1.
Kamarupi Prakrit
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Kamarupi Prakrit, Kamrupi Apabhramsa, old Kamrupi dialect, Kamarupa dialect and proto-Kamrupa, was the Middle Indo-Aryan used in ancient Kamarupa. This sort of Sporadic Apabhramsa is a mixture of Sanskrit, Prakrit, the evidence of this MIA exist in systematic errors in the Sankrit language used in the Kamarupa inscriptions. Linguists claim this gave rise to various eastern Indo-European languages like modern Assamese and felt its presence in the form of Kamrupi. Though the epigraphs were written in classical Sanskrit in kavya style of a degree, they abound in corrupt. Loss of repha and reduplication of the remaining concerned consonants, substitution of one vowel for another. Reduplication of consonants followed by r. Absence of duplication where it is otherwise necessary, varied substitution for m and final m. Substitution of h by gh and susbstitution of bh by h, indiscriminate substitution of one sibilant for another. Irregularity of declension in case of stems ending in consonants, absence of visarga even where it is invariably necessary. Some linguists claim that there existed a Kamrupi apabhramsa as opposed to the Magadhi apabhramsa from which the three cognate languages---Assamese, Bengali and Odia and Maithili---sprouted, the initial motive comes from extra-linguistic considerations. Kamarupa was the most powerful and formidable kingdom in the region provided the political and cultural influence for the development of the Kamrupi apabhramsa. Xuanzangs mention that the language spoken in Kamarupa was a different from the one spoken in Pundravardhana is provided as evidence that this apabhramsa existed as early as the 5th century. That Kamarupa remained unconquered till the beginning of the Assamese literature in the 14th century points to the possibility that the apabhramsa of the Kamarupa kingdom must have flourished. Archaic forms found in records from the Kamarupa period give evidence of this apabhramsa. The Buddhist Charyapadas from the 8th to 12th century are claimed by different languages, Assamese, Bengali, Odia, but the geographical region of its composition was the Kamarupa pitha and many of the composers were Kamarupi siddhas. Therefore the language in the Charyapadas is the best example of this apabhramsa, H. P. Sastri, who discovered these poems, termed the language sandhya bhasha and this is nothing but the Kamarupi apabhramsa. Assamese, or more appropriately the old Kamarupi dialect entered into Kamrup or western Assam, golockchandra Goswami in his An introduction to Assamese phonology writes, in early Assamese there seems to be one dominant dialect prevailing over the whole country, the Western Assamese dialect. Similarly Upendranath Goswami says, Assamese entered into Kamarupa or western Assam where this speech was first characterised as Assamese
2.
Athena Asamiya
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Athena Asamiya is a character originally from the former SNKs 1986 video game Psycho Soldier and a descendant of Princess Athena from the earlier Athena game. She later appears in The King of Fighters series of fighting games as a fighter character and has appeared in each of its 14 editions. She was also given her own video game Athena, Awakening from the Ordinary Life, in her first appearance in Psycho Soldier Athena has long pink hair and wears a black Japanese school uniform. For The King of Fighters 94 series, there was pressure within staff about including the character, the staff worked so much on her that other developers accused them of favoritism. One of the tried to explain Athenas poses but the developers found it funny. Athena wears new outfits in every game, some little changes. Her hair, however, is purple and becomes short from The King of Fighters 99 to The King of Fighters 2001, in The King of Fighters XIII, Athena returns wearing the same clothes but with a color alteration. Athena has been voiced by voice actresses since her debut in Psycho Soldier in which she was played by Rushina in the game. For The King of Fighters series, Athena has been played by several actresses, since The King of Fighters 98, Athena has been voiced by Haruna Ikezawa in each game she is featured as well as the anime The King of Fighters, Another Day. Athena first appears in the video game Psycho Soldier, fighting against several creatures attacking Earth along with her friend Sie Kensou and she would also appear in the crossover fighting game series The King of Fighters as part of the Psycho Soldier Team. The Psycho Soldier Team is initially composed of Kensou and Athenas teacher, the team would be present in most King of Fighters tournament as Chin wanted to train more Kensou and Athena as well as searching for evil forces such as the demon Orochi. The team has little changes within tournaments with the new member joining them being Bao from The King of Fighters 99 until The King of Fighters 2001. The King of Fighters 99, Evolution also contains a Striker version from Athena with her school uniform, by The King of Fighters 2003 the Psycho Soldier Team retires from competition as Kensou and Bao needed to train their new powers. As such, Athena creates the High School Girls Team along with the Sumo fighter Hinako Shijo, the Psycho Soldier Team returns in The King of Fighters XI with Athena, Kensou and a Momoko, a young girl able to use Psycho powers. In The King of Fighters XII, Athena is playable, but like each character, in the sequel, she is back with Kensou and Chin representing the Psycho Soldiers, she and her team will reappear in The King of Fighters XIV. She is also featured in the spin-off games The King of Fighters Neowave and KOF, in the Maximum Impact series, Athena has a self-proclaimed rival named Mignon Beart whom she does not acknowledge or know her. In the role-playing video game Athena, Awakening from the Ordinary Life, Athena has to find answers about strange things happened in her school. She was also added to the crossover series SNK vs. Capcom, being playable in SNK vs. Capcom, The Match of the Millennium and Capcom vs. SNK2
3.
Assamese alphabet
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The Assamese script is a writing system of the Assamese language. It used to be the script of choice in the Brahmaputra valley for Sanskrit as well as languages such as Bodo, Khasi. By the 17th century three styles of Assamese script could be identified that converged to the script following typesetting required for printing. The present standard is identical to the Bengali alphabet except for three letters, the Buranjis were written during the Ahom dynasty in the Assamese language using the Assamese alphabet. Later, Sankardev used it in the 15th and 16th centuries to compose his oeuvre in Assamese and Brajavali dialect, the Ahom king Supangmung, was the first ruler who started issuing Assamese coins for his kingdom. A similar script with minor differences is used to write Maithili, Bengali, Meithei, the Umachal rock inscription of the 5th century evidences the first use of a script in the region. The script was similar to the one used in Samudraguptas Allahabad Pillar inscription. Rock and copper plate inscriptions from then onwards, and Xaansi bark manuscripts right up to the 18th–19th centuries show a development of the Assamese script. The script could be said to develop proto-Assamese shapes by the 13th century, the script presently has a total of 11 vowel letters, used to represent the eight main vowel sounds of Assamese, along with a number of vowel diphthongs. All of these are used in both Assamese and Bengali, the two main languages using the script, for example, the Assamese script has two symbols for the vowel sound and two symbols for the vowel sound. This redundancy stems from the time when this script was used to write Sanskrit, a language that had a short and a long, and a short and a long. These letters are preserved in the Assamese script with their traditional names of hôrswô i and dirghô i, vowel signs can be used in conjunction with consonants to modify the pronunciation of the consonant. When no vowel is written, the vowel অ is often assumed, to specifically denote the absence of a vowel, may be written underneath the consonant. The names of the consonant letters in Assamese are typically just the consonants main pronunciation plus the inherent vowel ô, since the inherent vowel is assumed and not written, most letters names look identical to the letter itself. Some letters that have lost their distinctive pronunciation in Modern Assamese are called by a more elaborate name. For example, since the consonant phoneme /n/ can be written ন, ণ, or ঞ, these letters are not simply called nô, instead, they are called ন dôntiya nô, ণ murdhôinnya nô, and ঞ niô. Goswami the number of clusters is 143 symbolised by 174 conjunct letters. Three phoneme clusters are 21 in number, which are written by 27 conjunct clusters, a few of them are given hereafter as examples, Though ক্ষ is used in Bengali, it has a different pronunciation
4.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
5.
