Travels in India (Tavernier) 140: Concerning the Kingdom of Assam

140

It was never properly known what the Kingdom of Assam was till after that great Captain Mir Jumla, to whom I have often referred in the history of the Moguls, had assured the Empire to Aurangzeb by the death of all his brothers and the imprisonment of his son. He concluded, that, the war being finished, he would be no longer esteemed at Court as highly as he had been when Commander-in-Chief of the armies of Aurangzeb, and all powerful in the Kingdom where he had a great number of supporters. In order, therefore, to retain for himself the command of the troops, he resolved to undertake the conquest of the Kingdom of Assam, where he knew he would not meet with much resistance, the country having had no war for 500 or 600 years, and the people being without experience in arms. It is believed that it is this same people who, in ancient times, first discovered gunpowder and guns, which passed from Assam to Pegu, and from Pegu to China; this is the reason why the discovery is generally ascribed to the Chinese. Mir Jumla brought back from this war numerous iron guns, and the gunpowder made in that country is excellent. Its grain is not long as in the Kingdom of Bhutan, but is round and small like ours, and is much more effective than the other powder.
Mir Jumla left Dacca then with a powerful army for the conquest of the Kingdom of Assam. At 5 leagues from Dacca one of the rivers which comes from the lake of Chiamay, which like other rivers of India takes different names according to the places it passes, joins an arm of the Ganges, and at the place where these two rivers meet there are forts on each side, both being armed with good pieces of bronze cannon, which shoot at a level with the water. This is where Mir Jumla embarked, his army ascending the river to the 29th or 30th degree, where the frontier of Assam is situated, and thence he led it by land through a country abounding with all the necessaries of life, and with but little means of defence, especially as the people were taken by surprise. As they are all idolaters, the army, which consisted wholly of Muhammadans, did not spare their pagodas, but destroyed them wherever they met with them, burning and sacking all, up to the 35th degree. Mir Jumla then heard that the King of Assam was in the field with a larger number of forces than had been expected; that he had many guns, and an abundance of fireworks, similar to our grenades or nearly so, which are fixed at the end of a stick of the length of a short pike, as I have elsewhere represented, and carry more than 500 paces. Mir Jumla, having received this intelligence, did not consider it prudent to advance farther, but the principal cause of his return was that the cold season had commenced, and in order to conquer all that country it would have been necessary to go as far as the 45th degree of latitude ; this would have involved the loss of his army. For the Indians are so susceptible to cold, and fear it so much, that it is impossible to make them pass the 30th, or at the most the 35th degree, except at the risk of their lives, and of all the servants whom I took from India to Persia, it was a great thing for them to come as far as Kasvin, and I never succeeded in taking any of them to Tabriz. As soon as they saw the mountains of Medea covered with snow I had to allow them to return home.
As Mir Jumla was unable to go farther north, he resolved to turn to the south-west, and laid siege to a town called Azoo, which he took in a short time, and found great riches there. Many are of opinion that his original design was merely to take this town and to pillage it, and afterwards return, as he in fact did.