Indo-Aryan migration to Assam

People speaking Indo-Aryan languages first migrated to Assam (and the rest of Northeast India) in approximately the fifth century BCE.[1] They came from the Gangetic Plains into a region already inhabited by people who spoke Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman languages.[2]

Pre-Indo-Aryan Assam

The 8th- to 6th-century BCE text, Shatapatha Brahmana, describes the Sanskritization of East India up to the Karatoya river, the western boundary of the historic Kamarupa kingdom.[3] Though the Sankhyayana Grihasamgraha is said to mention 'Pragjyotisha' as the land of sunrise,[4] this has been shown to be a wrong attribution.[5] Archaeologically too, the Northern Black Polished Ware, a pottery style associated with the development of the first large states in Northern India, reached the Karatoya only by the 2nd century BCE.[6] Therefore, it is claimed that the spread of Indo-Aryans into Assam cannot be pushed beyond the 5th century BCE.[7]

It is also significant that neither early Buddhist sources,[6] nor Ashokan epigraphs[8] (3rd century BCE with the capital in East India) mention the Assam region. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st century CE) and Ptolemy's Geography (2nd century CE) refer to the region that included Assam as Kirrhadia, after the Kirata people (pre-Indo-Aryan), who were also the sources of the goods that were being traded.[9] A reference to Lauhitya in Kautilya's Arthashastra is identified by commentators with the Brahmaputra Valley,[10] though the Arthashastra in its current form is dated to the early centuries of CE, and the commentaries to even later.[11]

It appears that the Assam region became a punya bhumi, a region that did not require a Hindu purification ceremony, by the post Gupta period (320-550 CE).[12]

Introduction of Indo-Aryan

The earliest historical mention of this region in Indo-Aryan comes from Samudragupta's Allahabad inscription, where two kingdoms from the region—Kamarupa and Davaka—are mentioned.[13] The earliest evidence of Indo-Aryan in Assam are the 5th-century Umachal and Nagajari-Khanikargaon rock inscriptions.[14]

Brahman settlements

Two inscriptions of Bhaskaravarman (600-650 CE) on copper plates are re-issues of grants to Brahmins to settle in parts of the Kamarupa kingdom during the reign of Bhutivarman (518-542).[15] This policy, of the local kings settling Brahmans from other places in the kingdom, was a common policy of all Kamarupa kings that gave rise to pockets of Brahmanic influence.[16] From the inscriptions it can be made out that the Brahman donees came to Assam from present-day Bangladesh, Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.[17] Indo-Aryan presence and influence became significant by the 7th century.[18] Whereas the early grants had natural boundaries such as trees or water, those from the later Pala rulers (10-11th century), increasingly bordered on other granted lands,[19] thereby indicating that the pockets of Indo-Aryan settlements were becoming contiguous. Nevertheless, the process of Sanskritization was never complete in Assam, and significant sections remained outside Brahmanic influence.[20]

Languages

The subsequent Kamarupa inscriptions, written in Sanskrit, suggest that a majority of the Indo-Aryan immigrants spoke Kamarupi Prakrit the precursor of Assamese language and the Proto-Kamata; and that the learned few knew Sanskrit.[21] Sanskrit was the liturgical language of Hinduism and the state language of Kamarupa; and Assamese became a link language, accepted as a second language by some of the aboriginal peoples; over time, it became the first language for many. In return, Assamese acquired linguistic features of the native speakers.[22] The writing shows an evolution from the early Gupta script towards modern Assamese script.[23] The latest examples, such as the Kanai-boroxiboa inscription, use a proto-Assamese script.[24][25]

The Magadha empire was founded by Bimbisara in the 4th century BCE. About this time, or after, the whole of northern Bengal, to the south of the Jalpaiguri district and west of the Trisrota, was absorbed in the Maurya empire together with the Tamralipti region in the south west. The Mauryan empire of Ashoka undoubtedly included northern Bengal between the Teesta (Karatoya) and the Kosi rivers, for within this area stupas erected by Ashoka were found by Xuanzang in the 7th century CE. This area continued to be included in the Magadha empire at least till the 6th century CE. During the rule of the Imperial Guptas it was known as Pundravardhana, whose inhabitants then generally spoke non-Aryan languages.