Assam
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Assam (English pronunciation, /əˈsæm/ listen is a state in northeastern India. Located south of the eastern Himalayas, Assam comprises the Brahmaputra Valley, Assam, along with Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, and Meghalaya, is one of the Seven Sister States. Geographically, Assam and these states are connected to the rest of India via a 22 kilometres strip of land in West Bengal called the Siliguri Corridor or Chickens Neck. Assam shares a border with Bhutan and Bangladesh, and its culture, people. Assam is known for Assam tea and Assam silk, the first oil well in Asia was drilled here. The state has conserved the one-horned Indian rhinoceros from near extinction, along with the water buffalo, pygmy hog, tiger. It provides one of the last wild habitats for the Asian elephant, the Assamese economy is aided by wildlife tourism, centred around Kaziranga National Park and Manas National Park which are World Heritage Sites. Sal tree forests are found in the state which, as a result of abundant rainfall, Assam receives more rainfall compared to most parts of India. This rain feeds the Brahmaputra River, whose tributaries and oxbow lakes provide the region with a hydro-geomorphic and aesthetic environment, the precise etymology of Assam came from Ahom Dynasty. In the classical period and up to the 12th century the region east of the Karatoya river, largely congruent to present-day Assam, was called Kamarupa, in medieval times the Mughals used Asham and Kamrup, and during British colonialism, the English used Assam. Though many authors have associated the name with the 13th century Shan invaders the precise origin of the name is not clear. It was suggested by some that the Sanskrit word Asama was the root, which has been rejected by Kakati, among possible origins are Tai and Bodo. Assam and adjoining regions have evidences of settlements from all the periods of the Stone ages. The hills at the height of 1, 500–2,000 feet were popular habitats probably due to availability of exposed dolerite basalt, useful for tool-making. According to a text, Kalika Purana, the earliest ruler of Assam was Mahiranga Danav of the Danava dynasty. The last of these rulers, also Naraka, was slain by Krishna, narakas son Bhagadatta became the king, who fought for the Kauravas in the battle of Kurukshetra with an army of kiratas, chinas and dwellers of the eastern coast. Samudraguptas 4th century Allahabad pillar inscription mentions Kamarupa and Davaka as frontier kingdoms of the Gupta Empire, ruled by three dynasties Varmanas, Mlechchha dynasty and Kamarupa-Palas, from their capitals in present-day Guwahati, Tezpur and North Gauhati respectively. All three dynasties claimed their descent from Narakasura, an immigrant from Aryavarta, in the reign of the Varman king, Bhaskar Varman, the Chinese traveller Xuanzang visited the region and recorded his travels
6.
Arunachal Pradesh
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Arunachal Pradesh /ˌɑːrəˌnɑːtʃəl prəˈdɛʃ/ is one of the twenty-nine states of India. Located in northeast India, it holds the most north-eastern position among the states in the north-east region of India. Arunachal Pradesh borders the states of Assam and Nagaland to the south, Itanagar is the capital of the state. Arunachal Pradesh has territorial disputes with both the PRC and ROC due to its cultural, ethnic and geographic proximity to Tibet. A major part of the state, formerly called the North-East Frontier Agency, is disputed by China as the legality of the Simla Accord is not recognized by it, China claims most of the state as South Tibet. The state is seen to have potential for hydropower development. Arunachal Pradesh, whose name means Land of the Dawn-Lit Mountains in Sanskrit, is known as the Orchid State of India or the Paradise of the Botanists. Geographically, it is the largest among the North-east Indian states commonly known as the Seven Sister States, as in other parts of Northeast India, the people native to the state trace their origins to the Tibeto-Burman people. In recent times, large number of migrants from parts of India and other lands have built extensive economic. No reliable population count of the migrant population exists, and the percentage estimating the actual population accordingly. Arunachal Pradesh has the highest number of languages in the Indian subcontinent, enriched with diverse culture. Neolithic tools found in Arunachal Pradesh indicate that people have living in the Himalayan region for at least eleven thousand years. The history of pre-modern Arunachal Pradesh is unclear, oral histories possessed to this day by many Arunachali tribes of Tibeto-Burman stock are much richer and point unambiguously to a northern origin in modern-day Tibet. Recorded history from an outside perspective only became available in the Ahom, the Monpa and Sherdukpen do keep historical records of the existence of local chiefdoms in the northwest as well. Northwestern parts of this came under the control of the Monpa kingdom of Monyul. This region then came under the control of Tibet and Bhutan. The remaining parts of the state, especially those bordering Myanmar, were under the control of the Sutiya Kings until the Ahom-Sutiya battle in the 16th century, the Ahoms held the areas until the annexation of India by the British in 1858. However, most Arunachali tribes remained in practice largely autonomous up until Indian independence, recent excavations of ruins of Hindu temples such as the 14th century Malinithan at the foot of the Siang hills in West Siang were built during the Sutiya reign
7.
Nagaland
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Nagaland /ˈnɑːɡəlænd/ is a state in Northeast India. It borders the state of Assam to the west, Arunachal Pradesh and part of Assam to the north, Burma to the east, the state capital is Kohima, and the largest city is Dimapur. It has an area of 16,579 square kilometres with a population of 1,980,602 per the 2011 Census of India, each tribe is unique in character with its own distinct customs, language and dress. Two threads common to all are language and religion, Nagaland is one of three states in India where the population is mostly Christian. Nagaland became the 16th state of India on 1 December 1963, agriculture is the most important economic activity and the principal crops include rice, corn, millets, pulses, tobacco, oilseeds, sugarcane, potatoes, and fibres. Other significant economic activity includes forestry, tourism, insurance, real estate, the state has experienced insurgency as well as inter-ethnic conflict since the 1950s. The violence and insecurity have long limited Nagalands economic development, because it had to commit its scarce resources on law, order, and security. In the last 15 years, the state has seen violence and annual economic growth rates nearing 10% on a compounded basis. The state is mostly mountainous except those areas bordering Assam valley which comprises 9% of the area of the state. Mount Saramati is the highest peak at 3,840 metres and it lies between the parallels of 98 and 96 degrees east longitude and 26.6 and 27.4 degrees latitude north. The state is home to a variety of flora and fauna. The ancient history of the Nagas is unclear, tribes migrated at different times, each settling in the northeastern part of present India and establishing their respective sovereign mountain terrains and village-states. The origin of the word ‘Naga is also unclear, a popularly accepted, but controversial, view is that it originated from the Burmese word ‘naka’ or naga, meaning people with earrings. Others suggest it means pierced noses, both naka and naga are pronounced the same way in Burmese. The ancient name of Nagaland is Nakanchi or Naganchi, derived from the Naga language, before the arrival of European colonialism in South Asia, there had been many wars, persecution and raids from Burma on Naga tribes, Meitei people and others in Indias northeast. The invaders came for hunting and to seek wealth and captives from these tribes. When the British inquired Burmese guides about the living in northern Himalayas. This was recorded as ‘Naga’ and has been in use thereafter, with the arrival of British East India Company in the early 19th century, followed by the British Raj, Britain expanded its domain over entire South Asia including the Naga Hills
8.
Assamese people
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The Assamese people are a subgroup of the people of Assam. This subgroup is often associated with the Assamese language, the total population of Assamese speakers in Assam is nearly 13 million which makes up 48. 8% of the Assams population according to the Language census of 2001. Historically, the definition of the Assamese people has remained in a state of flux, the lack of a definition has put stumbling blocks in implementing clause 6 of the Assam Accord, an agreement signed by the activists of the Assam Movement and the Government of India in 1985. Difficulty in definition is rooted in the nature of inhabitants of the Assam state. In contrast, Lower Assam in pre–colonial times was known as Kamrup (instead of Asama, in the 16th century, the Ahom kingdom was known as the Kingdom of Acham to the Mughals, and later, to the British. In 1682, the eastern Kamrup was annexed by Ahom kingdom, Assamese was originally the local language of the Assamese Brahmins who taught Hinduism in Assam. According to Yasmin Saikia, the group now identifies as Tai–Ahom were historically seen as the Assamese people. However, the term ethnic Assamese is now associated by the Indian government at Delhi with the Assamese speaking Indo–Aryan group of Assam, the latter group is the majority people of Assam, while the Tai–Ahom people were a dominant minority during the Ahom Rule. Ahoms Assamese Brahmins Assamese Muslims History of Assam Indo-Aryan migration to Assam Jalia Kaibarta Kalitas Koch Rajbongshi Sutiya community Tribes of Assam
9.
Language family
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A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the precision of ones definition of language, the 2013 edition of Ethnologue catalogs just over 7,000 living human languages. A living language is one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified. Membership of languages in a family is established by comparative linguistics. Sister languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship, speakers of a language family belong to a common speech community. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, individuals belonging to other speech communities may also adopt languages from a different language family through the language shift process. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing, for example, Germanic languages are Germanic in that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. A family is a unit, all its members derive from a common ancestor. Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a level. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, a top-level family is often called a phylum or stock. The closer the branches are to other, the closer the languages will be related. For example, the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, there is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of the phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically as opposed to horizontally. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations, thus, different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language to nearly twenty, most of the worlds languages are known to be related to others
10.
Indo-European languages
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The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million speakers. Today, 46% of the population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language. The Indo-European family includes most of the languages of Europe, and parts of Western, Central. It was also predominant in ancient Anatolia, the ancient Tarim Basin and most of Central Asia until the medieval Turkic migrations, all Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to other language families. In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan, Iranian, in 1583, English Jesuit missionary Thomas Stephens in Goa wrote a letter to his brother in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin. Another account to mention the ancient language Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian. However, neither Stephens nor Sassettis observations led to further scholarly inquiry and he included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorns suggestions did not become known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission, gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Thomas Young first used the term Indo-European in 1813, deriving from the extremes of the language family. A synonym is Indo-Germanic, specifying the familys southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches, a number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopps Comparative Grammar appeared between 1833 and 1852 and marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline, the classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleichers 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmanns Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmanns neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussures development of the theory may be considered the beginning of modern Indo-European studies. This led to the laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics. Isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650 BC, Armenian, writing known from the beginning of the 5th century AD
11.
