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31-497: Borboruah ( Ahom language : Phu-Ke-Lung ) was one of the five patra mantris (councillors) in the Ahom kingdom , a position created by the Ahom king Prataap Singha in 1621. The position included both executive and judicial powers, with jurisdiction of the Ahom kingdom east of Kaliabor river and those regions not governed by the three great Gohains ( Burhagohain , Borgohain and

62-686: A habitat of tigers , but encroachment by man has greatly decreased their numbers, to perhaps as few as 100 animals. In 2004, the government established the world's largest tiger preserve in the Hukawng Valley, the Hukaung Valley Wildlife Sanctuary , with an area of approximately 6,500 km (2,500 sq mi); later, the Sanctuary was extended to 21,800 km , making it the largest protected area in mainland Southeast Asia. The government's establishment of

93-700: A meeting of Ahom people at Patsaku, Sibsagar District, the Tai Historical and Cultural Society of Assam was founded. Since the late 1960s, Ahom culture and traditions have witnessed a revival. In 1981 the Eastern Tai Literary Organization has been founded in Dhemaji, which produced language text books and publications in the Ahom script. Schools in Dibrugarh and Sibsagar districts started offering Tai language classes, teaching

124-432: A mix of Tai Ahom, Phakey, Khamti and Central Thai. The scholar Terwiel notes that the view of the Ahom language being a dead language is hotly contested by Ahom priests and spokesmen of the revival movement. According to them, the language did not die out because Ahom priests still use the language for religious purposes. Some even claim that the priestly class speaks Ahom as their mother tongue. Upon further investigation, it

155-566: A small group of traditional priests of the Ahom religion , and it was being used only for ceremonial or ritualistic purposes. There has been efforts to revive the language in recent times. A reconstructed version is taught in various educational institutions in Assam by AHSEC and Dibrugarh University . Tai-Ahom is classified in a Northwestern subgrouping of Southwestern Tai owing to close affinities with Shan , Khamti and, more distantly, Thai . The immediate parent language from which Ahom

186-554: A small minority in their own kingdom, of which they kept control. During the 17th century, the Assamese language entered the Ahom court and co-existed with the Tai-Ahom for some time before finally replacing it. Eventually the Ahom peasants too adopted the Assamese language over the Ahom language for secular purposes, while Ahom was restricted to religious use by Ahom priests. The everyday usage of Ahom language ceased completely by

217-659: A tone system, but because the Ahom script did not spell out any tones, the tones are now unknown. The Ahom language has the following pronouns: Ahom uses the proximal demonstrative nai meaning 'this' and the distal demonstrative nan meaning 'that'. Tai-Ahom mainly used an SVO word order, but an SOV word order has also been attested. Classifiers are used when forming plurals, counting entities and when specifically referring to one single entity. Some classifiers are: 'kun' (used for persons), 'tu' (used for animals) and 'an' (general). For example 'khai song tu' means two buffalo, where 'khai' means buffalo, 'song' means two and 'tu'

248-502: Is dependent upon context and the audience interpretation. Multiple parts of the sentence can be left out; verb and adjectives will remain, but other parts of speech, especially pronouns, can be dropped. Verbs do not have tenses, and nouns do not have plurals. Time periods can be identified by adverbs, strings of verbs, or auxiliaries placed before the verb. Ahom, like other Tai languages, uses classifiers to identify categories, and repetitions of words to express idiomatic expressions. However,

279-647: Is descended has been reconstructed as Proto-Tai , a language from 2000 years ago, in the Kra–Dai family (unrelated to Chinese, but possibly related to the Austronesian languages ), within the (proposed but debated) subgroup of Kam–Tai , although some say that Tai languages are a discrete family, and are not part of Kra–Dai. Ahom is distinct from but closely related to Aiton , which is still spoken in Assam to this day. Ahom has characteristics typical of Tai languages, such as: When speaking and writing Ahom, much