To the east and north of Pundravardhana, Kamarupa continued as an independent kingdom, ruled over by an indigenous line of kings who traced descent from heroes named in the epics as Naraka, Bhagadatta and Vajradatta.[26] Indo-Aryan accounts of the region between 500 BCE and 4th century CE come from the revised Mahabharata and Puranas (from the 2nd century BCE to the 2nd century CE), and the c. 10th-century Kalika Purana.[6] The accounts in these Hindu texts conflict with each other,[27] but the Kamarupa dynasties claimed ancestries going back thousands of years. It is supposed that bands of Indo-Aryan people moved from Magadha to the forested regions of the Brahmaputra valley; the leaders of these bands are remembered in later myths as Parashurama, Bashishtha and Naraka.[28] The Kalika Purana reports that Naraka displaced an indigenous Danava dynasty.

Sanskritisation under the Kamarupa kings

In his Nidhanpur copper-plate inscription Bhaskar Varman is said to have revealed the light of the Arya religion (prakasit aryadharmaloka) by dispelling the accumulated darkness of Kali Yuga.
— Kanaklal Barua, Early History of Kamarupa (1933)

In the historic period, the Kamarupa kings encouraged immigration from North India, and settled Brahmins as "islands of private domains in a sea of communally held tribal lands of shifting cultivation".[6] One such settlement was Habung, where Ratnapal of the Pala dynasty of Kamarupa settled Brahmins in c. the 10th century, then known as Ha-Vrnga Vishaya.[29]

Though traditional accounts claim that the kings of Assam were Indo-Aryan, modern scholarship is not clear.[30][31] Sanskritization, was a process that occurred simultaneously with "deshification" (or localisation, or tribalisation) in Assam.[32]

From epigraphic records, so far brought to light, it is possible to trace an almost unbroken genealogy of these kings from about the middle of the 4th century CE down to the 12th century or a period of nearly nine hundred years. Very few of the old Hindu kingdoms in India can present such unique genealogical records covering such a long period. No less than twelve copperplate inscriptions, inscribed seals and rock-inscriptions recorded by various kings of Kamarupa during this period have been discovered and deciphered. Epigraphic records left by the famous Gupta emperor Samudra Gupta, Yasodharman, king of Malwa, who was a famous conqueror, Adityasena, who belonged to the line of Later Guptas of Magadha, Jayadeva, a well-known king of Nepal and some of the Pala kings and Sena kings of Bengal provide useful material for the history of Kamarupa during this period. Other materials include Raghuvaugsa of Kalidasa, the Chinese writers, the Harsha-Charita of Banabhatta, the Raja-tarangini of Kahlan, and translations from Tibetan records.[26]

Kingship and Worship of Goddess[33]
King	Great deed	Sin or fault	Punishment	Brahmanical vs. Tribal tension
Naraka	Found kingdom of Kamarupa and Worship Kamakhya	Make pact with tribal king	Goddess hidden from him	Pact with tribal king
Bana (or Naraka)	Builds stairway to kamakhya temple	Demands vision of the goddess	Goddess hidden from him	Demonic tribal king
Salastambha	Conquest of Kamarupa	Unknown	Cursed to be mleccha	Founds mleccha dynasty
Visva Singha	Rediscover Kamakhya temple	Mother offends holy man	Mother is a mleccha	War against tribal kings, child of god and a mleccha
Naranarayana Singha	Rebuild the temple	Demands a vision of goddess	Descendents can't visit the temple	Defeats tribal kings but allowed soldier to worship in tribal mode
Rudra Singha	Patronize brahmins and build temples	Tribal origin, offends priest	Dies without receiving initiation	Non-Hindu tribal origin

Modern Assamese language

The modern Assamese language is the easternmost Indo-Aryan language, spoken by over 15 million native speakers.[34] It also serves as a lingua franca in the region.[35] With closely related languages it is also spoken in parts of Arunachal Pradesh and other northeast Indian states.