Indo-Iranian languages
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The Indo-Iranian languages, or Indo-Iranic languages, constitute the largest and easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family. It has more than 1 billion speakers, stretching from the Caucasus and the Balkans eastward to Xinjiang and Assam, the common ancestor of all of the languages in this family is called Proto-Indo-Iranian—also known as Common Aryan—which was spoken in approximately the late 3rd millennium BC. The three branches of modern Indo-Iranian languages are Indo-Aryan, Iranian, and Nuristani, additionally, sometimes a fourth independent branch, Dardic, is posited, but recent scholarship in general places Dardic languages as archaic members of the Indo-Aryan branch. Among the Iranian branch, major languages are Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, the Indo-Iranian languages derive from a reconstructed common proto-language, called Proto-Indo-Iranian. The oldest attested Indo-Iranian languages are Vedic Sanskrit, Older and Younger Avestan, a few words from another Indo-Aryan language are attested in documents from the ancient Mitanni kingdom in northern Mesopotamia and Syria and the Hittite kingdom in Anatolia. A comparative study of Santali and Bengali, ISBN 81-7074-128-9 Nicholas Sims-Williams, ed. Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples. Swadesh lists of Indo-Iranian basic vocabulary words
12.
Indo-Aryan languages
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The Indo-Aryan or Indic languages are the dominant language family of the Indian subcontinent. They constitute a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family, Indo-Aryan speakers form about one half of all Indo-European speakers, and more than half of all Indo-European languages recognized by Ethnologue. While the languages are spoken in South Asia, pockets of Indo-Aryan languages are found to be spoken in Europe. The largest in terms of speakers are Hindustani, Bengali, Punjabi. Proto-Indo-Aryan, or sometimes Proto-Indic, is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages and it is intended to reconstruct the language of the Proto-Indo-Aryans. Proto-Indo-Aryan is meant to be the predecessor of Old Indo-Aryan which is attested as Vedic. Despite the great archaicity of Vedic, however, the other Indo-Aryan languages preserve a number of archaic features lost in Vedic. Vedic has been used in the ancient preserved religious hymns, the canon of Hinduism known as the Vedas. Mitanni-Aryan is of age to the language of the Rigveda. The language of the Vedas – commonly referred to as Vedic Sanskrit by modern scholars – is only marginally different from Proto-Indo-Aryan the proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages. From the Vedic, Sanskrit developed as the language of culture, science and religion, as well as the court, theatre. Sanskrit is, by convention, referred to by scholars as Classical Sanskrit in contra-distinction to the so-called Vedic Sanskrit. Outside the learned sphere of Sanskrit, vernacular dialects continued to evolve, the oldest attested Prakrits are the Buddhist and Jain canonical languages Pali and Ardha Magadhi, respectively. By medieval times, the Prakrits had diversified into various Middle Indo-Aryan dialects, Apabhramsa is the conventional cover term for transitional dialects connecting late Middle Indo-Aryan with early Modern Indo-Aryan, spanning roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. Some of these dialects showed considerable literary production, the Sravakachar of Devasena is now considered to be the first Hindi book, the next major milestone occurred with the Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent in the 13th–16th centuries. Under the flourishing Turco-Mongol Mughal empire, Persian became very influential as the language of prestige of the Islamic courts due to adoptation of the language by the Mughal emperors. However, Persian was soon displaced by Hindustani and this Indo-Aryan language is a combination with Persian, Arabic, and Turkic elements in its vocabulary, with the grammar of the local dialects. The two largest languages that formed from Apabhramsa were Bengali and Hindustani, others include Sindhi, Gujarati, Odia, Marathi, the Indo-Aryan languages of Northern India and Pakistan form a dialect continuum
13.
Eastern Indo-Aryan languages
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The Indo-Aryan or Indic languages are the dominant language family of the Indian subcontinent. They constitute a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family, Indo-Aryan speakers form about one half of all Indo-European speakers, and more than half of all Indo-European languages recognized by Ethnologue. While the languages are spoken in South Asia, pockets of Indo-Aryan languages are found to be spoken in Europe. The largest in terms of speakers are Hindustani, Bengali, Punjabi. Proto-Indo-Aryan, or sometimes Proto-Indic, is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages and it is intended to reconstruct the language of the Proto-Indo-Aryans. Proto-Indo-Aryan is meant to be the predecessor of Old Indo-Aryan which is attested as Vedic. Despite the great archaicity of Vedic, however, the other Indo-Aryan languages preserve a number of archaic features lost in Vedic. Vedic has been used in the ancient preserved religious hymns, the canon of Hinduism known as the Vedas. Mitanni-Aryan is of age to the language of the Rigveda. The language of the Vedas – commonly referred to as Vedic Sanskrit by modern scholars – is only marginally different from Proto-Indo-Aryan the proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages. From the Vedic, Sanskrit developed as the language of culture, science and religion, as well as the court, theatre. Sanskrit is, by convention, referred to by scholars as Classical Sanskrit in contra-distinction to the so-called Vedic Sanskrit. Outside the learned sphere of Sanskrit, vernacular dialects continued to evolve, the oldest attested Prakrits are the Buddhist and Jain canonical languages Pali and Ardha Magadhi, respectively. By medieval times, the Prakrits had diversified into various Middle Indo-Aryan dialects, Apabhramsa is the conventional cover term for transitional dialects connecting late Middle Indo-Aryan with early Modern Indo-Aryan, spanning roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. Some of these dialects showed considerable literary production, the Sravakachar of Devasena is now considered to be the first Hindi book, the next major milestone occurred with the Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent in the 13th–16th centuries. Under the flourishing Turco-Mongol Mughal empire, Persian became very influential as the language of prestige of the Islamic courts due to adoptation of the language by the Mughal emperors. However, Persian was soon displaced by Hindustani and this Indo-Aryan language is a combination with Persian, Arabic, and Turkic elements in its vocabulary, with the grammar of the local dialects. The two largest languages that formed from Apabhramsa were Bengali and Hindustani, others include Sindhi, Gujarati, Odia, Marathi, the Indo-Aryan languages of Northern India and Pakistan form a dialect continuum
14.
