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83-701: Buranjis ( Ahom language : ancient writings ) are a class of historical chronicles and manuscripts associated with the Ahom kingdom . There were written initially in the Ahom Language and later in the Assamese language as well. The Buranjis are an example of historical literature which is rare in India—they bear resemblance to Southeast Asian traditions of historical literature instead. The Buranjis are generally found in manuscript form (locally called puthi ),

166-604: A group of Shans into the Brahmaputra valley in 1228. On the other hand, the tradition of writing family Buranjis began in the 16th century. The tradition of writing Buranjis survived more than six hundred years well into the British period till the last decade of 1890s, more than a half century after the demise of the Ahom kingdom, when Padmeswar Naobaisha Phukan wrote a Buranji in the old style incorporating substantial details from

249-700: 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

332-494: A middle indo-Aryan local prakrit that was progressing towards the modern Assamese language. In 1981 the Assam Publication Board republished a Kamarupa Sasanawvali , compiled and edited by Dimbeswar Sharma, without acknowledging the 1931 edition. After Gait, Jadunath Sarkar made further critical use of Buranjis for historiography—in the volume III of his tome History of Aurangzib (1916), Jadunath Sarkar used

415-432: 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

498-611: A number of single and multiple manuscript Buranjis in Assamese—nine between 1930 and 1938 and one each in 1945 and 1960 most of which were published by the DHAS. Bhuyan and others scholars in Assam regarded Buranjis as important historical elements and he attempted to bring them to the general population directly. Though Bhuyan edited a few single-sourced Buranjis, most of his works were editions of multiple-sources that have been compiled to form

581-616: A number of these manuscripts have been compiled and published especially in the Assamese language. They are some of the primary sources of historical information of Assam's medieval past, especially from the 13th century to the colonial times in 1828; and they have emerged as the core sources for historiography of the region for the pre-colonial period. The details in the Buranjis regarding the Ahom-Mughal conflicts agree with those in

664-580: A religious background. Some of the most widespread Tai Khamti dance dramas are: Sangken is the main festival of the Khamti. It is celebrated on 14 April. The Indian national colours are displayed at the Sangken festival where people irrespective of their tribe, caste, culture, race, etc., participate in the rituals. The main attraction of the festival is splashing clean water, which is the symbol of peace and purity. The images of Buddha are taken out and after

747-473: A shorter green wrap-around cloth (langwat). Their jewelry consists of bright amber earplugs, coral, beaded necklaces, silver hairpins, bangles and gold ornaments. The Khamti men usually tattoo their bodies. The Khamti tie their hair into a large knot, which is supported by a white turban (pha-ho). The chiefs wear a long coat made of silk. The hair is drawn up from the back and sides in one massive roll, measuring four to five inches in length. An embroidered band,

830-588: A single narrative. Though Bhuyan rearranged the texts in a linear fashion the published texts were true reproductions that maintained the original orthography and syntax with no attempt at interpretation; and he followed a consistent and transparent methodology of numbering paragraphs in all his Buranjis that enabled researchers to easily trace back any portion of the text to the original archived sources. Bhuyan's Buranji narratives could be classed into three themes: Ahom polity, Ahom-Mughal relations, and Ahom-Neighbour relations. Over time, especially in post-colonial Assam,

913-566: 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

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996-499: 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

1079-406: A team of native collaborators from among his junior colonial officers— Hemchandra Goswami , Golap Chandra Barua, Gunahash Goswami, Madhab Chandra Bordoloi, and Rajanikanta Bordoloi among others. Among Buranjis, he collected six Ahom-language manuscripts and eleven Assamese-language manuscripts. He charged Golap Chandra Barua to learn the Ahom language from a team of Ahom priests who purportedly knew

1162-659: 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'

1245-615: Is also possible that tea may have been used under another name. Frederick R. Dannaway, in the essay "Tea As Soma", argues that tea was perhaps better known as " Soma " in Indian mythology. Khamti is a Southwestern Tai language spoken in Myanmar and India by the Khamti people. It is a Daic language, specifically Kadai, Kam-Tai, Tai, Southwestern, Northwest branch. The language seems to have originated around Mogoung in Upper Myanmar . It