References

"From about the fifth century before Christ, there started a trickle of migration of the people speaking Indo-Aryan language from the Gangetic plain." (Taher 2011, p. 12)
"The first group of migrants to settle in this part of the country is perhaps the Austro-Asiatic language speaking people who came here from South-East Asia a few millennia before Christ. The second group of migrants came to Assam from the north, north-east and east. They are mostly the Tibeto-Burman language speaking people. From about the fifth century before Christ, there started a trickle of migration of the people speaking Indo-Aryan language from the Gangetic plain." (Taher 2001, p. 12)
(Puri 1968, p. 7)
Pathak, Guptajit (2008). Assam's history and its graphics. p. 39.
"Another text called Samkhyanagrihasamgrahasutra where a passage is wrongly supposed to refer to the land of Pragjyotisha is seen to suggest the earliest Brahmana settlement in Assam. M.M. Sarma has rightly pointed out that the word 'Pragjyotisha' in the sutra means 'before the appearance of any light and it has no relation with the country Pragjyotisha'." (Boruah 2008:167)
(Guha 1984, p. 75)
"...Indo-Aryans had not spread out as far as to Assam before 500 BCE, at least not in mentionable number." (Guha 1984, p. 74)
(Puri 1968, p. 4)
"...appear to call the land including Assam Kirrhadia after the Kirata population." (Sircar 1990, pp. 60-61)
"If we go by Bhattaswamin's commentary on Arthashastra Magadha was already importing certain items of trade from this Valley in Kautilya's days" (Guha 1984, p. 76)
"...the Arthashastra in its present form has to be assigned to the early centuries of the Christian era and the commentaries to much later dates." (Sircar 1990, p. 61)
"The name of Pragjyotisha has been traced in a passage of Sankhyana Grihya-samgrahawhich mentions it in connection with a vrata rite and speaks of the country as a punya-desha or holy land. However the popularity of the vrata rites and the holy character ascribed to the land appear to suggest a post Gupta period." (Sircar 1990, p. 61)
(Sircar 1990, p. 59)
(Sharma 1978, p. 305) While Umachal inscription stands as an index to the spread of the Aryan culture up to the Gauhati area and the Barganga inscription speaks of the spread of the Aryan culture up to the Dabaka area, the present inscription stands as an unquestionable testimony to the spread of the Aryan culture up to the sarupathar area of upper Assam as early as in the early part of the 5th century A.D.
"...the Doobi plates ... record the grant originally made by Bhutivarman in favor of two Brahmanas of the Ghosha family..." (Sircar 1990b, p. 103)
"Inscriptions show that from the 5th century A.D. onwards the granting of lands to Brahmanas in different parts of the region became a common practice for the rulers of early Assam. These settlements emerged as the pockets of Brahmanic influence." (Baruah 2008, p. 167)
"The genealogies of these Brahman donees also incidentally refer to their places of origin, like Pundra, Sravasthi, Varendri, Madhyadesha i.e. areas of present day Bangladesh, Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh." (Das 2005, p. 227)
(Puri 1968, p. 6)
"While demarcating the boundaries of these agrahara grants initially only natural boundaries like water bodies, trees, and the like are mentioned, but in the inscriptions of the Pala dynasty, they increasingly bordered on other sasanas , i.e. land donated by a royal decree." (Das 2005, p. 228)
"It is well known that till recent times some of the major tribes of Assam have remained beyond the pale of Sanskritization and some of them are still maintaining their own cultural traits. Therefore, it would be not tenable, if we identify the whole Brahmaputra valley and its adjoining areas as the region influenced by the Brahmanical faiths (as projected by some scholars)." (Baruah 2008, p. 168)
"... (it shows) that in Ancient Assam there were three languages viz. (1) Sanskrit as the official language and the language of the learned few, (2) Non-Aryan tribal languages of the Austric and Tibeto-Burman families, and (3) a local variety of Prakrit (ie a MIA) wherefrom, in course of time, the modern Assamese language as a MIL, emerged." (Sharma 1978, pp. 0.24-0.28)
"Large scale diffusion of linguistic innovations has been taking place between Asamiya, the Sino-Tibetan languages and Khasi in this area for a very long time (Moral 1997, p. 44)
(Lahiri 1991, pp. 58-59)
(Lahiri 1991, pp. 57-58)
N.R. Sharma, The Kāmarūpa School of Dharmaśāstra, 1994, Page 3 Moreover, the discovery of the copper plate-inscriptions issued by different kings of ancient Assam (Kamarupa) at different times brings to light the Aryan colour of the cultural heritage of Assam.
Early_History_of_Kamarupa,p.I
"The latter phase of Assam's history based on traditional accounts and the pauranic and epic sources, is conflicting, till we come to the time of Pushyavarman", (Puri 1968, p. 8)
(Guha 1984, p. 76)
(Guha 1983, p. 33)
Suresh Kant Sharma, Usha Sharma, Discovery of North-East India: Geography, History, Culture, ... - Volume 3, 2005, Page 275 first Indo-Aryan rule favourable to Brahmanism was founded in Kamarupa with Pusyavarman as the first ruler under Samudragupta
"Virtually all of Assam’s kings, from the fourth-century Varmans down to the eighteenth-century Ahoms, came from non-Aryan tribes that were only gradually Sanskritised." (Urban 2011, p. 234)
"Here I will follow the lead of Wendy Doniger, who suggests that the development of Hinduism as a whole in South Asia was not simply a process of Sanskritisation, that is, the absorption of non-Hindu traditions into the brahminic system; rather, it also involved a process of ‘Deshification’, that is, the influence of local (deshi) and indigenous cultures on brahmaic religion and the mutual interaction between Sanskritic and deshi traditions." (Urban 2011, p. 233)
(Urban 2009)
"Statement". censusindia.gov.in. Archived from the original on 6 February 2012.
"Axomiya is the major language spoken in Assam, and serves almost as a lingua franca among the different speech communities in the whole area." (Goswami 2003:394)

