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The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c14.s1.t8: Assam

The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c14.s1.t8

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Assam

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Unfortunately we know very little of Assam. Sunitkumar Chatterji¹ pointed out that the Brahmaputra was not included in the traditional holy rivers of India. Kamarupa does not occur in Sanskrit literature before the Christian era. Actually the earliest epigraphic mention seems to be that of Samudragupta in 330 A.D. in his Allahabad pillar inscription. It is very difficult to corroborate the claims made for the antiquity of higher cultures in Assam on the basis of the so-called mention in the *Mahabharata* of Pragjyotisha which according to Chatterji himself, is a later Sanskritization from an Austric word.

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¹ CHATTERJI, SUNITKUMAR. *Place of Assam in the history and Civilization of India*. Gauhati. 1955.

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The archaeological evidence points to a long survival of Stone Age or Neolithic communities. Coggin Brown² has pointed out the occurrence of a Burmese type of celt (the shouldered celt) in Assam. Recently exhaustive studies of Dr. A. H. Dani have shown even influences from Yunan, China. Hence we can expect a late penetration of higher cultures, probably in the Historic period.

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² BROWN, COGGIN J. *Catalogue of Pre-Historic antiquities in the Indian Museum*. Calcutta. 1917. p 130.

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