Origins and early settlement

As per traditional accounts, Sukaphaa (reign 1228–1268 CE), was a Tai prince originally from Mong Mao, who along with about nine thousand soldier-agriculturalists arrived in what is now Assam in 1228.^[4] After moving between different places, he finally settled in 1253 at Charaideo in eastern Assam and started forming a state. Upon settling in Assam, Sukaphaa established peaceful relations with the local ethnic groups, especially from the Borahi and the Moran. He later married the daughters of both Badaucha, the Moran chief, and Thakumatha, the Borahi chief, and established cordial relations with them. As he began establishing his domain, he avoided regions that were heavily populated.^[5] He also encouraged all his Tai soldiers as well as the members of the Tai elites to marry with the locals, which led to the beginning of the process called Ahomisation.^[6]

The Shan-Tai settlers displayed great assimilative capacity. While the Shan invaders called themselves Tai, they came to be referred to as Āsām, Āsam and Acam by the indigenous peoples of the region.^[7] The modern Assamese word Āhom by which the Tai people were known was derived from Āsām or Āsam. Socially, they fully identified with the multi-ethnic groups of their occupied territory, and the new name Ahom legitimised and recognised their political supremacy and leadership. The conquest of the Moran and Borahi ethnic groups at the initial stage produced the conquest society. The Tai settlers did not exterminate the vanquished population, but instead took them as partners in peace and development.^[8]

Expansion and assimilation

The Tai settlers brought with them the superior technique of wet-rice cultivation, and believed that they were divinely ordained to bring the fallow land under the plow. They adopted many stateless shifting cultivators of the region into their fold,^[9] though they were also conscious of their numerical inferiority.^[10] As a result, the Tai-Ahom polity initially absorbed people from various ethnic groups of the region such as Borahi, Moran and Naga. Later, after subjugating the Chutia kingdom and Dimasa Kingdom, much of the Chutia and the Dimasa-Kachari populace too were absorbed into the Ahom population.^[11]

Ahom as a state-conferred status

Saikia (2004) distinguishes the broad and heterogeneous subject population of the Ahom kingdom from the more restricted designation "Ahom". She emphasises that Ahom was not simply a fixed ethnic or hereditary category, but a political and administrative status conferred by the Swargadeo upon selected men serving the royal administration.^[12] Saikia notes that entry into this status depended on royal appointment and favour rather than descent alone; "birth did not play a role in conferring or guaranteeing the place of an Ahom to an individual."^[13] Such status could be acquired through royal service, appointment, incorporation into an official household, marriage or adoption, and could also be lost.^[14]

Once Ahom status had been acquired, however, some of those elevated to the aristocratic class attempted to represent their newly acquired position as an inherited one. Saikia notes that such nobles constructed prestigious family genealogies to legitimise their status and tended to suppress memories of their humbler origins.^[15] By the late eighteenth century, she argues, the buranjis reflected a distinction between the wider subject population and a gentrified class of Ahom officers, many of whom had themselves risen from the former; after attaining this elevated position, these officers sought to downplay their earlier backgrounds.^[16]

This process also involved intermarriage and the incorporation of local groups. Saikia (2004) notes that initially the male followers of Sukaphaa married Barahi women, producing a group called the Kadami Ahoms, while Morans, Barahis and other groups were designated aniyamar, or "irregular Ahoms".^[17] Later, many Morans and Barahis were "upgraded and designated as Ahoms".^[18]

During the pre-colonial period of Assam, the Ahoms were not an ethnic community as they are considered now; rather, they were a relatively open status group. Any community coming into the socio-economic fold of the Ahom state could claim the Ahom status with the active consent of the king.^[a]

Incorporation into clans and offices

Many indigenous people from various ethnic groups were ceremonially adopted into Ahom clans, as recorded in the chronicles known as Buranjis. The Miri-Handique lineage, for example, traced its origin to a Miri (Mising) boy adopted by Burhagohain Bhukula Gohain; his descendants subsequently became known by that name.^[25] Those incorporated into Ahom society could, if considered capable, also rise to important administrative positions. The second Borphukan, who served as governor of Lower Assam, was the son of a Naga of the Banferra clan; Queen Phuleswari, during the reign of Siva Singha (1714–1744), appointed a Bhutanese youth as her page; and Kancheng, the first Barpatra Gohain, was born and brought up in a Naga family.^[10] This was true even for the priestly clans: Naga-Bailung, Miri-bailung, Nara-Bailung,^[26] Chutia-Chiring^[27], Som-Chiring (Chutia origin)^[28] and Bar-Chiring (Naga origin).^[29] In this manner, numerous groups from both the plains and the surrounding hills were incorporated into the population identified as "Ahom".

