History of Assam

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 (Sino-Tibetan), Indo-Aryan and Austroasiatic cultures
Assam is the eastern most sentinel of India endowed with enchanting and picturesque natural beauty. The State is adorned with beautiful lush covers of greenery, a chain of hills and rivers mainly the Brahmaputra and the Barak. It has been the living place of various races, tribes and ethnic groups since time immemorial. The dynamics of synthesis and assimilation of the races make Assam glorified and rich.
The Assamese history has been derived from multiple sources. The Ahom kingdom of medieval Assam maintained chronicles, called Buranjis, written in the Ahom and the Assamese languages. 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, and two medieval texts compiled in the Assam region—the Kalika Purana and the Yogini Tantra.

The history of Assam can be divided into four eras. The ancient era began in the 4th century with the mention of Kamarupa in Samudragupta’s inscriptions on the Allahabad pillar and the establishment of the Kamarupa kingdom. The medieval era began with the attacks from the Bengal Sultanate, the first of which took place in 1206 by Bakhtiyar Khilji as mentioned in the Kanai-boroxiboa rock inscription, after the breakup of the ancient kingdom and the sprouting of medieval kingdoms and chieftain-ships in its place. 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.