The Ahom Political System: An Enquiry into the State Formation Process in Medieval Assam (1228-1714)

Guha, Amalendu

doi:10.2307/3516963

“…The nobility was responsible for acquiring the manpower, usually by absorbing and/or enslaving the diverse population, often through military ventures. These populations could be Zomians: Guha's (1983) account has been characterized by Nayanjot Lahiri (1984: 60) as 'the absorption of stateless shifting cultivators into [the padi Ahom] polity' (see also Saikia 2004: 155). Manpower could also be secured from other muang -usually militarily although without necessarily absorbing the muang themselves, as was typical of mandala states.…”

Section: The Mandala Statementioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of language contact in the Himalaya

Giri

¹

2020

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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Kong in 2016. She is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests lie in linguistic nationalism, linguistic identities, and language ideologies. Her current research explores how the ideology of 'authentic Tibetanness' -the idea that speaking Tibetan is taken as a claim to be an authentic Tibetan person -has been played out among Chone Tibetans in Kanlho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture by the Chinese state and by Tibetan ethno-nationalists. Her research also examines the ways in which Chone Tibetans engage, mediate, resist, and reject such ideology based on their own linguistic realities and experiences, in history and at present. Maya Daurio earned a Master of Science in Geography from the University of Montana, where her research focused on language maintenance and social-ecological resilience within an endangered language community in Nepal. She has worked for over eight years in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and is interested in anthropological, ecological, and humanitarian applications of GIS. Concurrent research interests include language endangerment and maintenance, traditional ecological knowledge, social-ecological resilience, indigeneity, and mountain geographies. Maya will be pursuing a doctorate in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.

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“…B. K. Gohain (1999: 101), referencing scholars such as Terweil, claims that the script of the Ahom kingdom was 'specific only to Ahom' and that it was 'derived from old Mon as it was written in the first centuries of the second millennium A.D.' -the Mon kingdom being one of the first vernacularizing mandala states among the Southeast Asian mandala states, as noted above. 4 Other scholars, such as Guha (1983), 3 In a personal conversation (29 October 2018, Dibrughar University, Assam) I had with Jahnabi Gogoi Nath, a historian of the Ahom kingdom (see, e.g., Gogoi Nath 2002), she expressed doubt whether the king whom Pollock references was Barahi. Given my argument that ethnonyms had little or no identitarian significance, or that kingdoms were not territorially defined and marked by a specific language before vernacularization, whether the royal patron of the first Assamese Ramayana was Barahi or not is less significant than that he was Hindu and probably a Tibeto-Burman speaker.…”

Section: The Ahom Kingdommentioning

confidence: 99%

1. Language Contact and the Politics of Recognition amongst Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China: The rTa’u-Speaking ‘Horpa’ of Khams

Lhundrop¹,

Suzuki²,

Roche

³

2019

The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya

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Bendi Tso completed a Master of Arts in Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2016. She is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests lie in linguistic nationalism, linguistic identities, and language ideologies. Her current research explores how the ideology of 'authentic Tibetanness'-the idea that speaking Tibetan is taken as a claim to be an authentic Tibetan person-has been played out among Chone Tibetans in Kanlho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture by the Chinese state and by Tibetan ethno-nationalists. Her research also examines the ways in which Chone Tibetans engage, mediate, resist, and reject such ideology based on their own linguistic realities and experiences, in history and at present. Maya Daurio earned a Master of Science in Geography from the University of Montana, where her research focused on language maintenance and social-ecological resilience within an endangered language community in Nepal. She has worked for over eight years in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and is interested in anthropological, ecological, and humanitarian applications of GIS. Concurrent research interests include language endangerment and maintenance, traditional ecological knowledge, social-ecological resilience, indigeneity, and mountain geographies. Maya will be pursuing a doctorate in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.

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“…B. K. Gohain (1999: 101), referencing scholars such as Terweil, claims that the script of the Ahom kingdom was 'specific only to Ahom' and that it was 'derived from old Mon as it was written in the first centuries of the second millennium A.D.' -the Mon kingdom being one of the first vernacularizing mandala states among the Southeast Asian mandala states, as noted above. 4 Other scholars, such as Guha (1983), 3 In a personal conversation (29 October 2018, Dibrughar University, Assam) I had with Jahnabi Gogoi Nath, a historian of the Ahom kingdom (see, e.g., Gogoi Nath 2002), she expressed doubt whether the king whom Pollock references was Barahi. Given my argument that ethnonyms had little or no identitarian significance, or that kingdoms were not territorially defined and marked by a specific language before vernacularization, whether the royal patron of the first Assamese Ramayana was Barahi or not is less significant than that he was Hindu and probably a Tibeto-Burman speaker.…”

Section: The Ahom Kingdommentioning

confidence: 99%

3. Transforming Language to Script: Constructing Linguistic Authority through Language Contact in Schools in Nepal

Pradhan

¹

2019

The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya

1

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This chapter examines the power dynamics – conceptualized as ‘linguistic authority’, using Bourdieu’s theoretical framework – of language contact in education in contemporary Nepal. Nepal’s new policy of Multi-Lingual Education (MLE) is generating new sites and types of language contact; the author describes the adoption of multilingual textbooks in a school in the southern Tarai region. Through the creation of standardized, written scripts of minority languages to use in the textbooks, the legitimate authority of the languages is asserted, leading to recognition from the state and shifts in power relations.

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The Ahom Political System: An Enquiry into the State Formation Process in Medieval Assam (1228-1714)

Cited by 34 publications

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The politics of language contact in the Himalaya

The politics of language contact in the Himalaya

1. Language Contact and the Politics of Recognition amongst Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China: The rTa’u-Speaking ‘Horpa’ of Khams

3. Transforming Language to Script: Constructing Linguistic Authority through Language Contact in Schools in Nepal

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