Kamrup Kamarupa | |
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Coordinates: 26°15′N91°30′E / 26.25°N 91.5°E | |
Country | India |
Ancient capital | Pragjyotishpura, Durjaya |
City | Barpeta, Guwahati, Nalbari, Palashbari, Rangiya |
Population (2011) | |
• Total | 6,000,000 |
Time zone | UTC+5.30 (UTC+05:30 (IST)) |
Area codes | 0361 |
Website | www www www www |
Kamrup is the modern region situated between two rivers, the Manas and the Barnadi in Western Assam, with the same territorial extent as the Colonial and post-Colonial "Undivided Kamrup district". [1] [2] It was the capital region of two of the three dynasties of Kamarupa and Guwahati, the current political center of Assam, is situated here. It is characterized by its cultural artifacts. [3]
The origin of name, its original form being Kamarupa, is attributed to a legend in the Kalika Purana which mentions that it is in this region that Kamadeva regained his form. [4]
The history of the Kamrup region dates back to the 4th century under Kamarupa Kingdom. The kingdom was successively ruled by three dynasties - the Varman, the Mlechchha (Mech) and the Pala dynasties. Among these, the capitals of the Varman Dynasty and the Pala Dynasty, called Pragjyotishpura and Durjaya respectively, were in Kamrup, whereas the capital of the Mlechchha dynasty was in Tezpur outside the Kamrup region.
Samudragupta's 4th-century Allahabad prasasti mention Kamarupa as well as Davaka (Nagaon district in central Assam) and it is presumed that a later Kamarupa king absorbed Davaka. [5] Though the kingdom came to be known as Kamarupa, the kings called themselves the rulers of Pragjyotisha (Pragjyotishadhipati), and not Kamarupa. [6] Vaidydeva, an 11th-century ruler, named Kamarupa as a mandala within the Pragjyotisha bhukti. [7] According to Sircar, the Kamarupa mandala is congruent to undivided Kamrup of the modern times. [8]
The Kamarupa region soon lost a unified political rule. Sandhya, a 13th-century ruler in the Kamarupanagara (North Guwahati), moved his capital to present-day North Bengal and his new kingdom came to be called Kamata; [9] or sometimes as Kamata-Kamrup. [10] Though Kamata included Koch Bihar, Darrang, Kamrup districts, and northern Mymensingh in general, [11] its control over the Kamrup region was lax. [12] In the extreme east of the erstwhile Kamarupa kingdom the Chutiya, Kachari and the Ahom kingdoms emerged, with the Baro-Bhuyans in Kamrup, Nagaon, Lakhimpur and Darrang providing the buffer between these kingdoms in the east and the Kamata kingdom in the west. [13] [14]
In the beginning of the 16th century Viswa Singha filled the vacuum left by the destruction of the Khen dynasty of Kamata and consolidated his rule over the Baro-Bhuyan chieftains ruling over the Kamrup region, and by the time of Naranarayana, the kingdom extended a firm rule between the Karatoya and the Bhareli rivers. Even though the Koch kings called themselves Kamateshwars (lords of Kamata), [15] their kingdom came to be called the Koch kingdom and not as Kamrup.
In 1581 the Kamata kingdom was bifurcated with Raghudev gaining control over the portion to the east of the Sankosh river up to the Bharali river [16] in the north bank; and east of the Brahmaputra in present-day Bangladesh. Raghudev's kingdom came to be called Koch Hajo in Muslim chronicles, and Kamrup in Ekasarana documents. [17] As the Mughal established the rule of the Bengal Subah in Dhaka, Koch Bihar entered into an alliance with them against Parikshitnarayana, the son and successor of Raghudev. The Mughals pushed eastward, removed Parikshit from power and consolidated power right up to the eastern border of Kamrup by 1615 (up to the Barnadi river). Though the Mughals pushed further east they came into direct military conflict with the Ahom kingdom and finally settled the boundary at Barnadi river following the Treaty of Asurar Ali in 1639.
The Mughals established four sarkars in the newly acquired land---among which were Dhekeri (between Sankosh and Manas) and Kamrup (between Manas and Barnadi). [18] Kamrup was also renamed as Shujabad, after Shah Shuja, the Subahdar of Bengal. [19] The Mughal governors were called Faujdars of Shujabad. [20] The sixth faujdar, Lutfullah Shirazi, built a hilltop mosque in Koch Hajo in 1657. The mosque contained the mazar (mausoleum) of Prince Ghiyath ad-Din Awliya of Iraq, who is commonly credited for introducing Islam to the region. [21] The Mughals lost Kamrup forever in 1682 after the Battle of Itakhuli. Incomplete list of Faujdars of Guahati:
After the Battle of Itakhuli (1682), the Ahom kingdom established control over Sarkar Kamrup, and it became the domain of the Borphukan, based in Guwahati. The region continued to be called Kamrup and its eastern and western boundaries were identical to the later British district. [22] In addition to the Kamrup region, the Borphukan's domain included the additional region to the east up to Kaliabor. The Koch prince that oversaw Darrang, too, reported to the Borphukan. The Ahoms did not impose their administrative system fully over Kamrup, and the resultant pargana-based system was a mixed Mughal-Ahom system, in contrast to the Paik system in the rest of the kingdom in the east. [23]
The region became part of the Burmese empire between 1821 and 1824.