Kamrupi dialect
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Kamrupi dialect, formerly Kamrupi language is the first ancient Aryan literary language spoken in Brahmaputra valley and North Bengal, developed primarily in the Kamrup and North Bengal. It is one of two dialect groups of the Assamese language, the other being Goalpariya. The Kamrupi is heterogeneous with three dialects, West, Central and South Kamrupi, recent times, the South Kamrupi dialect has been used in the works of author Indira Goswami with dramatic effects. Poet and nationalist Ambikagiri Raichoudhury used Kamrupi in his works to great extent, the Kamrup between Manas and Barnadi rivers, where Kamrupi is spoken, formed the capital area of two of three dynasties of the ancient Kamarupa kingdom, with Pragjyotishpura and Durjaya. Kingdom existed as parallel to Davaka of central Assam and this evidence convinced Upendra Nath Goswami that Assamese entered into Kamarupa or western Assam where this speech was first characterised as Assamese. This is evident from the remarks of Hiuen Tsang who visited the Kingdom of Kamarupa in the first half of the seventh century A. D. during the reign of Bhaskaravarman. Kamrupi is initially spoken in Kamrup and areas covered by Kamrup kingdom. The Kamrupi is currently prevalent in Mughal Sarkar of Kamrup, in late medieval times, Kamrupi literary style passed to eastern Assam. The literary activities occurred throughout Assam and North Bengal, and influence of Kamrupi remain strong throughout, ake suni lakshminarayan ghila khedi ahil. bangale khaibak napai garar bhitarate sukhai mare barphukane maharajat janova rup kari sihatar manuhak maharajar thaik anai. Kamrup passed to the British in 1824, and the district, largely congruous to the Kamapitha. Form spoken in Eastern Assam, come to due to translation of Bible in 1838 by American Baptist Missions. British adopted Eastern Assamese as the official language in 1873. Whereas the Kamrupi was non-uniform, the dialect was uniform over a large territory. Since the center of activity has moved back to Guwahati in Kamrup. For example, the case is -di in Kamrupi and -re in eastern Assamese. These dialects are now spoken in the present districts of Kamrup, Nalbari, Barpeta, Darrang, Kokrajhar, the name is derived from the ancient Kamrup Kingdom that existed from the fourth to the twelfth century, ruled by three major dynasties. Furthermore, the modern Bengali scholars like Suniti Kumar Chatterjee and Sukumar Sen have named the dialect of Bengali spoken in North Bengal as Kamrupi, Chatterjee wrote, Assamese Kamrupi and Bengali Kamrupi is quite similar, the division possibly occurred due to political reasons and two forms dialect continuum. According to him, Magadhi Prakrit, keeping north of the Ganga river, gave rise to the Kamarupa Apabhramsa dialects of Western Assam and he divides Magadhan dialects regionwise as Radha, Varendra, Kamarupa and Vanga Sukumar Sen says, Oriya and Assamese have intimate relations with Bengali
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Goalpariya dialects
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Goalpariya is a group of regional Indo-Aryan dialects spoken in the present-day Dhubri, Goalpara, Kokrajhar and Bongaigaon districts of the erstwhile undivided Goalpara district of Assam, India. It is prevalent with the Indo-Aryan Kamrupi dialects to its east, the basic characteristic of the Goalpariya dialect is that it is a composite one into which words of different concerns and regions have been amalgamated. There are three identified dialects in this group, Eastern, Western and Intermediate, scholars from Assam associate these dialects with the Assamese language. Chatterji classifies Western Goalpariya with the North Bengali dialects, and classes all Goalpariya dialects, including Eastern Goalpariya, the Goalpara region is the westernmost part of Brahmaputra Valley. The region has never been a political entity. In ancient times it was included Pragjyotisha of Ramayana, Mahabharata, subsequently, region formed a part of Kamarupa kingdom. The Ratnapitha division of Kamarupa kingdom included the Goalpara region, the British received this region as the Diwani of Bengal in the 18th century, and it became a part of Colonial Assam in 1826. Birendranath Dutta identifies three main dialects, one he classifies as Eastern Goalpariya, with two sub-varieties, the lects around Abhayapuri and Goalpara towns forming one, and the lects around Krishnai, Dudhnai and Dhupdhara forming the other. Locally, the speeches in this region are given names, Habraghatiya, Bausiya, Namdaniya. Under Western Goalpariya, Dutta discusses two separate dialects, the lects around Gauripur, and the lects around Salkocha, Dutta considers the Salkocha dialect as the intermediate dialect. The Goalpariya dialects have been subject of controversy, primarily because they fall on a dialect continuum. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a debate on whether they were dialects of Bengali or Assamese languages and he did not find any linguistic uniformity between Ahom-dominated east Assam and the Goalpara–Kamrup region or with Bengal. Bengali linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji also followed this classification in his thesis, the debate never died down and authors continue to critically examine the nation building aspects of this debate. Assamese scholars consider Goalpariya is a part of the Assamese dialects, specifically, the two erstwhile western districts of Assam, Kamrup and Goalpara, possess several local dialects. The Goalpariya dialect is similar to the Rajbonshi dialect which evolved under the Koch dynasty, the differences between the eastern and western Assamese dialects are wide and range over the whole field of phonology, morphology and, not infrequently, vocabulary. The dialects of Goalpara straddle the Assamese-Bengali language divides and display features from both languages, though the phonemes in the eastern dialects approach those of Assamese, the western dialect approach those of Bengali. The distinctive velar fricative /x/ present in Assamese is present in the eastern dialect, the dental and alveolar distinction in Bengali are found in the western dialect, but merged into alveolars in the eastern dialect in consonance with Assamese. Further the aspirated /ch/ is present in Bengali as well as the western dialect, the nouns in Goalpariya language takes or as suffix to indicate feminine gender
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Writing system
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A writing system is any conventional method of visually representing verbal communication. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a form of information storage. The processes of encoding and decoding writing systems involve shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of characters that make up a script, the general attributes of writing systems can be placed into broad categories such as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies. Any particular system can have attributes of more than one category, in the alphabetic category, there is a standard set of letters of consonants and vowels that encode based on the general principle that the letters represent speech sounds. In a syllabary, each symbol correlates to a syllable or mora, in a logography, each character represents a word, morpheme, or other semantic units. Other categories include abjads, which differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated, alphabets typically use a set of 20-to-35 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have 80-to-100, and logographies can have several hundreds of symbols. Systems will also enable the stringing together of these groupings in order to enable a full expression of the language. The reading step can be accomplished purely in the mind as an internal process, writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms, ideograms and other mnemonic symbols. Proto-writing lacked the ability to capture and express a range of thoughts. Soon after, writing provided a form of long distance communication. With the advent of publishing, it provided the medium for a form of mass communication. Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that a system is always associated with at least one spoken language. In contrast, visual representations such as drawings, paintings, and non-verbal items on maps, such as contour lines, are not language-related. Some other symbols, such as numerals and the ampersand, are not directly linked to any specific language, every human community possesses language, which many regard as an innate and defining condition of humanity. However, the development of writing systems, and the process by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven, once established, writing systems generally change more slowly than their spoken counterparts. Thus they often preserve features and expressions which are no current in the spoken language. One of the benefits of writing systems is that they can preserve a permanent record of information expressed in a language. In the examination of individual scripts, the study of writing systems has developed along partially independent lines, thus, the terminology employed differs somewhat from field to field
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Eastern Nagari script
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The Assamese script is a writing system of the Assamese language. It used to be the script of choice in the Brahmaputra valley for Sanskrit as well as languages such as Bodo, Khasi. By the 17th century three styles of Assamese script could be identified that converged to the script following typesetting required for printing. The present standard is identical to the Bengali alphabet except for three letters, the Buranjis were written during the Ahom dynasty in the Assamese language using the Assamese alphabet. Later, Sankardev used it in the 15th and 16th centuries to compose his oeuvre in Assamese and Brajavali dialect, the Ahom king Supangmung, was the first ruler who started issuing Assamese coins for his kingdom. A similar script with minor differences is used to write Maithili, Bengali, Meithei, the Umachal rock inscription of the 5th century evidences the first use of a script in the region. The script was similar to the one used in Samudraguptas Allahabad Pillar inscription. Rock and copper plate inscriptions from then onwards, and Xaansi bark manuscripts right up to the 18th–19th centuries show a development of the Assamese script. The script could be said to develop proto-Assamese shapes by the 13th century, the script presently has a total of 11 vowel letters, used to represent the eight main vowel sounds of Assamese, along with a number of vowel diphthongs. All of these are used in both Assamese and Bengali, the two main languages using the script, for example, the Assamese script has two symbols for the vowel sound and two symbols for the vowel sound. This redundancy stems from the time when this script was used to write Sanskrit, a language that had a short and a long, and a short and a long. These letters are preserved in the Assamese script with their traditional names of hôrswô i and dirghô i, vowel signs can be used in conjunction with consonants to modify the pronunciation of the consonant. When no vowel is written, the vowel অ is often assumed, to specifically denote the absence of a vowel, may be written underneath the consonant. The names of the consonant letters in Assamese are typically just the consonants main pronunciation plus the inherent vowel ô, since the inherent vowel is assumed and not written, most letters names look identical to the letter itself. Some letters that have lost their distinctive pronunciation in Modern Assamese are called by a more elaborate name. For example, since the consonant phoneme /n/ can be written ন, ণ, or ঞ, these letters are not simply called nô, instead, they are called ন dôntiya nô, ণ murdhôinnya nô, and ঞ niô. Goswami the number of clusters is 143 symbolised by 174 conjunct letters. Three phoneme clusters are 21 in number, which are written by 27 conjunct clusters, a few of them are given hereafter as examples, Though ক্ষ is used in Bengali, it has a different pronunciation
