. The p ik system of the Ahom government fostered friendship and unity amongst the common people. The smallest unit of the p ik, called got, consisted of four p 푎�iks, who generally did not belong푎� to the same family. It was the system of those days that when one or two p iks of the got work under the State, the remaining푎� three or two, had to look푎� after the household affairs of their absent comrade. In the times of emergency two, sometimes three p 푎�iks were recruited from each got. The first levy in a got was called the mul; the second and third was called as dew l and tew l accordingly. Some p iks were also organized into professional푎� khels, each rendering a particular kind of productive work like boat building and arrow-making for the state.푎� Thus the 푎�unit, from the smallest to푎� the highest, inculcated a spirit of harmony friendship among the inhabitants of country. During the time of Rajeswar Singha (1752-1789) as the pressure on the Paik system increased, the number of paiks in each got was decreased from four to three. The control of the state over the p iks was very rigid. Over each twenty p iks, there was an officer called Bora, over him was a Saikia commanding a hundred p iks, then a Hazarika commanding a thousand and p 푎�iks and then a Phukan commanding 6,000푎� p iks. One p ik in each got was always to be available for service, and in times of war,푎� sometimes even three p iks from each got were recruited푎� for military service, in which case the whole푎� burden푎� of a got fell upon a single p ik. The p푎� ik constituted the foundation of the entire Ahom socio-political organization, and were divided into two classes.푎� The lowest was the k nri or k ri i.e. archer p iks or simply p iks;푎� and the next higher were the chamu s and the visay s (officers). The p iks were grouped according to the services rendered to the state푎� into two푎� broad classes, soldiers푎� and labours.푎� The regular peasantry, which was bound푎� to give its service푎� to the state 푎�as a soldier in times of war and as a labourer in times of peace was called k nri p iks. Those p iks working as tenants in the private landed estate of the nobles were called bilatiyas, whereas those allotted to the temples and Satras were called dewaliyas. These푎� 푎�two classes paiks푎� were exempted from paying a number of taxes and were not required to proceed to the battle-field unless the situation so demanded. During the Ahom period there were another class of paiks calls bahatiyas and they were render service to their respective hill masters. Peasants of good birth or relative affluence were called chamua paiks. The chamuas were free from rendering personal services. There were altogether nine classes of chamuas, such as Kakati, Kataki, Sabhapandit, Deodhai. Bailung etc. Those who were exempted from personal services viz. the chamuas, had to pay rupees two per head as levy to the state. Each paik in return for his service to the State was allotted two puras of best arable land called ga-mati, free of charge which was neither hereditary nor transferable. If they enjoy more than the usual quota of paddy lands, then they had to pay rupee one per pura of additional lands used by them. In case a paik died without leaving an heir, his share of land was forfeited to the khel he belonged. The royal services that the paiks tended to were defense (the Ahom kingdom did not have a standing army till the beginning of 19th century and its army consisted of the militia formed of paiks), civil construction (embankments, roads, bridges, tanks etc), military production (boats, arrows, muskets) etc. Vol. I. Issue. IV 2 October 2012 www.galaxyimrj.com Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research journal ISSN 2278-9529 The paik and khel system able to mobilize a vast labour force at any given point of time for all the functions of the state. Though this system was essentially based on coercion and was very strict, it did however provide a good measure of social security and because of its ethnic, kinship, and other social bindings it also provide a sense of belonging. The state that emerged in Assam in the Middle Ages ultimately depended on the efficient functioning of the paik and the khel system. The paiks, whether they pursued another craft or not, were all peasants. When they did, they were taxed at a rate depending on the nature of the craft or profession. Thus gold washers and brass workers were taxed at the rate of ` 5/-, oil-pressures and fishermen at ` 3/- and silk-weavers at ` 2/- annually. It appears that the professional paiks were kept under strict royal supervision so that a common pursuit, namely trade, was not allowed to grow among them.