1328-477: Is an older Shan writing system that was not fully developed to include diacritics to denote the different tones or represent proto-Tai voiceless and voiced distinctions. Since the Ahom language has not been spoken for about two hundred years now reading them today involves heavy use of reconstructions. The first Assamese Buranjis were written during the reign of Suhungmung ( r.  1497–1539 ). A manuscript called Swarga Narayan Maharajar Akhyan , included in

1411-687: Is carried on the front of the body so that its hilt can be grasped in the right hand if needed. The dance "Ka Poong Tai" is one of the main dramatic art forms of the Tai Khamtis. Unlike many forms of traditional Arunachali dance, the Khamti dance is a dance drama, reflecting the culture of the Khamti Buddhists. The traditional folk dances of the Tai Khamtis have their roots in Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and Myanmar. The community has many folk dances and each dance has

1494-502: Is closely related to Thai and Lao languages. The name "Khamti" means "place of gold". Three dialects of Khamti are known: North Burma Khamti, Assam Khamti, and Sinkaling Khamti. Speakers of Khamti are bilingual, largely in Assamese and Burmese. The Tai Khamtis have their own writing system called 'Lik-Tai', which closely resembles the Northern Shan script of Myanmar with some of the letters taking divergent shapes. Their script

1577-502: 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,

1660-647: 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

1743-493: Is divided into classes, each signifying distinct status in the social hierarchy. The chiefs occupy the highest positions, followed by the priests, who wield considerable influence over all ranks. In the past, the slaves constituted the lowest rank. The Tai-Khamti are very strong believers of Theravada Buddhism . Houses have a prayer room, and they pray every morning and evening by offerings flowers (nam taw yongli) and food (khao tang som). They are traditionally peaceful. Houses of

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1826-585: Is evidently derived from the Lik Tho Ngok script since hundreds of years ago. There are 35 letters including 17 consonants and 14 vowels. The script is traditionally taught in monasteries on subjects like tripitaka, Jataka tales, code of conduct, doctrines and philosophy, history, law codes, astrology, and palmistry etc. The first printed book was published in 1960. In 1992 it was edited by the Tai Literature Committee, Chongkham. In 2003 it

1909-466: Is no substantial documentation of the history of tea drinking in the Indian subcontinent for the pre-colonial period. One can only speculate that tea leaves were widely used in ancient India since the plant is native to some parts of India. The Singpho tribe and the Khamti tribe, inhabitants of the regions where the Camellia sinensis plant grew native, have been consuming tea since the 12th century. It

1992-605: Is not known which ones, or who his Assamese collaborators were. The Ahom kingdom came under East India Company rule in 1826 following the First Anglo-Burmese War and the Treaty of Yandaboo , in which the invading Burmese military was pushed away. In 1833 the EIC established a protectorate under a past Ahom king, Purandar Singha. Following his instructions Kashinath Tamuli-Phukan wrote Assam Buranji in 1835 before

2075-505: Is rice, usually supplemented by vegetables, meat and fish. They drink a beer made from rice (lau) as a beverage that is not served during festivals. Some of the well-known dishes are khao puk (made out of sticky rice and sesame seeds), khao lam (bamboo rice), paa sa (fresh river fish soup with special herbs), paa som , and nam som among others. Beef is considered taboo. They are the earliest people to have used tea in India. But there

2158-659: 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. Khamti people The Tai Khamti ( Khamti : တဲး ၵံးတီႈ ), also known as the Hkamti Shan ( Burmese : ခန္တီးရှမ်းလူမျိုး ; Chinese : 康迪人) or simply as Khamti , are a Tai ethnic group of India, China and Myanmar. The Tai-Khamti are followers of Theravada Buddhism . The Tai-Khamti have their own script for their language, known as 'Lik Tai', which originated from

2241-404: 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

2324-659: The Burhagohain , the Borgohain , or the Borpatragohain , was in command of producing Buranjis, but the junior office of Borbarua took over the power in the 18th century. Family Buranjis were written by nobles or by officials who had themselves participated in those event (or by people under their supervision), sometimes anonymously, though the authorship often becomes known. It became a tradition for respectable Ahom nobles to maintain their own family Buranjis, and as

2407-540: The ICSSR , New Delhi, the Publication Board, Assam, engaged H K Barpujari to edit a multi-volume comprehensive history of Assam covering the prehistoric times to 1947. Barpujari envisioned "that in a project of national importance the best talents of the country need be utilised, and that the volumes should represent the latest researchers on the subject on the model adopted in Indian historical series published by