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Latin alphabet
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The Latin alphabet is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. It is the script of the English language and is often referred to simply as the alphabet in English. It is an alphabet which originated in the 7th century BC in Italy and has changed continually over the last 2500 years. It has roots in the Semitic alphabet and its offshoot alphabets, the Phoenician, Greek, the phonetic values of some letters changed, some letters were lost and gained, and several writing styles developed. Two such styles, the minuscule and majuscule hands, were combined into one script with alternate forms for the lower and upper case letters, due to classicism, modern uppercase letters differ only slightly from their classical counterparts. The Latin alphabet started out as uppercase serifed letters known as roman square capitals, the lowercase letters evolved through cursive styles that developed to adapt the formerly inscribed alphabet to being written with a pen. Throughout the ages, many stylistic variations of each letter have evolved that are still identified as being the same letter. From the Cumae alphabet, the Etruscan alphabet was derived, the Latins ultimately adopted 21 of the original 26 Etruscan letters. Gaius Julius Hyginus, who recorded much Roman mythology, mentions in Fab, the Parcae, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos invented seven Greek letters — A B H T I Y. Others say that Mercury invented them from the flight of cranes, which, palamedes, too, son of Nauplius, invented eleven letters, Simonides, too, invented four letters — Ó E Z PH, Epicharmus of Sicily, two — P and PS. The Greek letters Mercury is said to have brought to Egypt, Cadmus in exile from Arcadia, took them to Italy, and his mother Carmenta changed them to Latin to the number of 15. Apollo on the added the rest. The original Latin alphabet was, The oldest Latin inscriptions do not distinguish between /ɡ/ and /k/, representing both by C, K and Q according to position, K was used before A, Q was used before O or V, C was used elsewhere. This is explained by the fact that the Etruscan language did not make this distinction, C originated as a turned form of Greek Gamma and Q from Greek Koppa. In later Latin, K survived only in a few such as Kalendae, Q survived only before V. G was later invented to distinguish between /ɡ/ and /k/, it was simply a C with an additional diacritic. C stood for /ɡ/ I stood for both /i/ and /j/, V stood for both /u/ and /w/. K was marginalized in favour of C, which stood for both /ɡ/ and /k/
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Assam Sahitya Sabha
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The Assam Sahitya Sabha is a non Government, non profit, literary organisation of Assam. It was founded in December,1917 in Assam, India to promote the culture of Assam, presently it has about one thousand branches all over Assam and also outside the state. The central office is at Jorhat, a city of historical importance, the branches and the district units also have their offices in their respective places. Assam was ruled mainly by Ahom and Koch dynasties, in 1826, Assam came under the rule of the British, and in the process it had become a part of the political map of India. Of course Assam was always a part of the cultural map of India. However, the history of modern Assam, modern Assamese language, since 1872 some efforts were made to build up some organisations to work for the development of Assamese language, literature and culture of the modern period. Ôxôm Xahityô Xôbha was the results of all those efforts. In 1917 it came into being, the first conference was held in the month of December 1917 under the presidency of Padmanath Gohain Baruah, a big name in the history of modern Assamese literature. Sarat Chandra Goswami was the first secretary of the Sabha, since then the annual conference, nowadays biennial, is held with great pomp and grandeur, and a writer of high reputation is elected to the presidency of the Society. Before formal formation of Asam Sahitya Sabha, Sahitya Kandari Padma Nath Gohain Baruah had established Kohima Sahitya Sabha at Kohima, Nagaland, Padma Nath Gohain Baruah was Founder Secretary and a Bengali Gentlemen Mr. Nabin Chandra Bhattacherjee was the Founder President. There was an Office Building at the Heart of the Kohima Town, late Govinda Chandra Paira, Dhan Bahadur Sonar and Hari Prasad Gorkha Rai were the main product of Kohima Sahitya Sabha, who were Honored by awarding Literary Pension by the Assam Government. The Kohima Sahitya Sabha is still alive and it has an own Bhawan at P. R. Hill, Kohima, Opposite Nagaland Police Headquarters. The Bhawan was exchanged by the Nagaland Government with the earlier one, the conference of the Asam Sahitya Sabha helds biennially. First conference of Asam Sahitya Sabha was held at Sivasagar, Assam and it become a big literary festival, unique in its character, which is attended by thousands of people. The writers of the state assemble, exchange their views and address the people, except regular biennially seasons in 2000 and 2002 special session was held at Jorhat and Kalgachia. On 31 January, 1–4 February 2013 at Biswaratna Dr. Bhupen Hazarika Samannay Khetra, Barpeta Road, the Sabha’s 2015 session held at Kaliabor, Nagaon. The current conference will be held in Padmanath Gohain Baruah Khetra, Asam Sahitya Sabha Patrika is an official journal of the Asam Sahitya Sabha. The first issue was appeared in October,1927, chandradhar Barua was the founder editor of the journal
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Culture of Assam
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The culture of Assam is traditionally a hybrid one, developed due to cultural assimilation of different ethno-cultural groups under various politico-economic systems in different periods of history. Typical naming of the rivers and spatial distribution of related ethno-cultural groups also support this theory, such an assimilated culture therefore carries many elements of source cultures, of which exact roots are difficult to trace and are a matter for research. It is believed that Assamese culture in its original form developed over 700 years as the country of Kamarupa during the first millennium AD, the first 300 years of Kamarupa was under the great Varman dynasty,200 years under the Mlechchha dynasty and 200 years under the Pala dynasty. The records of many aspects of the language, traditional crafts are available in different forms, when the Tai-Shans entered the region in 1228 under the leadership of Sukaphaa to establish Ahom kingdom in Assam for the next 600 years, again a new chapter of cultural assimilation was written. The original Tai-Shans assimilated with the culture, adopted the language on one hand. The Vaishanav Movement, a 15th-century religio-cultural movement under the leadership of Srimanta Sankardeva, a renewed Hinduisation in local forms took place, which was initially greatly supported by the Koch and later by the Ahom Kingdoms. The resultant social institutions such as namghar and sattra - the Vaishnav Herimtage have become part of the Assamese way of life, the movement contributed greatly towards language, literature and performing and fine arts. On many occasions, the Vaishnav Movement attempted to introduce alien cultural attributes, brajavali, a language specially created by introducing words from other Indian languages, failed as a language but left its traces on the Assamese language. Moreover, new rules were also introduced changing peoples food habits. This had a impact on the alienation of many local ethno-cultural and political groups in the later periods. Time-factors for such integrations and differentiations have also played an important role along with the position of events in the entire series of events. With a strong base of tradition and history, modern Assamese culture is influenced by various events those took place in under British rule of Assam. A new wave of Western and northern Indian influence was apparent in the performing arts, However, Assamese culture in its hybrid form and nature is one of the richest and is still under development. Assamese culture in its true sense today is a system composed of different sub-systems. It is more interesting to note that many of the source-cultures of Assamese culture are still surviving either as sub-systems or as sister entities. In broader sense, therefore, the Assamese cultural system incorporates its source-cultures and However, some of the common cultural traits available across these systems are, Respect towards areca-nut and betel leaves Respect by Salutation of the Siju plant. Various elements are being used to represent beliefs, feelings, pride, identity, symbolism is an ancient cultural practice in Assam, which is still very important for the people. Tamulpan, Xorai and Gamosa are three important symbolic elements in Assamese culture, tamul-paan or guapan are considered as the offers of devotion, respect and friendship
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History of Assam
