Indo-Aryan migration to Assam

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History of Kamarupa
Rulers and Events

The beginning of Indo-Aryan migration to Assam is estimated to the fifth century BCE[1] when a trickle of Indo-Aryans entered a region that was already populated by Austro-Asiatic speakers[2] and Tibeto-Burman speakers.[3] It is estimated that the Aryan culture became predominant by the 3rd century[4] and reached eastern Assam by the 5th century, as evidenced by the Nagajari-Khanikargaon rock inscription in the Golaghat region.[5] Aryan presence and influence became significant by the 7th century,.[6] The copper plate inscriptions of Kamarupa gives weight to Aryan culture of ancient Assam.[7]

The Aryan wave extended to Kamarupa directly from Mithila and Magadha long before Lower Bengal became either habitable or fit for Aryan occupation. Kamarupa was therefore Aryanized long before central and lower Bengal.[8]

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 tho 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, for within this area stupas erected by Ashoka were found by Yuan Chwang 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 Gupta's this stretch was known as Pundravardhana. 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 mythological rulers Naraka, Bhagadatta and Vajradatta who were heroes mentioned in the epics.[8]

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 kinks of Bengal provide useful material for the history of Kamarupa during this period.[8]

The Raghuvaugsa of Kalidasa, the very valuable accounts of the Chinese writers, the Harsha-Charita of Banabhatta, the Raja-tarangini of Kahlan and the translations from Tibetan records, made available, also throw valuable light. The local epigraphic records constitute, however the most important foundation on which a reliable frame-work of history can be based.[8]

Migration

The Indo-Aryan speaking people[1] came into a region that was already inhabited by Austroasiatic[2] and Tibeto-Burman-speaking[3] peoples, who in turn immigrated from China.[9]

It is held that a majority of the Indo-Aryans spoke Old Kamarupi dialect or Old Assamese[10] also known as Kamarupi Prakrit, the precursor of Assamese language and the Kamatapuri lects; and that the learned few knew Sanskrit.[11] The Indo-Aryan language was accepted as a second language by some of the aboriginal peoples and it became a link language; and over time, it became the first language for many. In return, the Indo-Aryan languages in the region acquired linguistic features of the native speakers.[12]

Reconstruction

The 8th- to 6th-century BCE text, Shatapatha Brahmana, describes the Sanskritization of East India up to the Karatoya river.[13] Archaeologically, the Northern Black Polished Ware reached the Karatoya firmly by the 2nd century BCE.[14] The Karatoya river formed the western boundary of the historic Kamarupa kingdom, and sanskritization of Assam cannot thus be pushed beyond the 6th century BCE.[15] It is also significant that neither early Buddhist sources,[14] nor Ashokan epigraphs[16] (3rd century BCE with the capital in East India) mention the Assam region. A reference to Lauhitya in Kautilya's Arthashastra (3rd century BCE) is sometimes identified with the Brahmaputra region.[17]

The first date-able epigraphic notice of the region is found in the 4th century Allahabad pillar of Samudragupta, where Kamarupa and Davaka are mentioned as frontier provinces of the Gupta Empire. Indo-Aryan account of the region between 500 BCE and 4th century CE comes from revised Mahabharata and Puranas (from the 2nd century BCE to the 2nd century CE), and the c. 10th-century Kalika Purana.[14] Though the various accounts in these Hindu texts conflict each other,[18] it is nevertheless held that large bands of Indo-Aryan people moved from Magadha to the forested regions of the Brahmaputra valleys in search of elephants, timber and virgin land; and the leaders of these bands are remembered in later myths as Parashurama, Bashishtha and Naraka.[19] That these bands of Indo-Aryan established their own rule in the region can be inferred from the account in Kalika Purana where it is said that Naraka displaced an indigenous Danava dynasty.

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".[14] 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.[20]

Sanskritization and localization

Though traditional accounts brand the kings of Assam as Indo-Aryan, modern scholarship is not clear.[21][22] Sanskritization, was a process that occurred simultaneously with "deshification" (or localization, or tribalization) in Assam.[23]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 "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)
  2. 1 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." (Taher 2001, p. 12)
  3. 1 2 "The second group of migrants came to Assam from the north, north-east and east. They are mostly the Tibeto-Burman language speaking people" (Taher 2001, p. 12)
  4. Mani L. Bose, Social History of Assam: Being a Study of the Origins of Ethnic Identity , 1989, p. 40 when the Aryans entered Assam from the west is uncertain. It seems probably that the Aryan penetration into Assam began from the time of the Brahmanas and the Epics and by the 3rd century A.D. Aryan culture became the predominant.
  5. (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.
  6. (Puri 1968, p. 6)
  7. 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.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Kanak Lal Barua (1933),Early History of Kamarupa,p.I
  9. Vivek Chadha, United Service Institution of India, Low Intensity Conflicts in India: An Analysis, 2005, Page 257, The Bodo-Kacharis, widely accepted as Assam's original inhabitants, are a Mongoloid race that migrated from China.
  10. Sukumar Sen, Grammatical sketches of Indian languages with comparative vocabulary and texts, Volume 1, 1975, P 31, Coming from the regions of Videha-Magadha, through North Bengal, Assamese, or more appropriately the old Kamarupi dialect entered into Kamrup or western Assam, where this speech was first characterized as Assamese.
  11. "... (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)
  12. "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)
  13. (Puri 1968, p. 7)
  14. 1 2 3 4 (Guha 1984, p. 75)
  15. "...Indo-Aryans had not spread out as far as to Assam before 500 BCE, at least not in mentionable number." (Guha 1984, p. 74)
  16. (Puri 1968, p. 4)
  17. "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)
  18. "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)
  19. (Guha 1984, p. 76)
  20. (Guha 1983, p. 33)
  21. 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
  22. "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)
  23. "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)

References

  • 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". Social Scientist. 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. Social Scientist. 12 (6): 70–77. JSTOR 3517005. 
  • 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, The Comprehensive History of Assam, I, Guwahati: Publication Board, Assam, pp. 59–78 
  • Taher, M (2001), "Assam: An Introduction", in Bhagawati, A K, Geography of Assam, New Delhi: Rajesh Publications, pp. 1–17 
  • Urban, Hugh B. (2011). "The Womb of Tantra: Goddesses, Tribals, and Kings in Assam". The Journal of Hindu Studies. 4: 231–247. doi:10.1093/jhs/hir034. 
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