2490-537: The Mughal chronicles such as Baharistan , Padshahnama , Alamgirnamah and Fathiyyah ; and they also provide additional details not found in these Mughal chronicles. Buranjis were consulted by the king and high officials of the Ahom kingdom for decision making in state matters. Buranjis are available in manuscript form usually hand-written on oblong pieces of Sanchi bark, though the size and number of folios varies. They are usually densely written on both sides of

2573-602: The Orunodoi magazine in the middle of the 19th century; this was followed in the 20th century by publications of single and compiled Buranjis –the first two Buranjis were edited by native collaborators of Edward Gait: the Purani Asam Buranji , edited by Hemchandra Goswami and published by Kamarupa Anusandhan Samita , and Ahom Buranji , a bilingual Ahom-English Buranji translated by Golap Chandra Barua and published in 1930. S K Bhuyan compiled, collated, and edited

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2656-453: The Satras ). Buranjis were written in the Ahom language , but since the 16th century they came to be increasingly written in the Assamese language —and Ahom Buranji manuscripts have become rare. Buranjis written in the Ahom language span a period of 400 to 600 years and ended two centuries ago when the last of the speakers of the language died out. The Ahom script used in these Buranjis

2739-554: 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

2822-400: 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

2905-613: The 18th century a third class called Chakaripheti Buranji emerged that dealt with Ahom lineages. Different reports submitted for archiving also came to be called Buranjis: Chakialar Buranji (reports from chokey , or outpost, officers), Datiyalia Buranji (reports on neighbouring polities from frontier officers), Kataki Buranji (reports from ambassadors or envoys to other polities), Chang-rung Phukonor Buranji (architectural plans and estimates from engineers, dealing with construction of maidams , bridges, temples, roads, ramparts, excavation of tanks, etc.), and Satria Buranji (report on

2988-682: The Ahom kingdom (1792–1794) to put down the Moamoria rebellion . He wrote his report, and from his notes, published his work Memories of the Reign of Swargee Deo Gowrinath Singh, Late Monarch of Assam some time after 1796. During his stay in Guwahati he encountered the king's scholar-bureaucrats and was shown a copy of an Ahom Buranji and he took the help of Ahom priests to translate the preamble into English. Saikia (2019) suggests that Wade eventually translated three discrete Assamese Buranjis, though it

3071-469: 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

3154-514: The Buranji style though Maniram Dewan 's Buranji-Bibekratna hewed much closer. In 1894 Charles Lyall , the then Chief Commissioner of Assam and a keen ethnologist, charged Edward Gait , a colonial officer and a keen historian, to research Assam's pre-colonial past. Gait implemented an elaborate plan to collect local historical sources: coins, inscriptions, historical documents, quasi-historical writings, religious works and traditions; and created

3237-518: The Buranji style, but still were called Buranjis. In 1829 Haliram Dhekial Phukan, an erstwhile Ahom officer who successfully transitioned into British officialdom, published Assam Desher Itihash yani ("or") Assam Buranji —written in a hybrid Assamese, Sanskrit, and Bengali language, it drew deeply from the traditional Buranji material and format, but broke away from it by being mindful of early Indian historiographic traditions. Gunabhiram Barua 's work Assam Buranji (1887) too departed significantly from

3320-552: The Buranjis forms its own standard, and is a close precursor of the modern Assamese standard. Even though the Indo-Aryan rooted word for history is itihash derived from the class of written records called Itihasa , the word buranji is used instead for "history" in the Assamese language. During the reign of Rajeswar Singha ( r.  1751–1769 ), Kirti Chandra Borbarua had many Buranjis destroyed because he suspected they contained information on his lowly birth. Much of

3403-604: The Buranjis, especially the Buranji from Khunlung and Khunlai , to fill in details of the Koch-Mughal relations during the pre- Mir Jumla II period and to crosscheck and facts given in the Buranji and the Persian chronicles. The Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies (DHAS) was established in 1928 for historical research following a government grant sanctioned by J R Cunningham. Among its many primary goals, one