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The history of Assam is the history of a confluence of people from the east, west and the north, the confluence of the Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan and Austroasiatic cultures. Although invaded over the centuries, it was never a vassal or a colony to an external power until the Burmese in 1821, and, subsequently, the Assamese history has been derived from multiple sources. The Ahom kingdom of medieval Assam maintained chronicles, called Buranjis, written in the Ahom, History of ancient Assam comes from a corpus of Kamarupa inscriptions on rock, copper plates, clay, royal grants, etc. that the Kamarupa kings issued during their reign. Protohistory has been reconstructed from folklore, epics like Mahabharata, the history of Assam can be divided into four eras. The ancient era began in the 4th century with the mention of Kamarupa in Samudraguptas Allahabad pillar, the colonial era began with the establishment of British control after the Treaty of Yandaboo in 1826, and the post-colonial era began in 1947 after the Independence of India. The earliest inhabitants of the region are assigned to the Middle Pleistocene period in the Rongram valley of Garo Hills, the Paleolithic sites, which used handaxe-cleaver tools, have affinities to the Abbevillio-Acheulean culture. Other Paleolithic sites include those in the Daphabum area of Lohit district in Arunachal Pradesh which used stone tools from metamorphic rocks, the cave-based Paleolithic sites at Khangkhui in Ukhrul, Manipur, is placed in the Late Pleistocene period. There exists evidence of a culture in the Rongram Valley of Garo Hills that lie between the neolithic layers and virgin soil. The microliths here were made of dolerite, unlike those from the rest of India, shreds of crude hand-made pottery indicate that the microlithic people were hunters and food-gatherers. The Late neolithic cultures have affinities with the spread of the Mon Khmer speaking people from Malaysia, since these cultures have been dated to 4500–4000 BCE, the Assam sites are dated to approximately that period. These neolithic sites, though widely spread, are concentrated in the hills and high grounds and these cultures performed shifting cultivation called jhum, which is still practiced by some communities in the region. Some typical sites are Daojali Hading in Dima Hasao, Sarutaru in Kamrup district, there exists no archaeological evidence of Copper-Bronze or Iron age culture in the region. This might seem as an impossibility given that corresponding cultures have discovered in Bengal as well as Southeast Asia. It can only be conjectured that metal age sites in the region exist but have not yet been discovered, the affinity is with Southeast Asia. The megalithic culture was the precursor of the fertility cult and the saktism, protohistoric Assam is reconstructed from epics and literature from early times. The earliest political entity seems to have led by a non-Aryan Danava dynasty with Mahiranga mentioned as the first king. This dynasty was removed by Narakasura, Naraka appears to be a generic name for many kings belonging to the Naraka dynasty. According to legend, the last of the Naraka kings was killed by Krishna, the last in the Naraka dynasty was a ruler named Suparua
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Kamarupa
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Kāmarūpa, was an ancient kingdom on the Indian subcontinent, it is the first historical kingdoms of Assam, India, that came into being alongside Davaka. Though Kamarupa existed from 350 to 1140 CE, Davaka was absorbed by kamarupa in the 5th century, in the 16th century the Ahom kingdom came into prominence and assumed for itself the political and territorial legacy of the Kamarupa kingdom. The name of this survives in Kamrup, a present-day district in Assam. According to the 10th century Kalika Purana and the 7th century Xuanzang, the eastern border was the temple of the goddess Tamreshvari near present-day Sadiya, in the eastern most corner of Assam, which too agrees with Xuanzang. The people of Kamarupa were aware of Sichuan which lay two months away from its eastern borders. The southern boundary was near the border between the Dhaka and Mymensingh districts in Bangladesh, thus it spanned the entire Brahmaputra valley and at various times included present-day Bhutan and parts of Bangladesh. This is supported by the various epigraphic records found scattered over these regions, the extent of state structures can be culled from the numerous Kamarupa inscriptions left behind by the Kamarupa kings as well as accounts left by travellers such as those from Xuanzang. Governance followed the classical structure of state. Kings and courts, The king was considered to be of divine origin, succession was primogeniture, but two major breaks resulted in different dynasties. In the second, the officials of the state elected a king, Brahmapala. The royal court consisted of a Rajaguru, poets, learned men, different epigraphic records mention different officials of the palace, Mahavaradhipati, Mahapratihara, Mahallakapraudhika, etc. Council of Ministers, The king was advised by a council of ministers, according to the Kamauli grant, these positions were filled by Brahmanas and were hereditary. State functions were specialized and there were different groups of officers looking after different departments, revenue, Land revenue was collected by special tax-collectors from cultivators. Cultivators who had no rights on the lands they tilled paid uparikara. Duties were collected by toll collectors from merchants who plied keeled boats, the state maintained a monopoly on copper mines. The state maintained its stores and treasury via officials, Bhandagaradhikrita, grants, The king occasionally gave Brahmanas grants, which consisted generally of villages, water resources, wastelands etc. Such grants conferred on the donee the right to collect revenue, sometimes, the Brahmanas were relocated from North India, with a view to establish varnashramdharma. Nevertheless, the existence of donees indicate the existence of a feudal class, grants made to temples and religious institutions were called dharmottara and devottara respectively
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Ahom kingdom
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The Ahom kingdom was a kingdom in the Brahmaputra Valley in Assam, India, that maintained its sovereignty for nearly 600 years and successfully resisted Mughal expansion in Northeast India. Established by Sukaphaa, a Tai prince from Mong Mao, it began as a mong in the reaches of the Brahmaputra based on wet rice agriculture. It expanded suddenly under Suhungmung in the 16th century and became multi-ethnic in character, 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, the 1901 census of India enumerated approximately 179,000 people identifying as Ahom. The latest available census records slightly over 2 million Ahom individuals however, the total population of Assam being at 31 million according to the 2011 census, they presently constitute slightly over 25%. The Ahoms called their kingdom Mong Dun Shun Kham, while called it Assam. The British-controlled province after 1838 and later the Indian state of Assam came to be known by this name and he was accompanied by his three queens, two sons, several nobles and their families, other officials and families, and soldiers totaling more than nine thousand persons. He befriended the groups, the Barahi and the Marans, finally settled his capital at Charaideo and established the offices of the Dangarias—the Burhagohain. In the 1280s, these two offices were given independent regions of control, and the check and balance that these three main offices accorded each other was established, the Ahoms brought with them the technology of wet rice cultivation that they shared with other groups. The people that took to the Ahom way of life and polity were incorporated into their fold in a process of Ahomization, the expansion was so large and so rapid that the Ahomization process could not keep pace and the Ahoms became a minority in their kingdom. This resulted in a change in the character of the kingdom and it became multi-ethnic, hindu influences, which were first felt under Bamuni Konwar at the end of the 14th century, became significant. The Assamese language entered the Ahom court and co-existed with the Tai language for some time in the 17th century before finally replacing it. The rapid expansion of the state was accompanied by the installation of a new high office, two special offices, the Sadiakhowa Gohain and the Marangikowa Gohain were created to oversee the regions won over from the Sutiya and the Kachari kingdoms respectively. The subjects of the kingdom were organized under the Paik system, initially based on the phoid or kinship relations, the kingdom came under attack from Turkic and Afghan rulers of Bengal, but it withstood them. On one occasion, the Ahoms under Ton Kham Borgohain pursued the invaders and reached the Karatoya river, the Ahom kingdom took many features of its mature form under Pratap Singha. The Paik system was reorganized under the professional system, replacing the kinship based phoid system. Under the same king, the offices of the Borphukan, no more major restructuring of the state structure was attempted till the end of the kingdom. The kingdom came under repeated Mughal attacks in the 17th century, and on one occasion in 1662, the Mughals under Mir Jumla occupied the capital, Garhgaon
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Chutiya Kingdom
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The Sutiya Kingdom or Sadiya was a state on the Indian subcontinent, established by Birpal in 1187 CE in the areas comprising the present-day Indian states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. The kingdom absorbed the ancient Pal dynasty of Kamarupa and reigned for over 400 years in eastern Assam and Arunachal Pradesh with its capital at Sadiya. It controlled the present Assam districts of Lakhimpur, Dhemaji, Tinsukia, parts of Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Sonitpur and East Siang, Subansiri, Lower Dibang, the Sutiya are an ethnic group originally from Tibet and the Sichuan province of China. Most illustrious of the Sutiya kings was Gaurinarayan son of Birpal and he brought many other Sutiya groups into his kingdom. In 1224 Ratnadhwajpal defeated Bhadrasena, the king of Swetagiri, then he went on to subjugate Nyayapal and marched toward Kamatapur, where he formed an alliance with the Kamata ruler by marrying a princess. Then he marched to Dhaka, and made friends with the Gauda ruler, the hostilities with the Ahoms began when the Sutiya Kingdom expanded to the south and during which Ahom king, Sutuphaa, was killed by the Sutiya king during a friendly negotiation. This conflict triggered a number of battles between the two sides, which saw great loss of men and money, the simmering dispute often flared till 1524 when the Ahoms struck the Sutiya Kingdom at its weakest state, took Sadiya and killed the then king Nityapal. The Ahoms established their rule by instituting the position of Sadiyakhowa Gohain, but the Sutiya had dispersed to frontier regions, and continued raids against the Ahoms. It finally ended in 1673 when they fall under the domination of the Ahoms, according to Sutiya language, the word Sutiya stands for glory. Assamese chronicles name Asambhinna as the first Sutiya king, who dwelt on the banks of Brahmaputra with his seven brothers, in his reign came a Brahmin, who converted all the seven brothers into Hinduism and married Asambhinas daughter. Thereafter,31 kings followed Indra Dev Raja in regular succession, sambhung pha then appointed a Tamon over the vassal kingdom and returned to Mogaung. Four months later, Tamon was poisoned to death and Kossi Raja became independent, thus,31 rulers intervened between Indra Dev Raja and Kossi Raja over an aggregate of 554 years. So the accession of Asambhinna can roughly be placed in the middle of the 7th century, the founder of the kingdom was Birpal who claimed descent from the legendary Bhishmak and reigned in 1187. He ruled over 60 families with his capital on a hill called Swarnagiri, the surname Pal is possible imitation of the Pala dynasty of Kamarupa. He was succeeded by his son Sonagiri assuming the title of Gaurinarayan, Gaurinarayan alias Ratnadhwajpal was one of the most powerful Sutiya king, he brought under his sway tribes of neighbouring mountains Rangalgiri, Kalgiri, Nilgiri, Chandragiri, Dhavalgiri etc. He conquered the whole region of Assam which included the areas of present-day Arunachal Pradesh. In the year 1224, with a army, he descended on the valley of Brahmaputra, attacked and deported a king named Bhadrasena. In the expedition, he gained rich booty and many prisoners of war belonging to Brahmin, Tanti, Sonari, Sutar and Kumar castes and he built his capital at Ratnapur, hence also called Ratnadhwajpal and used certain techniques to advance the agricultural system in the kingdom
25.
