Vernacular Historiography and North-East Literature: A Critical Reading of the Kachari Buranji

Abstract

This paper proposes to undertake an analysis of the Kachari Buranji (1936), a chronicle, collated from old Assamese manuscripts, documenting the Ahom–Kachari relations from the end of the fourteenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century. This buranji comes under the sub-genre called kataki buranjis (the others being Jayantia Buranji and Tripura Buranji), which have dealt with the political and other correspondences between the Ahoms and the adjoining kingdoms. Throughout the period of medieval history of Assam, the Ahom–Kachari relations went through the complex and alternating phases of friendship and animosity, which affected the territorial as well as demographic dynamics of precolonial “north-eastern” geography. Since the buranji was compiled in the early twentieth century by putting together relevant materials from a number of Assam Buranjis, the collated information throws light on the strategic importance of the Kacharis, both as a community and as a political entity, to the Ahom rulers and their expansionist ambitions. This study also endeavours to examine the Kachari Buranji as a vernacular historiographical enterprise undertaken by the Department of Historical & Antiquarian Studies, Government of Assam, during the 1930s, to compile a buranji specifically dedicated to a historically and culturally significant community of Assam.