Bibliography

Baruah, Nirode (2008). "Sanskritization and Detribalization in Early Assam: Some Geographical Aspects". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. Indian History Congress. 69: 167–179. JSTOR 44147178.
Das, Paromita (2005). "The Naraka Legends, Aryanisation and the "varnasramadharma" in the Brahmaputra Valley". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. Indian History Congress. 66: 224–230. JSTOR 44145840.
Deka, Phani (2007). The great Indian corridor in the east. Mittal Publications. p. 404.
Guha, Amalendu (1983). "The Ahom Political System: An Enquiry into the State Formation Process in Medieval Assam" (PDF). Social Scientist. 11 (12): 3–34. doi:10.2307/3516963. JSTOR 3516963.
Guha, Amalendu (1984). "Pre-Ahom Roots and the Medieval State in Assam: A Reply". Social Scientist. 12 (6): 70–77. doi:10.2307/3517005. JSTOR 3517005.
Lahiri, Nayanjot (1990). "Landholding and Peasantry in the Brahmaputra Valley C. 5th-13th Centuries A.D.". Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. Brill. 33 (2): 157–168. JSTOR 3632226.
Moral, Dipankar (1997), "North-East India as a Linguistic Area" (PDF), Mon-Khmer Studies, 27: 43–53
Pathak, Guptajit (2008). Assam's history and its graphics. Mittal Publications. p. 211.
Puri, Baij Nath (1968). Studies in Early History and Administration in Assam. Gauhati University.
Samiti, Kamarupa Anusandhana (1984). Readings in the history & culture of Assam. Kamrupa Anusandhana Samiti. p. 227.
Sharma, Mukunda Madhava (1978). Inscriptions of Ancient Assam. Guwahati, Assam: Gauhati University.
Sircar, D C (1990), "Pragjyotisha-Kamarupa", in Barpujari, H K (ed.), The Comprehensive History of Assam, I, Guwahati: Publication Board, Assam, pp. 59–78
Sircar, D C (1990b), "Political History", in Barpujari, H K (ed.), The Comprehensive History of Assam, I, Guwahati: Publication Board, Assam, pp. 94–171
Taher, M (2001), "Assam: An Introduction", in Bhagawati, A K (ed.), Geography of Assam, New Delhi: Rajesh Publications, pp. 1–17
Urban, Hugh (2009), The Power of Tantra: Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies, Bloomsbury Publishing, ISBN 9780857715869
Urban, Hugh B. (2011). "The Womb of Tantra: Goddesses, Tribals, and Kings in Assam". The Journal of Hindu Studies. 4 (3): 231–247. doi:10.1093/jhs/hir034.