Language and cultural change

The modern Ahom people and their culture are a syncretism of the original Tai and their culture^[86] and local Tibeto-Burman peoples and their cultures they absorbed in Assam. After the initial contact of the Tai-Ahoms with the local people of the region, the Tai speakers learnt the local language and culture. With better communication and proper running of the Ahom administration, they learnt the local Assamese language. The adoption of Assamese language also changed the language of Chronicle writings, the Buranji(s), where they write their all events. Even though the already mixed group known as 'Ahom' made up a relatively very small portion of the kingdom's population,^[11] they still maintained their original Tai-Ahom language alongside Assamese and practised their traditional religion until the 16th century, when the Ahom court completely adopted the local language of the region, the Assamese language.^[87]

Transition from Ahomisation

This process of Ahomisation went on until the mid-16th century, when the mixed Ahom society itself came under direct Hindu influence.^[88] In contexts of conquest, subjugated groups normally adopt the language and customs of the conquerors, and this was the root of the Ahomisation process. But in Assam, even after the process of Ahomisation started in the region, the Ahom kings observed that complete political influence in the country was not possible. With the expansion of the territory of the Ahom kingdom and the further inclusion of a diverse population, a reverse process took place. The conquerors had no alternative but to sanction the use of the language and culture of the conquered people at the common level of the totality.^[8]

After the subjugation of Chutia territories as in the Chutia Kingdom, the process of Ahomisation gave way to the process of Sanskritisation (Hinduisation). The process of Sanskritisation increased significantly in the 16th and 17th centuries after the expansion of the Ahom kingdom westward, which led to the absorption of many Hindu subjects.^[89]

Early Hindu influences at court

The first Hindu cultural elements came into the Ahom royal palace during the reign of Sukhaangphaa (1293–1332), when the king of the Kamata Kingdom, offered his daughter to the Ahom king to conclude the battle between the Kamata and Ahom kingdoms.^[90] This was the first recorded marriage of an Ahom king with a Hindu princess outside of the kingdom, and this marriage brought some Hindu elements to the Ahom royal palace. After the annexation of the Chutia kingdom, Kachari Kingdom and Baro-Bhuyan territories, the Ahoms assimilated their own culture with them. The Ahom royalty later appointed some Chutias in their offices, intermarried and had relations with them. Thus, cultural assimilation took place which majorly impacted the social structure, belief and practices in Ahom society.

Royal adoption of Hindu forms

Gradually, the Ahom royalty accepted the influence of Hinduisation, which led to Hindu religion's entry into the Ahom royal palace during the reign of Sudangphaa, also known as Bamuni Konwar (reign: 1397–1407). Sudangphaa also appointed a Brahmana as an advisor in the Ahom royal court, and he was the first Ahom king to adopt the coronation of Singarigharutha. Singarigharutha was the traditional coronation ceremony of an Ahom king. It was believed that even though an Ahom prince became a king, he could not attain the status of a full-fledged monarch until his Singarigharutha ceremony was completely performed. Therefore, each Ahom ruler after their accession to the throne tried to organize the ceremony as soon as possible.

Suhungmung (reign: 1497–1539) was the first Ahom king to adopt the Hindu title Swarga-Narayan, a Sanskrit equivalent of Tai-Ahom's Chao-Pha. After the reign of Suhungmung, the Ahom king preferred to use their Hindu names in the official records.^[91] The kings who were traditionally known with the title of Chao-Pha were replaced by the title of Swargadeo, and since then Ahom kings came to be known as the 'Swargadeo'.

Continuities of Tai-Ahom practice

The priestly classes of the Ahom like the Mohan, Deodhai and Bailung, mostly remained outside the purview of mainstream Hinduism and continued to express their unwillingness to come into the fold of the Brahmin Hindus.^{[citation needed]} However the traditions of Tai culture and religion can be found to be preserved by some priestly classes in rituals, marriages and festivals which today reflect the Ahom style of living.