310-865: Is located in Tanaing Township in the Myitkyina District of Kachin State in the northernmost part of the country. It has the Hukaung Valley Wildlife Sanctuary . The rivers draining into the Hukawng Valley, the Tanai Kha, the Tabye, the Tawan, and the Turong, form the headwaters of the Chindwin River . Ringed by steep mountain ranges to the north, east and west, the valley is known as

341-469: Is the classifier for animals. The following interrogatives are found: Ahom has the following basic numerals: 0 in Ahom script is "𑜰". Below is a comparative table of Ahom and other Tai languages. Hukawng Valley The Hukawng Valley ( Burmese : ဟူးကောင်းချိုင့်ဝှမ်း ; also spelt Hukaung Valley ) is an isolated valley in Myanmar , roughly 5,586 square miles (14,468 km ) in area. It

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372-404: Is therefore usually regarded as a dead language. It retains cultural significance and is used for religious chants and to read literature. This is complicated however by the fact that the phonology with its tone system has been completely lost, because the Ahom script does not mark tone and under-specifies vowel contrasts, which obscures the meaning of words as tones are important to distinguish

403-518: The Borpatrogohain ), and the princely estates ( Meldangiya raja ). The region to the west of Kaliabor was governed by the Borphukan . The Borbarua had a council ( Chora ) of Phukans reporting to him, called Choruwa Phukans . Each Phukan was responsible for receiving the royal revenue (in cash, kind, and services) from the subjects ( paiks ) and was also responsible for maintaining

434-554: The 'Tai Ahom Yuva Chatra Sanmilan, Assam' (TAYCSA), demanded that the Tai-Ahom language be included in the school curriculum of the state of Assam. They also demanded the creation of a two-year diploma course in Mahdavdeva University. An online dictionary containing nearly 5,000 entries (see External links) has been created by analyzing old manuscripts, especially the Bar Amra. A descriptive grammar of Ahom, based on

465-400: The 13th and the 18th centuries. The language was the court language of the kingdom, until it began to be replaced by the Assamese language in the 17th century. Since the early 18th century, there have been no native speakers of the language, though extensive manuscripts in the language still exist today. The tonal system of the language is entirely lost. The language was only partially known by

496-469: The Ahom still reside today. Tai-Ahom was the exclusive court language of the Ahom kingdom , where it was used to write state-histories or ' Buranjis '. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the small Ahom community expanded their rule dramatically toward the west and they successfully saw off challenges from the Mughal Empire and other invaders. The rapid expansion resulted in the Ahom people becoming

527-399: The creation of the first adequate modern dictionary by Nomal Chandra Gogoi in 1987, titled The Assamese-English-Tai Dictionary . This dictionary allowed a reader to find the translation of 9,000 Assamese words into English and Tai. This dictionary filled in missing gaps of the Ahom vocabulary with Aiton and Khamti words and if those were not available, Lanna and Thai words were used. The result

558-538: The early 19th century. Although the language is no longer spoken, the exhaustive 1795 Ahom-Assamese lexicon known as the Bar Amra preserves the lexical forms of the language towards the end of the Ahom Kingdom . The language today is used chiefly for liturgical purposes, and is no longer used in daily life. While the written language (and ritualistic chants) survive in a vast number of written manuscripts, Ahom

589-642: The expressions, classifiers, pronouns, and other sentence particles vary between the Tai languages descended from Proto-Tai, making Tai languages mutually unintelligible. It has its own script, the Ahom script . The Ahom people and their language originated in Yunnan in south-west China . They migrated from the border between northern Vietnam and the Guangxi province of China, to the Hukawng Valley , along

620-573: The grammar found in old manuscripts, is being worked on. A sketch has been released, titled “A Sketch of Tai Ahom” by Stephen Morey. The Tai Ahom consonants have been reconstructed as the following, by analyzing old texts: The semi-vowel /w/ is missing from the system, however it is an allophone of /b/ that occurs only in the word final position. Consonants found in the word final position are: /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, j, b [w]/. Vowels can occur in syllable medial and final positions only. The following vowel inventory has been reconstructed: The language had