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[Taher_2011_12-1] "From about the fifth century before Christ, there started a trickle of migration of the people speaking Indo-Aryan language from the Gangetic plain." (Taher 2011, p. 12)

[Taher_2001_12-2] "The first group of migrants to settle in this part of the country is perhaps the Austro-Asiatic language speaking people who came here from South-East Asia a few millennia before Christ. The second group of migrants came to Assam from the north, north-east and east. They are mostly the Tibeto-Burman language speaking people. From about the fifth century before Christ, there started a trickle of migration of the people speaking Indo-Aryan language from the Gangetic plain." (Taher 2001, p. 12)

[3] (Puri 1968, p. 7)

[4] Pathak, Guptajit (2008). Assam's history and its graphics. p. 39.

[5] "Another text called Samkhyanagrihasamgrahasutra where a passage is wrongly supposed to refer to the land of Pragjyotisha is seen to suggest the earliest Brahmana settlement in Assam. M.M. Sarma has rightly pointed out that the word 'Pragjyotisha' in the sutra means 'before the appearance of any light and it has no relation with the country Pragjyotisha'." (Boruah 2008:167)

[Guha_1984_75-6] (Guha 1984, p. 75)

[7] "...Indo-Aryans had not spread out as far as to Assam before 500 BCE, at least not in mentionable number." (Guha 1984, p. 74)

[8] (Puri 1968, p. 4)

[9] "...appear to call the land including Assam Kirrhadia after the Kirata population." (Sircar 1990, pp. 60-61)

[10] "If we go by Bhattaswamin's commentary on Arthashastra Magadha was already importing certain items of trade from this Valley in Kautilya's days" (Guha 1984, p. 76)

[11] "...the Arthashastra in its present form has to be assigned to the early centuries of the Christian era and the commentaries to much later dates." (Sircar 1990, p. 61)

[12] "The name of Pragjyotisha has been traced in a passage of Sankhyana Grihya-samgrahawhich mentions it in connection with a vrata rite and speaks of the country as a punya-desha or holy land. However the popularity of the vrata rites and the holy character ascribed to the land appear to suggest a post Gupta period." (Sircar 1990, p. 61)

[13] (Sircar 1990, p. 59)

[14] (Sharma 1978, p. 305) While Umachal inscription stands as an index to the spread of the Aryan culture up to the Gauhati area and the Barganga inscription speaks of the spread of the Aryan culture up to the Dabaka area, the present inscription stands as an unquestionable testimony to the spread of the Aryan culture up to the sarupathar area of upper Assam as early as in the early part of the 5th century A.D.

