"... passing through several muangs, staying some time at each place, and then crossed the Irrawaddy River near Wing Men, maybe today's Bhamo. From there they marched towards the Hnkawng valley of today's Kachin State of upper Burma and crossed over the northern part of the Patkai range into northeastern Assam. The Tai Ahom chronicles note that Siu-Ka-Pha had an army of 9,000 men with superior weapons. On their way they came to Mainkwon, the seat of an influential Naga chief. Siu-Ka-Pha conquered the site and continued his march towards Pha-Ke-Che-Ring, the state of the Tai Phake people, an area south of the Kham hill and just west of the Loglai River.
The Phake people, another branch of the Tai Mao, originally came from Muang Mao via Muang Kwan (today's Maing Kwan) in the Hnkawng valley. Then, they advanced to the Nong Jang lake on the Patkai range. Siu-Ka-Pha declared the lake as his territory of which the eastern limits formed the boundary between the Nara county and his land. From the Nong Jang Patkai pass he moved towards the Ruk River along the bank of the Pong or Bong River. There, they built rafts and the whole party, including three hundred horses, descended to the Dihing River. From the confluence they rowed on the Dihing River southwest through the present Tirap Division and entered the Brahmaputra valley in a region called Tipam.
There he founded the first Tai state in eastern Assam in 1229. Because of seasonal flooding, Siu-Ka-Pha ventured southwards down the Brahmaputra valley for the next twenty years. All the various locations settled at for some years proved unsuitable for cultivation until he reached the area of Sibsagar Division. There, he built his first capital on a permanent basis in 1252" (Schliesinger 2001, p.39).
The Tai Ahom people were not Buddhists and maintained their own, Tai religious beliefs and cultures. While in India, they were confronted with various Hindu and Buddhist practices and in time, inevitably, began to adopt some of these. However, it appears that many of the original Tai practices and rituals continue in something like their original form even now, despite having been renamed according to Hindu usages (Buragohain, 1999). These include belief in the full range of gods and spirits, divination, sacrifices and rites and chanting. Hence, this is an example of Tai-icisation of Indian culture to balance the somewhat earlier Indianisation of Southeast Asia. It is also an example of Sinicisation of the region because the Tai Ahom, like all Tais, had for thousands of years been rubbing up against their Chinese neighbours and over the last few hundred years had been more or less willing members of the Nanchao kingdom, serving in its armies and occasionally being coerced into forming its labour force.
The copyright of the article The Tai Ahom Kingdom of Assam - Page 2 in East Asian History is owned by . Permission to republish The Tai Ahom Kingdom of Assam - Page 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
