Land of the Eastern Light : Assam Before the Ahoms

Description

‘A history of Assam in antiquity that is a model of clarity and historical method.’ Shivshankar Menon

FOREWORD BY VIKRAM SAMPATH

‘A history of Assam in antiquity that is a model of clarity and historical method.’ Shivshankar Menon

‘Meticulously researched.’ Sanjeev Sanyal

Long before Sukaphaa, the Tai-Ahom king, crossed into the Brahmaputra valley in the thirteenth century, Assam had lived under different names: Pragjyotisha in epic memory, Kamarupa in historical record—around which had gathered a world of kings and gods, elephant armies and sacred rivers, fortified cities and ritual power.

In Land of the Eastern Light, Nabaarun Barooah tells the story of Assam from mythic antiquity to the eve of the Ahom age. We encounter, among others, Naraka, the legendary king of Pragjyotisha, whose fall transformed him into a demon; Bhagadatta, the ruler who rode his elephant into the epic war of the Mahabharata; Bhaskaravarman, who reshaped the politics of the Gangetic belt; and Prithu, who decimated the Turkic-Afghan general Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji. From the origins of Kamakhya and the rise of tantric power to the defence of Kamarupa against foreign invasion, this book journeys through one of the least remembered yet most arresting arcs of India’s ancient past.

Erudite, searching and vividly rendered, Land of the Eastern Light restores pre-Ahom Assam to scale, revealing a realm shaped by war, myth and political ambition well before the histories we more readily inherit.