Colonial Assam
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Colonial Assam refers to the period of History of Assam between the signing of the Treaty of Yandabo and Independence of India when Assam was under the British colonial rule. The political institutions and social relations that were established or severed during this period continue to have an effect on contemporary events. The legislature and political alignments that evolved by the end of the British rule continued in the post Independence period, the region that came to be known as undivided Goalpara district came under British rule after the transfer of the Deewani from the Mughal Emperor on August 12,1765. The Burmese occupiers retreated from the Ahom capital of Rangpur in January 1825, in the war against the Burmese the Ahoms did not help the British. In 1828, the Kachari kingdom was annexed under the Doctrine of Lapse after the king Govinda Chandra was killed, in 1832, the Khasi king surrendered and the British increased their influence over the Jaintia ruler. In 1833, upper Assam became a British protectorate under the ruler of the Ahom kingdom, Purandhar Singha. With the annexation of the Maran/Matak territory in the east in 1839, Assam was included as a part of the Bengal Presidency. The annexation of upper Assam is attributed to the manufacture of tea in 1837. Under the Wasteland Rules of 1838, it nearly impossible for natives to start plantations. After the liberalization of the rules in 1854, there was a land rush, from 1859 central Indian labour was imported for the tea plantations. This labour, based on a contract, led to a virtual slavery of this labour group. The conditions in which they were transported to Assam were so horrific that about 10% never survived the journey, the colonial government already had monopoly over the opium trade. There were immediate protests and revolts against the British occupation, in 1828, two years after the Treaty of Yandabo, Gomdhar Konwar rose in revolt against the British, but he was easily suppressed. In 1830 Dhananjoy Burhagohain, Piyali Phukan and Jiuram Medhi rose in revolt, in the Indian rebellion of 1857, the people of Assam offered resistance in the form of non-cooperation, and Maniram Dewan and Piyali Baruah were executed for their roles. In 1861 peasants of Nagaon gathered at Phulaguri for a raiz mel to protest against taxes on betel-nut, Lt. Singer, a British officer got into a fracas with the peasants and was killed, after which the protests were violently suppressed. Assamese, which had replaced by Bengali as the official language in 1837, was reinstated alongside Bengali. The people of Sylhet, Goalpara, Kamrup and the Hills protested the inclusion in Assam, in 1889, oil was discovered at Digboi giving rise to an oil industry. In this period Nagaon witnessed starvation deaths, and there was a decrease in the indigenous population, colonialism was well entrenched, and the tea, oil and coal-mining industries were putting increasing pressure on the agricultural sector which was lagging behind
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Assam Province
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Assam Province was a province of British India, created in 1911 by the partition of the Eastern Bengal and Assam Province. The Assam territory was first separated from Bengal in 1874 as the North-East Frontier non-regulation province and it was incorporated into the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam in 1905 and re-established as a province in 1912. In 1824 Assam was occupied by British forces following the First Anglo-Burmese War, between 1826 and 1832 Assam was made part of Bengal under the Bengal Presidency. From 1832 to October 1838 the Assam princely state was restored in Upper Assam while the British ruled in Lower Assam, purandar Singha was allowed to rule as king of Upper Assam in 1833, but after that brief period Assam was annexed to Bengal by the British. In 1873 British political control was imposed on western Naga communities, on 6 February 1874 Assam, including Sylhet, was severed from Bengal to form the Assam Chief-Commissionership, also known as the North-East Frontier. Shillong was chosen as the capital of the Non-Regulation Province of Assam in September 1874, the Lushai Hills were transferred to Assam in 1897. The new Commissionership included the five districts of Assam proper, Khasi-Jaintia Hills, Garo Hills, Naga Hills, Goalpara, ironically, Cooch Behar a historical part of Assam, was left out. From 16 October 1905 Assam became part of the Province of East Bengal, some of the Indian ministers under the dyarchy scheme were Sir Syed Muhammad Saadulla and Rai Bahadur Promode Chandra Dutta. The Government of India Act 1935 provided provincial autonomy and further enlarged the provincial legislature to 108 elected members. In 1937 elections were held for the newly created Assam Legislative Assembly established in Shillong, the Indian National Congress had the maximum number of seats with 38 members but declined to form a government. Therefore, Sir Syed Muhammad Saadulla was invited to form the government, saadullas government resigned in September,1938 and the Governor then invited Gopinath Bordoloi. Bordolois cabinet included future President of India Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, in 1939, all of the Congress ministries in British Indian provinces resigned and a new government under Saadulla was formed. Sir Syed Muhammad Saadulla remained as the Premier or Chief Minister of Assam till 1946 barring a period of Governor Rule. When fresh elections to the legislatures were called in 1946. Prior to the Independence of India, on 1 April 1946, Assam Province was granted self-rule, Bordoloi continued as the Chief Minister even after Indias independence in 1947. C. K. Integration of the North East, the State Formation Process
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Ahom people
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The Ahom are the descendants of the ethnic Tai people that accompanied the Tai prince into the Brahmaputra valley in 1228 and ruled the area for six centuries. The modern Ahom people and their culture are a blend of the original Tai culture. Some ethnic groups, including the Tibeto-Burman speaking Borahi people, were subsumed into the Ahom community. Members of other communities, based on their allegiance to the Ahom kingdom or the usefulness of their talents, were accepted as Ahoms, nowadays Ahoms form the largest mongoloid community of Assam and North East India. They are in majority in Upper Assam The Tibeto-Burman locals near the Ahoms gave them the name Ahom, in the early 13th century, Mong Mao was a small kingdom of Tai people, related to the Shan, in present-day Yunnan Province, Myanmar. In 1228, the Mong Mao prince Chao-lung Sukaphaa began his journey with about 9000 followers and he crossed the Patkai Hills and reached the Brahmaputra valley in 1228. He moved from place to place, searching for a seat and he decided not to attack the Morans and Borahis but befriend them instead. His depleted followers married into the Borahi and the Moran ethnic groups, the Borahis, a Tibeto-Burman people, were subsumed into the Ahom fold, though the Moran maintained their independent ethnicity. Sukaphaa established his capital at Charaideo near present-day Sivasagar in 1253, the Ahom kingdom then consolidated its power, building their kingdom for the next 600 years. The first major expansion was at the cost of the Sutiya kingdom, the expansions success was not only a result of Ahom military prowess, but also of changes in the Ahom social and political outlook. Suhungmung was the first Ahom king to adopt a Hindu name, Swarga Narayan, in 1536 the Dimasa Kacharis, known to Ahoms as Timisa, were uprooted from their capital at Dimapur. Thus by the middle of the 16th century, the Ahoms were in control of all of present-day eastern Assam, the late 17th century saw another expansion of Ahom territory. After the 1682 Battle of Itakhuli, that marked the end of the Ahom-Mughal conflicts, by bringing the various tribal groups and regions under one ruler and one governing polity the Ahoms are considered the architects of modern Assam. Ahom power declined in the half of the 18th century. In the first part of the 19th century, the Burmese army invaded their kingdom, uprooted their capital, Assam was then annexed by British India, becoming a province and then a state as the Ahom identity gradually became Assamese. The Ahom people also practice the ancient and distinct Indian religion Furalung, given the non-dogmatic nature of Indian religious traditions, an adherent may identify with both Furalung and Hinduism. Similarly, many among the Ahom people practice Buddhism as well and its usage declined during the reign of Swargadeo Rajeswar Singha, who ordered Sanskrisation. All funerals were to be practiced under the Brahmanical Hindu cremation rites, conducted by a Maithil Brahmin priest, the Tai Ahoms worship their deceased forefathers as they are the guardian deities of the house holders
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Assamese Brahmins
