A History of Assam c11.23

c11.23

Comparison with traditions of other Shān tribes. The traditions of the Ahoms regarding the origin of their kings tally very closely in their main features with those preserved by the Shāns of Upper Burma, of which an account has been given by Ney Elias in his *History of the Shans*.* There are, as may be well understood, many differences in matters of detail, and especially in the names of the various rulers and of the places where they reigned. A more noteworthy point of divergence is that the Shān chronicles, while they contain no reference to Sukāphā's invasion of Assam, claim that Sāmlungphā, the brother of a king of Mungmau who ascended the throne in 1220 A.D., gained several notable victories in Upper Assam, where he defeated the Chutiyas, as well as in Arakan, Manipur and other countries. The two stories, however, are not necessarily incompatible, and it is quite possible that while Sukāphā was pushing his way across the Pātkāi, with a small body of colonists, rather than of military invaders, and establishing himself in the south-eastern corner of the Brahmaputra valley, the general of another Shān State may have entered the valley by a more easterly route and inflicted a series of defeats on the Chutiyas, whose kingdom was well to the north of the tract where the Ahoms made their first lodgment.