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3486-567: The Cambridge University Press." Subsequently, Barpujari engaged primarily D C Sircar , among others, to write on the period when Kamarupa was prevalent, which was of particular interest to the Kamarupa Anusandhan Samiti historians; and primarily Jagadish Narayan Sarkar among others, to write on the medieval period. Sarkar had earlier used the Buranjis as source for a number of his past works, but

3569-457: The DHAS had collected 2000 original manuscripts and 300 transcripts. Though the Buranjis were originally un-printed manuscripts what is commonly understood as Buranjis are the printed ones available today. Many of these printed Buranjis today are reproductions of single manuscripts, while many others were compilations of individual manuscripts arranged in a particular order. The earliest Buranjis to be seen in print were those published serially in

3652-538: The Shan (Tai) script of Myanmar. Their mother tongue is known as Khamti language . It is a Tai language , closely related to Thai and Lao . According to 2001 census of India, the Tai Khamtis have a population of 12,890. In Myanmar their total population is estimated at 200,000 people. The Tai Khamtis who inhabit the region around the Tengapani basin of Arunachal Pradesh were descendants of migrants who came during

3735-545: The Tai-Khampti are built on raised floors with thatched roofs. The roofs are constructed so low that the walls remain concealed. Wooden planks are used for flooring, and the walls are made of bamboo splices. The Khamti are settled, agriculturists. They use a plough (thaie) drawn by a single animal, either an ox or a buffalo (or even an elephant in olden days). The Khamti raise crops such as paddy rice (khow), mustard/sesame seeds (nga) and potato (man-kala). Their staple food

3818-477: The colonial times. Official Buranjis were written by scribes under the office of the Likhakar Barua , and these were based on state papers, such as diplomatic correspondences, spy reports, etc. The Buranjis and the state papers were usually secured in a store or library called Gandhia Bhoral under the supervision of an officer called Gandhia Barua . Generally one of the three ministers of the Ahom state,

3901-520: The courtiers and they were not the records of the people in general. Nevertheless, the practice of writing Buranjis in the older tradition survived the downfall of the Ahom kingdom and persisted till the 1890s. Subsequently, Buranjis themselves became sources for new historiography. John Peter Wade, a medical officer of the East India Company , accompanied Captain Welsh in his expedition into

3984-399: 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

4067-646: The cultural and political history of India. Padmanath Bhattacharya's 1931 Kamarupa Sasanavali itself became the target of criticism—from Assamese nationalists such as Laksminath Bezbaruah for failing to differentiate Assamese and Bengali. He was also criticised for correcting the Sanskrit while transcribing sources; and in 1978 Mukunda Madhav Sharma reported that the errors in Sanskrit in the inscriptions displayed that alongside Sanskrit there were Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman languages being used in Kamarupa as well as

4150-490: The death of Sutingphaa in 1648—its translation in Assamese language appeared in the magazine Orunodoi from 1850-1852 in serial form under the name Purani Asam Buranji . The text from Orunodoi was later compiled and edited by S K Bhuyan and included in the 1931 published Deodhai Asam Buranji . S K Bhuyan reports that this translation was believed to have been done by an Ahom scholar named Jajnaram Deodhai Barua who flourished soon after 1826. The American Baptist Mission copy

4233-538: 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

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4316-814: The economic aspects of Mughal imperialism. These three Buranjis together provide exhaustive and minute details in the Ahom-Mughal relationship—that agree with each other and also with the Persian sources generally. Among other Buranjis, the Asam Buranji from Khunlung to Gadadhar Simha follows the style of Purani Asam Buranji but provides additional details and elaborations in certain sections. The Buranji obtained from Sukumar Mahanta (published 1945) has details on earlier invasions from Bengal—Turbak, Alauddin Husain Shah , etc.—and specifically has information on social, religious, and administrative changes during

4399-960: The eighteenth century from the Shan region of Hkamti Long , in the western source of the Irrawaddy River Valley. They are located in Hkamti Long , Mogaung and Myitkyina regions of Kachin State as well as Hkamti District of Sagaing Division of Myanmar . In India , they are found in Namsai district and Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh . Smaller numbers are present in Lakhimpur district , Dhemaji district and Munglang Khamti village in Tinsukia district of Assam and possibly in some parts of China . The Khamti society

