History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c41.s1: §i. The Geography of the Assam Valley.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c41.s1
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§i. The Geography of the Assam Valley.
v3.c41.s1.1
At the extreme north-eastern corner of our country, through a cleft in the Himalayan range, the drainage of the Tibet plateau escapes into India. Arrested by the rocky wall of the Garo Khasia and Naga hills on the south, the mighty volume of water sweeps westwards, scoring out a deep and broad bed nearly four hundred miles long, from Sadiya to Dhubri, and then turns due south to mingle with the Ganges at Goalnanda. This river is the Brahmaputra, and its valley is the province of Assam. From East Bengal it is divided by the long succession of hills that begin at the s. w. corner of the province and end, in the extreme east, in the Patkoi range, the border-line between Assam and Burma.
v3.c41.s1.2
The copious rainfall on the eastern Himalayas, descending in torrents, has carved many a river which cut up the plains north of the Brahmaputra into a number of valleys, each bounded by rivers on three sides and by the mountain on the fourth. The successive advances of the Assam kingdom have been westwards and its shrinkings eastwards, from one of these feeder rivers to the next. These rivers, —the Bharali, the Bar Nadi, the Monas and the Sankosh,—have been the boundary between the kingdom of Assam and its rivals, Kuch Bihar or Mughal India, in different ages. The south Brahmaputra valley is similarly furrowed by innumerable streams, but these have in general a western or markedly north-western inclination.
v3.c41.s1.3
Closely surrounded in the north, east and south by rugged hills whose slopes are held by savage tribes, Assam is practically impervious to attack from these directions.∗ But it is not so well protected in the west, where it merges in the plains of North Bengal. From the Kuch Bihar side invasions have been easily conducted into the north Brahmaputra valley, and armies have also sometimes marched into Assam from Dacca by following the left bank of the Brahmaputra and turning the extreme western end of the Garo hills. But every hostile army operating in southern Assam must depend for its success, and even for its very life, on the support of a strong flotilla of war-boats. If it loses the command of the water highway, it is crushed between the river in the north and the savage-haunted hills in the south. Dacca is too far-off and the way to it is too circuitous for any reinforcement to be sent up from it by land in time.
v3.c41.s1.4
∗ The only exceptions are the conquests by the Ahoms and the Burmese; but these were rather migrations of kindred tribes.
v3.c41.s1.5
The river Sankosh now forms the boundary between Bengal and Assam. But the western districts of Assam, viz. Goalpara and Kamrup, enclosed by the Sankosh and the Bar Nadi, have been connected with Bengal almost throughout their entire history, often politically, always by culture.