The region came under Burmese control in 1822. The British, in control over the region to the west of the Manas river since the transfer of Bengal in 1765, marched into Guwahati on 28 March 1824 at the beginning of the First Anglo-Burmese War and established administrative control by October. [24] The Kamrup district that the British constituted in 1833/1836 was largely congruous to the Mughal Sarkar Kamrup of 1639. [25]
After Indian Independence in 1947, the Kamrup district maintained its form. The district was divided, beginning in 1983, and the original district is often called "Undivided Kamrup district". The Kamapitha, Sarkar Kamrup of 1639 and the Undivided Kamrup district from the Colonial as well as the Independent periods is today defined as the Kamrup.
The Battle of Saraighat was a naval battle fought in 1671 between the Mughal Empire, and the Ahom Kingdom on the Brahmaputra river at Saraighat, now in Guwahati, Assam, India. This was the decisive battle that ended the years long Mughal siege of Guwahati, with the Ahoms pushing away the Mughals west beyond the Manas river.
The Dooars or Duars are the alluvial floodplains in eastern-northeastern India and southern Bhutan that lie south of the outer foothills of the Himalayas and north of the Brahmaputra River basin. This region is about 30 km (19 mi) wide and stretches over about 350 km (220 mi) from the Teesta River in West Bengal to the Dhansiri River in Udalguri district of Assam. The region forms the gateway to Bhutan. It is part of the Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands ecoregion.
Kamarupa, an early state during the Classical period on the Indian subcontinent, was the first historical kingdom of Assam.
The history of Assam is the history of a confluence of people from the east, west, south and the north; the confluence of the Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman (Sino-Tibetan), Tai and Indo-Aryan cultures. Although invaded over the centuries, it was never a vassal or a colony to an external power until the third Burmese invasion in 1821, and, subsequently, the British ingress into Assam in 1824 during the First Anglo-Burmese War.
The Khen dynasty of Assam was a late medieval dynasty of the erstwhile Kamata kingdom. After the fall of the Pala dynasty of Kamrupa, the western region was reorganized into the Kamata kingdom when Sandhya moved his capital from Kamarupanagara to Kamatapur in about 1257 due to the frequent clashes with the Kacharis from the east. Sandhya styled himself Kamateswara and the kingdom came to be known as "Kamata". The Khen dynasty at a later period took control of the kingdom.
The Koch dynasty ruled parts of eastern Indian subcontinent in present-day Assam and Bengal. Biswa Singha established power in the erstwhile Kamata Kingdom which had emerged from the decaying Kamarupa Kingdom. The dynasty came to power by removing the Baro-Bhuyans, who had earlier removed the short-lived rule established by Alauddin Hussain Shah.
The Kamata Kingdom emerged in western Kamarupa probably when Sandhya, a ruler of Kamarupanagara, moved his capital west to Kamatapur sometime after 1257 CE. Since it originated in the old seat of the Kamarupa kingdom, and since it covered most of the western parts of it, the kingdom is also sometimes called as Kamarupa-Kamata.
Koch Hajo (1581–1616) was the kingdom under Raghudev and his son Parikshit Narayan of the Koch dynasty that stretched from Sankosh River in the west to the Bhareli River in the east on the north bank of the Brahmaputra River. It was created by dividing the Kamata kingdom then under Nara Narayan in medieval Assam. The Sankosh River divided the two new kingdoms, and it is roughly the boundary between the present-day Assam and West Bengal. The western half of the Kamata kingdom emerged as Koch Bihar whereas the eastern half emerged as Koch Hajo. The name Hajo comes from the legendary king Hajo, a Koch tribal chief and an ancestor of the Koch dynasty, who ruled over the Rangpur division in present-day Bangladesh and some regions of present-day Assam.
The Ahom kingdom was a late medieval kingdom in the Brahmaputra Valley that retained its independence for nearly 600 years despite encountering Mughal expansion in Northeast India. Established by Sukaphaa, a Tai prince from Mong Mao, it began as a mong in the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra based on wet rice agriculture. It expanded suddenly under Suhungmung in the 16th century and became multi-ethnic in character, casting a profound effect on the political and social life of the entire Brahmaputra valley. The kingdom became weaker with the rise of the Moamoria rebellion, and subsequently fell to repeated Burmese invasions of Assam. With the defeat of the Burmese after the First Anglo-Burmese War and the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826, control of the kingdom passed into East India Company hands.
