A History of Assam c11.2

c11.2

IN the last two chapters an account has been given of the fortunes of various Bodo rulers, whose ancestors had been domiciled in Assam from time immemorial, and who had already lost much of their energy and martial qualities by long residence in a fertile and steamy plain. We have now to discuss the doings of a race of alien conquerors. Early in the thirteenth century a band of hardy hill men wandered into the eastern extremity of the Brahmaputra valley, led by chance rather than by any deep-seated design, and quite unconscious of the fact that their descendants were destined to bring the whole valley under their rule and to set a limit to the eastward extension of the empire of the Mughal conquerors of India. These were the progenitors of the Ahoms.* They were an offshoot of the great Tāi or Shān race, which spreads eastwards, from the border of Assam over nearly the whole of Further India, and far into the interior of China. The special section to which they belonged, or the Shāns proper, occupied the northern and eastern hill tracts of Upper Burma and Western Yunnan, where they formed a group of states for which, according to Ney Elias, there is no collective native name. The paramount kingdom, the home of the Mau branch of the tribe, was known to themselves as Mungmau, and as Pong to the Manipuris; and the latter term has been taken by some to denote the entire country or collection of states.