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Assamese Brahmins, also called Bamuns by the locals, constitute the Indo-Aryan community of the Assam Valley belonging to the Vedic Brahmin caste. Brahmins are found everywhere in Assam and surrounding areas however, most predominantly in Jorhat, Nalbari, Barpeta, Goalpara, Dibrugarh, Nagaon, Sonitpur, Tinsukia and Darrang districts. Brahmins of the valley also have a significant diaspora in the rest of the mainland India, mainly in Delhi, and are considered to be at the apex of eastern Indias caste hierarchy. Common surname families include, Acharjee / Acharya, Adhyapok, Barua / Baruah, Bhatta, Gain / Gayen, Goswami / Goswami, Thakur / Borthakur, Sharma / Sarma, Phukan, Rajkhowa etc. Each Brahmin family within the community belongs to a specific gotra which is unique to a family thereby indicating their origin or lineage, many of the Assamese Brahmins write the conferred titles either gifted by the Ahom kings or adopted being in Assam for a long time. Assamese Brahmins, like rest of the sect elsewhere in mainland India, for example, their dietary regime include non-vegetarian food, such as Eggs, Fish, Chicken, Duck, Pigeons meat and Mutton, less likely consumed by Brahmins elsewhere. It may be common to see a fewer Brahmins worshipping saints of Asamiya community equally as a part of their religious curriculum. Traditionally, the ceremony of Lagundeoni - one of the Sanskaras or rites of passage marking acceptance of a student by a Guru, is a quite prevalent ritual within the community, the ceremony is typically performed between ages 12 –14 among Brahmin males. In variably most Brahmin families are involved in performing religious rituals, some of these rituals may be performed at some occasions in a year, however, a few others may be performed every year as part of continued legacy of worshipping a family deity. These traditions are passed on to generations and hence it is not uncommon to see a Brahmin family engaging in rituals that may be as old as 500 years of age or beyond. Durga Puja is performed among some Brahmin families which may or not include Murti Sthapana in their homes, traditionally, the ritual celebrates worship of the Hindu goddess Durga and is observed as Saptami, Ashtami, Nabami and Dashami. Jagaddhatri literally means Holder of the World, some Brahmins of Assam show reverence to the Goddess Lakshmi by performing Lakshmi Puja in their homes every year. They pray for prosperity and well-being for their families and businesses and involves Sculpture installation of Lakshmi idol or Murti with Bhakti, Japa, Bhajana, Yajna, Homa. Where the rest of the mainland India performs Lakhmi Puja during Diwali, much like Lakshmi Puja, some families adhere to Radha Krishna as their family deities and show reverence to the god and goddess as the supreme power of all. Raas Puja is performed in the later Autumn spanning across 2 days - Adhibash, sanskara Lagundeoni Ganak List of Notable Assamese Brahmins
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Islam in Assam
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Islam is the second largest religion in Assam. Islam is also fastest growing religion in Assam according to 2011 census report, according to pew research centre If its current Muslim growth rate continues then by 2050 Assam will become a Muslim majority state. According to the 2011 census, there were 10,679,345 Muslims in the Indian state of Assam, Islam came to Assam in the 13th century, before the Ahom dynasty of the region. However, migration of Bengali-speaking immigrants, mostly from Bangladesh have also arrived in Assam, many of these immigrants have been either naturalized or acquired forged Indian documents since. The Muslims first came to Assam in the early 13th century, a chieftain of the Mech tribe embraced Islam at the invitation of Khilji, and adopted the name Ali Mech. He guided Khiljis army through the known as Kamarupa during the expedition. Barak Valley, On the other hand Islam became popularised in Barak Valley with the arrival of Sufi Hazrat Shahjalal, a large part of the valley came under Bengal Sultanate. Since then Muslim continue to play important in all walk of life, in 1613, the Mughals annexed Koch Hajo briefly. They also ruled Goalpara, but could not subdue the other parts of Assam, the Mughal soldiers who were taken as prisoners of wars by the Assamese kingdoms were later assimilated by the local population, but maintained their Islamic beliefs. In 1630, a Muslim saint named Shah Milan popularly known as Ajan Fakir came from Baghdad and he preached the local population about Islam and as a result many of them had entered into the fold of Islam and became his disciples. His mausoleum is present in Sahoguri Chapori in Sibsagar district of Assam, although the Muslims of Assam did not identify with any caste, they had caste-like divisions based on family ancestry and functional sections. In order of social status, the ancestral groups include. In 17th century, a Syed Muslim saint Ajan Fakir came to Assam, shaikh This section is formed by the descandants of invading Muslim soldiers who married local Assamese girls, some of whose relatives also converted to Islam. Maria These are descended from the captured Muslim soldiers, who came with the armies of Khilji, miah These are descended of local indigenous Australoid-Dravidian people who converted to Islam. However it is used as a racial epithet. The British East India Company had established its rule in the neighbouring Bengal region after the Battle of Plassey in 1757, when Assam came under the colonial rule, the British brought with them a number of Bengali settlers. These Bengalis encouraged other Bengalis to settle in Assam for economic reasons, the fertile land of Assam attracted a number of landless peasants from East Bengal, nearly 85% of whom were Muslims. The tea planters and Marwari businessmen, who needed workers, also welcomed the immigrants, early establishments were in the Goalpara district, mostly in the char lands and reserved forests
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Chutiya people
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Sutiya /ˈsʊðiːjɑː/ is a community or an ethnic group originating from the Indian state of Assam and are the descendants of the Sino-Tibetan family of Mongoloid stock. The earliest recorded history about the Sutiyas is found in the Assamese chronicle, the Sutiya people through the Sutiya dynasty formed their kingdom in the present Indian states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh and reigned from 1187 to 1673. The seat of the Sutiyas when they were in the ascendant, appears to have been about Lakhimpur and they hold all the countries to the north of the Brahmaputra as far down as Biswanath. They spoke a language of Tibeto-Burman origin but overtime started speaking Assamese language, Sutiyas along with Koch Rajbongshi and Ahom are sometimes referred to as semi-Hinduised caste. The Sutiya community are recognised as OBC by the Govt, of India and are an ethnic Assamese speaking group. The 2011 census report estimated 2,600,000 individual belonging to the group, according to Sutiya language, the word Sutiya stands for glory. The Sutiyas are semi-Hinduised people who had a kingdom in upper Assam. They are generally alleged to be of Shan origin, though Dalton believed from their language to be related to Kacharis. They seem to have intermarried with the Ahoms, so that the latter have a subdivision called Sutiya. The Sutiyas have sections calling themselves Ahoms and they are now chiefly found in the upper Assam districts side by side with the Ahoms. Edward Gait in his book A History of Assam wrote, The Sutiya Kingdom was established by Birpal in 1187 on the bank of the river Brahmaputra. The kingdom absorbed the ancient Pal dynasty and reigned for over 400 years in northeastern Assam and areas of present-day Arunachal Pradesh, the kingdom controlled the entire region of present Assam districts of Lakhimpur, Dhemaji, Tinsukia and parts of Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Sonitpur. It was the dominant kingdom in upper Assam till the 16th century in which it expanded from Parshuram Kund in the east to Vishwanath in the west and had absorbed many local communities and tribes, most illustrious of the Sutiya kings was Gaurinarayan, son of Birpal. He brought many other Sutiya groups into his kingdom, in 1224 Ratnadhwajpal defeated Bhadrasena, the king of Swetagiri. Then he went on to subjugate Nyayapal and marched toward Kamatapur, then he marched to Dhaka, and made friends with the Gauda ruler. The simmering dispute often flared till 1523 when the Ahoms struck the Sutiya Kingdom in its weakest state, they finally took Sadiya, the Ahoms established their rule by instituting the position of Sadiyakhowa Gohain, the governor in charge of Sadiya. But the Sutiya had dispersed to frontier regions, and continued raids against the Ahoms and it finally ended in 1673, when the Sutiyas fall under the domination of the Ahoms. The original language of the Sutiyas belong to the Tibeto-Burman language group, although, the language is no longer spoken, it is well preserved by the Deuri people or the priestly section of the group
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Bodo people
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The Bodos are an ethnic and linguistic aboriginal group of the Brahmaputra valley in the northeast part of India. The Bodos are recognized as a tribe in the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. Udalguri, Chirang, Baksa, Sonitpur, Goalpara, Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, Darrang, Bongaigaon, the Bodos living in West Bengal, Nagaland and Nepal are called Mech. The Bodos use the term Bodosa to describe themselves, though spread in different parts of this region, as well as, in the neighbouring countries, majority of their population is found in Assam. The Boro people form the largest indigenous group in the present demography of the region, the language belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family. According to the report of 1971, the population of the Boros was 610,459. The Boro Socio-political organisations however do not accept this figure and they claim their population to be not less than 4 million in 1990. This discrepancy is believed to have crept in because of deliberate doctoring of some census officials, the census reports of the Government conducted every 10 years are believed to have presented the Hinduised Boros as Assamese. This misclassification has reduced the Boro population in the record by a big margin. He also observed that the increase in Kamrup and Darrang is so great as to suggest the suspicion that a number of Koch have turned themselves into Kalitas. The Koches are the Hinduised Boros and the Kalitas are one of the castes of the Assamese community. This process of infringement has continued through successive census, as a result, the successive census reports give inconsistent figures of population of this people. For instance, in 1881, the Boro population was 894,885, while in 1891, it rose to 1,058,496, in 1961, their population figured at 1,228,450, while in 1971, it fell to 610,459. Such fluctuation in the figure cannot be analysed by any natural law of demography. Thus the census reports of the Government of India, which ought to be the most authentic documents, have suffered from anomalies, under such circumstances, the population figures furnished by the Boro socio-political organizations appear more convincing. The present Boro population inclusive of all groups is not less than 9.5 million. Bodos traditionally practise Bathouism, which is the worshiping of forefathers, the shijou plant is taken as the symbol of Bathou and worshiped. It is also claimed as the supreme god, in Bodo language, Ba means five and thou means deep
India (Assam)