Ahom–Mughal wars refers to the series of 17th-century conflicts between the Ahoms and the Mughals over the control of the Brahmaputra valley. It began soon after the eastern branch of the Kamata kingdom then under the Koch dynasty, Koch Hajo, collapsed after a sustained Mughal campaign bringing it face-to-face with the eastern Ahoms. After nearly seventy years of sustained efforts, the Mughals were finally ousted in the Battle of Itakhuli in 1682. The Mughals since then maintained interest to the region west of the Manas river via zamindars, till they were ousted from Bengal by the British about a hundred years later.
Borphukan was one of the five patra mantris (councillors) in the Ahom kingdom, a position that was created by the Ahom king Prataap Singha. The position included both executive and judicial powers, with jurisdiction of the Ahom kingdom west of Kaliabor river. The headquarters of Borphukan was based in Kaliabor and after the Battle of Itakhuli in 1681 in Itakhuli in Guwahati. This position was particularly important and powerful because of its distance from the Ahom capital, giving it a semblance of independence. The region to the east of Kaliabor was governed by the Borbarua. Lachit Deka later became Borphukan or the ruler of Lower Assam according to the fifth chronicles of the Satsori Asom Buranji.
The Baro-Bhuyans were confederacies of soldier-landowners in Assam and Bengal in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. The confederacies consisted of loosely independent entities, each led by a warrior chief or a landlord. The tradition of Baro-Bhuyan is peculiar to both Assam and Bengal and differ from the tradition of Bhuinhar of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar—in Assam this phenomenon came into prominence in the 13th century when they resisted the invasion of Ghiyasuddin Iwaj Shah and in Bengal when they resisted Mughal rule in the 16th century.
Kamrupi dialects are a group of regional dialects of Assamese, spoken in the Kamrup region. It formerly enjoyed prestige status. It is one of two western dialect groups of the Assamese language, the other being Goalpariya. Kamrupi is heterogeneous with three subdialects— Barpetia dialect, Nalbariya dialect and Palasbaria dialect.
Undivided Kamrup district is a former administrative district located in Western Assam from which Kamrup Rural (2003), Kamrup Metropolitan (2003), Barpeta (1983), Nalbari (1985) and Baksa (2004) districts were formed. It was announced in January 2020 that the Bajali sub-division of Barpeta district will be upgraded to a full district.
The Battle of Itakhuli was fought in August 1682 between the Ahom Kingdom and the Mughal Empire. The Ahoms pushed back Mughal control to the west of the Manas River. The main battle was fought at a garrison island on the Brahmaputra, in which the Mughal fauzdar, Mansur Khan, was defeated and the remnant of the Mughal forces pursued to the Manas River. With this win, the Ahoms recovered Sarkar Kamrup from the Mughals.
Goalpara region, largely congruous to the historical undivided Goalpara district, is a region that is associated with the people and culture of Goalpara. It is bounded on the north by Bhutan, on the east by the Kamrup region, in the south by Meghalaya and in the west by Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri in West Bengal and Rangpur in Bangladesh. The natural landmarks are: Sankosh and Brahmaputra rivers on the west, the Manas River on the east in the north bank, and a corresponding region in the south bank; the Garo Hills in the south and Bhutan Hills in the north.
The Undivided Goalpara district is an erstwhile district of Assam, India, first constituted by the British rulers of Colonial Assam.
Gohain Kamal Ali was an embanked road that connected the capital of the Koch dynasty, Cooch Behar in North Bengal to heart of Agomani in Dhubri and Narayanpur in Lakhimpur district in Assam, and ran along the foot of the Bhutan hills and the Dafla (Nishi) hills. This was constructed under the supervision of Gohain Kamal, the step-brother of the king, Nara Narayan and was completed in 1547. This was the road that the Koch general Chilarai used soon after for his invasion of the Ahom kingdom, and attacked the Ahom fort at Pichala, which was not a success, but a later movement in 1562 was greatly successful.
Sandhya was a king of Kamarupa kingdom in north-eastern India in the present-day state of Assam, India. He founded the Kamata Kingdom when he moved his capital west to Kamatapur sometime after 1257 CE.
Balinarayan alias Dharmanarayan or Baldeo of Mughals was the son of Koch King Raghudev and younger brother of King Parikshit and the first King of Darrang Desa. He was the chief conductor of the operations conducted against the Mughals during their occupation of Kamrupa erstwhile fallen Koch Hajo which got annexed to Mughal domain after the defeat of the latter.