4482-642: 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

4565-473: The folios. Most often the text begins with a legendary account of the establishment of the Ahom kingdom . Though many such Buranjis have been collected, compiled and published, an unknown number of Buranjis are still in private hands. There were two kinds of Buranjis: one maintained by the state (official) and the other maintained by families. The Buranjis themselves claim that the tradition of state Buranjis began with Sukaphaa ( r.  1228–1268 ) who led

4648-585: The fringed and tasseled ends of which hang down behind, encircles the roll. The Khamti are renowned for their craftsmanship. Their sword is known as pha-nap. Their priests are known to be amateur craftsmen, who use wood, bone or ivory to carve religious statues. It is believed that by shaping ivory handles of weapons they will evince great skill. Their weapons include poisoned bamboo spikes (panjis), spear, bow and arrow, sword, and shield, usually made of rhinoceros or buffalo hide. The Khamti also have firearms which resemble old flint muskets and horse pistols. The sword

4731-573: 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

4814-619: The historicity of Buranjis, both by native and British researchers, was in sharp contrast to the reception of other pre-colonial documents, such as the kulagranthas of Bengal. The Buranji-based A History of Assam came under criticism from nationalists represented by the Kamarupa Anusandhan Samiti (English: Assam Research Society), that emerged in 1912 amidst the annual convention of the Uttar Bangia Sahitya Parishad (English: North Bengal Literary Society). The society consisted of mostly Sanskrit scholars interested in

4897-407: The historicity of the Buranjis, A History of Assam was finally published in 1906. Gait's A History of Assam did not follow the colonial mode of historiography—it used the Buranjis sympathetically, and it avoided the ancient/medieval/modern periodisation then common in Indian historiography. It elevated the stature of the Buranjis as trusted and reliable historical sources. The ready acceptance of

4980-693: The information found in the Baharistan , Padshahnama , Alamgirnamah and Fathiyyah ; further it provides additional details on the quick changes in the Ahom and Mughal fortunes in the post Mir Jumla period which are not available in the Persian sources. The information in this manuscript is supplemented by those in the Ahom Buranji which was edited, translated, and eventually published by G C Barua in 1930. The Purani Asam Buranji , edited by H C Goswami and published by KAS in 1922, too provided information not found elsewhere; it uniquely provides details on

5063-560: 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,

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5146-572: The language. Gait devised a method to check for historicity—he first convinced himself that Golap Barua did learn the language. He then checked for consistency within the Ahom and the Assamese Buranji manuscripts and with sources from Mughal sources that were available at that time. He further collated all the dates available in the Buranjis and checked them against those in the 70 Ahoms coins, 48 copper plates, 9 rock, 28 temple and 6 canon inscriptions that he had collected. Thus convinced with

5229-864: The liberal Ahom polity absorbed new entrants the creation and existence of Buranjis spread to outside the royal archives and to non-Ahom owners. Non-royal Buranjis enjoyed equal parity with royal Buranjis. It also became a tradition to read out parts of family Buranjis during Ahom Chaklang marriage ceremonies. Existing Buranjis were often updated by rulers or authors. Supplemental folios were often appended with additional material to an existing Buranji, resulting in changes in language and calligraphy. Since these manuscripts were often copied or recopied for duplication before printing became available scribal errors were common. Sometimes specific events were omitted, due to either changes in state policies or scribal mistakes—and Ahom nobles would rectify these omissions by rewriting existing Buranjis which remained exclusive resources for

5312-404: 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,

5395-399: The official Buranjis have been lost due to acts of nature, war, and a major part of the official Buranjis was lost during the 19th century Burmese invasion of Assam . The Buranji's contained within themselves the instinct of historiography. Nevertheless they were written for state purposes of the Ahom kingdom, and they served primarily the interests of the Ahom dynasty followed by those of

5478-568: The owners. Rulers, nobles and general scholars thus contributed to the corpus of Buranjis. Sometimes these Buranjis were refreshed and updated with the help of external sources such as those from the Tai-Mau and Khamti polities. Internally, the Buranji chronicles classify themselves as either Lai-lik Buranji (Assamese: Barpahi Buranji ) that are expansive and deal with political histories, and Lit Buranji (Assamese: Katha ) which deal with single events, such as Ram Singhar Yuddhar Katha . In