[15] "...the Doobi plates ... record the grant originally made by Bhutivarman in favor of two Brahmanas of the Ghosha family..." (Sircar 1990b, p. 103)

[16] "Inscriptions show that from the 5th century A.D. onwards the granting of lands to Brahmanas in different parts of the region became a common practice for the rulers of early Assam. These settlements emerged as the pockets of Brahmanic influence." (Baruah 2008, p. 167)

[17] "The genealogies of these Brahman donees also incidentally refer to their places of origin, like Pundra, Sravasthi, Varendri, Madhyadesha i.e. areas of present day Bangladesh, Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh." (Das 2005, p. 227)

[Puri_1968_6-18] (Puri 1968, p. 6)

[19] "While demarcating the boundaries of these agrahara grants initially only natural boundaries like water bodies, trees, and the like are mentioned, but in the inscriptions of the Pala dynasty, they increasingly bordered on other sasanas , i.e. land donated by a royal decree." (Das 2005, p. 228)

[20] "It is well known that till recent times some of the major tribes of Assam have remained beyond the pale of Sanskritization and some of them are still maintaining their own cultural traits. Therefore, it would be not tenable, if we identify the whole Brahmaputra valley and its adjoining areas as the region influenced by the Brahmanical faiths (as projected by some scholars)." (Baruah 2008, p. 168)

[21] "... (it shows) that in Ancient Assam there were three languages viz. (1) Sanskrit as the official language and the language of the learned few, (2) Non-Aryan tribal languages of the Austric and Tibeto-Burman families, and (3) a local variety of Prakrit (ie a MIA) wherefrom, in course of time, the modern Assamese language as a MIL, emerged." (Sharma 1978, pp. 0.24-0.28)

[22] "Large scale diffusion of linguistic innovations has been taking place between Asamiya, the Sino-Tibetan languages and Khasi in this area for a very long time (Moral 1997, p. 44)

[23] (Lahiri 1991, pp. 58-59)

[24] (Lahiri 1991, pp. 57-58)

[N.R._Sharma,_1994,_Page_3-25] N.R. Sharma, The Kāmarūpa School of Dharmaśāstra, 1994, Page 3 Moreover, the discovery of the copper plate-inscriptions issued by different kings of ancient Assam (Kamarupa) at different times brings to light the Aryan colour of the cultural heritage of Assam.

[Early_History_of_Kamarupa,p.I-26] Early_History_of_Kamarupa,p.I

[27] "The latter phase of Assam's history based on traditional accounts and the pauranic and epic sources, is conflicting, till we come to the time of Pushyavarman", (Puri 1968, p. 8)

[28] (Guha 1984, p. 76)

[29] (Guha 1983, p. 33)

[30] Suresh Kant Sharma, Usha Sharma, Discovery of North-East India: Geography, History, Culture, ... - Volume 3, 2005, Page 275 first Indo-Aryan rule favourable to Brahmanism was founded in Kamarupa with Pusyavarman as the first ruler under Samudragupta

[31] "Virtually all of Assam’s kings, from the fourth-century Varmans down to the eighteenth-century Ahoms, came from non-Aryan tribes that were only gradually Sanskritised." (Urban 2011, p. 234)

[32] "Here I will follow the lead of Wendy Doniger, who suggests that the development of Hinduism as a whole in South Asia was not simply a process of Sanskritisation, that is, the absorption of non-Hindu traditions into the brahminic system; rather, it also involved a process of ‘Deshification’, that is, the influence of local (deshi) and indigenous cultures on brahmaic religion and the mutual interaction between Sanskritic and deshi traditions." (Urban 2011, p. 233)

[33] (Urban 2009)

[34] "Statement". censusindia.gov.in. Archived from the original on 6 February 2012.

[35] "Axomiya is the major language spoken in Assam, and serves almost as a lingua franca among the different speech communities in the whole area." (Goswami 2003:394)