651-625: The groundwater. The valley is well known for Burmese amber , a type of amber dating back to the Cretaceous period, around 99 million years ago. During World War II , the Ledo Road was built by the US Army across the Hukawng Valley, largely by African-American engineer battalions and Chinese laborers, in order to supply the armies of the Republic of China , who were then allied with

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682-651: The guilds of specific professions ( khels ). The council was in Garhgaon earlier but moved to the Jorhat when the capital moved following the Moamoria rebellion . To the above six choruwa phukans Rudra Singha added three additional phukans . Ahom language The Ahom people established the Ahom kingdom and ruled parts of the Brahmaputra river valley in the present day Indian state of Assam between

713-560: The language by following the phonology of existing sister languages, especially Tai-Aiton and Tai-Phake . The Institute of Tai Studies and Research (ITSAR), is a Tai-Ahom language teaching institute in Moran , Sivasagar , Assam , India, established in 2001 and affiliated to Dibrugarh University . It offers a one-year Tai-Ahom language diploma course and a three-month certificate course in spoken Tai-Ahom. Other initiatives have been taken, such as workshops and language classes. In 2019,

744-404: The meaning of words in tonal languages. Fabricated samples of the Ahom script delayed translation of legitimate Ahom texts. Several publications were created based on the fabricated samples, leading to incorrect grammatical analysis and dictionary resources that acted as a barrier to future researchers. A later translation of Ahom Buranji , a major Ahom script was provided by Golap Chandra Barua,

775-563: The preserve was accomplished in cooperation with the Kachin Independent Army , a formerly-rebel group that inhabits the region. The extremely rare leaf muntjac , also known as the phet-gyi , dwarf deer or leaf deer, also lives in the Hukawng. Major industry includes amber and gold mining ; most gold mines are now depleted, but the toxic chemicals from former gold extraction have not been cleared, and are seeping into

806-417: The rules of Tai grammar. It has also changed greatly regarding semantics, literally translating Assamese into Tai words, which leads to sentences which do not make sense to any Tai speaker. Terwiel therefore calls this revived language 'pseudo-Ahom'. Nevertheless, this revived language has been used passionately by revitalists and many neologisms have been created. The demand for translation into Tai-Ahom led to

837-424: The same man responsible for fabricating samples of translated Ahom script. It was discovered years later, by Professor Prasert na Nagara , that the translation was unreliable. Despite these difficulties, along with the lack of native speakers and specific text, studies in Ahom have prevailed, and certain available scripts have been translated and transliterated, using known words, characters and context. In 1954, at

868-559: The scholar Morey reported that Ahom priests have resorted to compounding words to differentiate between words that are homophones in the revived language, since Ahom lost its tone system. For example in old Ahom, the word su for tiger and su for shirt would have sounded differently by pronouncing them with a different tone. In revived Ahom, they are now differentiated by compounding them with another word: tu for animal and pha for cloth respectively. Subsequently, tu su and pha su can be differentiated. An effort has been made to revive

899-725: The upper reaches of the Chindwin river , northern Burma . In the 13th century, they crossed the Patkai Range . and settled in the Brahmaputra River valley, in Northeast India. After increasing their power in Upper Assam, the Ahom people extended their power to the south of the river Brahmaputra and east of the river Dikho, which corresponds to the modern day districts of Dibrugarh and Sibsagar, Assam, where

930-525: Was a hodgepodge of multiple Tai languages, that was only linked to the Ahom language by the Ahom script in which the dictionary entries were written. The scholar Terwiel recommended in 1992 to base neo-Ahom on the grammar and tones of the very closely related Aiton language, which is still spoken in Assam. Summarizing, the revivalists use a language consisting of a mixture of Tai words from multiple Tai languages, overlaid on an Assamese grammatical base. In 1999,

961-436: Was determined that the priests could decipher the Ahom script and read the words aloud. However, because they did not know any tones, they did not have any idea of the meaning of the words except for the simplest expressions. According to Terwiel, there are great differences between the old Ahom language of the manuscripts, which is easily recognizable as a Tai language, and what the revivalists call Ahom, which does not follow

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