5561-538: The period this Buranji covered, which was from the earliest rulers to Gadadhar Singha ( r.  1681–1696 ). The first Buranji to be printed was Assam Buranji by Kashinath Tamuli Phukan, which was published by the American Baptist Mission in 1848. Kashinath Tamuli Phukan wrote this Buranji under the instructions of the then Ahom king Purandar Singha ( fl.  1832–1838 ) and his minister Radhanath Barbarua. Kashinath Tamuli Phukan's Buranji

5644-412: The protectorate was dismantled. Buranji writing continued among remnant and scions of past Ahom officialdom, the chief among them was Harakanta Barua who expanded Kashinath Tamuli-Phukan's Buranji, and Padmeshwar Naobaisha Phukan who wrote Assam Buranji the 1890s—the last Buranji written in the older tradition. In parallel a newly emerging colonial elite began historiography in styles that departed from

5727-629: The published compilation Deodhai Asam Buranji , is dated 1526 and considered as the oldest Assamese Buranji. The language of the Assamese Buranjis, on the other hand, formed the template for the standard literary language in the late-19th century. Assamese Buranjis used the Garhgaya style of writing—one of three different styles of the Bengali-Assamese script prevalent between the 17th and 19th centuries in Assam. The Assamese of

5810-417: 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

5893-424: 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

5976-559: 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

6059-431: The scope of the present work included a comprehensive historiography—and the choice fell on him because of his command over Persian, Assamese, Bengali etc. and his familiarity with sources in these languages. According to Sarkar (1992) the Ahom Buranji from Khunlung and Khunlai , the Buranji used in 1916 by Jadunath Sarkar, provides accurate details and chronology of the Ahom-Mughal interactions and that they agree with

6142-480: The standard for studying pre-Ahom Kamarupa . This effort ultimately resulted in Kanaklal Barua 's Early History of Kamarupa (1933) a seminal work that emerged as an authoritative alternative to Gait's historiography. Ignoring the tribal genealogy of Assam, this work focused on myths and legends from Sanskrit epics and inscriptions and Assam's Hindu past, departed strongly from Gait's work, and placed Assam in

6225-441: The standard reference to Buranjis were to these easily accessible published Buranjis which came to represent the original manuscript Buranjis. Though Bhuyan's editorial methodology is known his textual criticism is either superficial or not known very well; he filled gaps in the narrative by interpolations from different sources, but the inconsistencies were not addressed in his work. Following an assurance of financial support from

6308-416: The study of old inscriptions, and a dominant section of it was Bengali. Foremost among these scholars was Padmanath Bhattacharya , professor of Sanskrit and History at Cotton College, who critiqued Gait on coloniality, his basic flaws in the use of historical evidence, and his fundamental historical assumptions, primarily Gait's ignoring the pre-Ahom period. Bhattacharya's 1931 work Kamarupa Sasanawali formed

6391-725: 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

6474-473: 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,

6557-453: Was again modified with tone marking by scholars of Northern Myanmar and Arunachal Pradesh. The traditional Khamti dress of men is a full-sleeved cotton shirt (siu pachai) and multi-coloured sarong (phanoi). The women's dress consists of a long sleeve shirt (siu pasao), a deep-coloured long sarong ( sinh ) made from cotton or silk, and a coloured silk scarf (phamai). Married woman wear in plain black long wrap-around sarong (sinn) and above that

6640-436: 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

6723-426: Was further expanded, in the Buranji tradition, by Harakanta Baruah (1818–1900) when he was an officer of the British colonial government using material from his personal manuscript library. The Harakanta Baruah version was edited in its near-original form by S K Bhuyan and published by DHAS in 1930 as Assam Buranji . The earliest Ahom-language Buranjis published was one that covered the period from Khunlung-Khunlai to

6806-494: Was supplemented by another that was an even earlier translation of the same original Ahom manuscript. The first copy has Saka equivalents in parentheses to the Ahom laklis which were compared to and cross-checked against the one compiled earlier by Gait. 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

6889-490: Was to acquire and archive manuscripts and copies of original documents for further historical research. S K Bhuyan, who was earlier with the KAS, joined DHAS as an honorary assistant director; and under his leadership the DHAS began to systematically collect Buranjis. A team of DHAS office assistants either procured documents by correspondence, or toured local regions to collect, transcribe and archive manuscripts and documents. By 1978

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