Medieval and early colonial Assam : society, polity, economy 9788170740766, 8170740762

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MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

Medieval and Early Colonial Assam Society, Polity, Economy

AMALENDU G UH A 4?

Published for Centre for Studies in Social Scienccs, Calcutta by K P BACCHI & COMPANY CALCUTTA

NEW DELHI

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First Published in 1991 K P Bagchi & Company 286 B. B. Ganguli Street, Calcutta 700012 1-1698 Chittanjnjan Park, New Delhi 110019 © Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta ISBN 81-7074-076-2

Type-Selling b y : The Bengal P. T. S. & Computer Centre 9A, Roy Bagan Street, Calcutta 700006

Printed b y : Printed b y : Angel Printers 437B, Rabindra Sarani, (Sovabazar) Calcutta — 5

Published b y : Susanta Ghosh Registrar, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta 10, Lake Terrace, Calcutta 700029

To Anima, Supratik and Monisha

CONTENTS FOREWORD INTRODUCTION U ST OF TABLES AND MAPS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

The Geography behind The History The Historiographical Perspective Land Rights and Social Classes The Tai Migration and its Impact on The Rice Economy From Tribalism to Feudalism: 1600-1750 Peasant Uprisings and The Feudal Crisis Colonialization : Years of Transitional Crisis Colonialization : The Second Phase 1840-59 A big Push without A Take-off The Impact of The Bengal Renaissance Agrarian Structures in The Late Nineteenth Century Imperialism of Opium

Bibliography Index

ix xiii xvii 1 29 39 61 82 98 139 159 186 206 219 280 297 307

FOREWORD History in the round, history that takes into account the solidity and the rigidity of the terra firma, yet recognizes the constant changes wrought by human endeavour on it and within the limits set by it, history that can describe the myriad aspects of human consciousness as expressed in literature, art and in social institutions such as the family, the kin group, the tribal formation, castes and states remains an ambitious yet unattainable goal for most historians or social scientists. The great exemplars of this genre, of course, remain the myriad volumes turned out by the Annales school of historians in France. Without any conscious attempt to imitate the methods of the Annales school, through a sense of deep engagement with the material and through a lifetime of scholarly endeavour, Professor Amalendu Guha has brought off a feat—a feat of writing the history of medieval and early colonial Assam in the round. For Indian social scientists this achievement not only sets a standard to emulate. The history of medieval and early colonial Assam has a fascination of its own. Assam was for many of us a land of mythic frontiers, not only the frontier of myths, but also of the intrepid European planters taming the jungles to produce the tea for the civilized world. For those of us who were more concerned with the fate of the human beings whom the European planters disposed of as so many animate tools, Assam was also the frontier where an alien civilization bred a new kind of slavery. Nearer our own time, the Assam movement and other political movements demanding new kinds of autonomy in the name of the people posed fresh challenges to our understanding and to our capacity to act as responsible citizens of an independent country. Professor Guha dispels much of the mythic opacity from the land and the people he has so lovingly and yet so dispassionately portrayed. We understand the difficulties of communication between the plains and the hills, between different stretches of the Brahmaputra, between the hilltops and the valleys, between hill people enjoying a kind of primitive affluence and plains immigrants winning land from the swamps foot by weary fopt But if he only stressed the difficulties.

[X]

Professor Guha would have given us an etiolated narrative at best. He goes on to show how communication and trade created symbiotic structures between hill and plains-people and between different groups of plains-people and hill-people. He also shows how changes took place in the patterns of living of different groups of people under the impact of perennial wet rice cultivation as against shifting (jhum) cultivation or under the impact of the coming of the iron plough to gradually displace the hoe as the main implement of cultivation. He shows how a structure of feudal relations was built up in the Tai-Ahom kingdom, and how, paradoxically enough, a process of Hinduization helped these conquerors from further east consolidate their power on a basis of hierarchical ideology. He stresses the specificities of the Vaishnavism that spread in Assam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and shows how the more radical sects of the. Vaishnavas inevitably came into conflict with the feudal state apparatus. He goes on to explore both the ideological and the more materialistic roots of the Moamaria revolt of the late eighteenth century. Peasant discontent found its idiom, if not its ideological moorings, in the neo-Vaishnavite movement of the Moamara (Mayamara) Satra. This conflict exhausted both the contending parties, and prepared the way for a brief Burman conquest followed by the British take-over. Professor Guha is as careful a guide to the history of the colonialization of Assamese economy and society as he had been of the precolonial period. His work on the plantation economy of Assam is, of course, by now a recognized classic. But he takes us outside the boundaries of the planter Raj, and shows the peasants of the Brahmaputra valley in their exploited and differentiated state. But he shows them also responding to new stimuli emanating from the international and the larger Indian economy. Professor Guha often talks of state formation and de-tribalization as processes operating in medieval Assam. But it is a proof of his sensitivity to the tenacious maintenance of identities of different groups Of people that we never lose sight of the Bodo-Kocharis, the Koch»Koches or the Tai-Ahoms even while they are being intermingled with one another in the melting pot of Assam. They enrich one another's culture, but the enrichment somehow requires that the distinctiveness of each people is recalled from time to time.

Cxi] We are now passing through periodic ethno-linguistic conflicts in different parts of the country—conflicts that sometime take a violent form. I would like to believe that in a democracy, if the different peoples with distinctive memories recognize one another's contribution to the rich tapestry that is Indian culture, then political solutions within a constitutional framework can be worked o u t Professor Guha has presented a historical portrait which is a microcosm of India. But we must recognize that for purposes of cultural synthesis, symbiosis and cffluence, Assam is rich enough to be a macrocosm in itself. I hope other people will read the book with as much wonder and as much pleasure as I have done. I consider it a privilege that I have worked with a scholar of Professor Guha's distinctive stamp for more than fifteen years in the same institution. 21 May 1990

Amiya Kumar Bagchi Director Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

INTRODUCTION Contributions included in this volume have been selected from a wide range of research papers I published over a span of twenty year? between 1965 and 1985. These were written to add certain new dimensions to the stereotyped interpretations of Assam's past, handed down to Us by historians of imperialist and nationalist schools. I have not undertaken now any large-scale revision of what I wrote earlier. Not much accretion to our received knowledge has occurred meanwhile to warrant such revision. It appears that, mine were among the earliest attempts at applying what D. D. Kosambi used to call 'the combined method of history' towards understanding Assam, a region grossly neglected in our national historiography. This is why I have ventured to bunch together some of those original texts in one place within easy reach of the new generation now taking increasing interest in that methodology. However, while making a coherent whole of the intermittently published disparate pieces, some marginal emendations could not be avoided. We have also shortened their original titles while arranging them serially around a central argument. Their full titles and first publication details have however been listed, among other entries, in our bibliography section. Since all non-English terms have repeatedly been explained in their appropriate places in the text, no glossary has been provided. Whether or not India's pre-colonial social formation was feudal in essence and whether or not colonialism helped promotion of its transition to a new formation have currently been the two major issues of debate. I have examined both in the light of the experience of just one region, Assam. Here under the 600-year old dynastic rule of the Ahoms, an offshoot of the Tai people of Southeast Asian origin, a

[xiv]

variant of feudalism emerged directly from tribal formations. The first six contributions in this volume highlight certain peculiar aspects of this feudalism which underwent a political and moral collapse even before the British appeared on the scene. An economic crisis culminating in peasant revolts hastened this collapse. The remaining six contributions examine what colonialization meant for the Assamese people in terms of economy and culture and why it lacked a regenerative role. Even its destructive role vis-a -vis the old institutions was limited and hailing, because of its compromises with feudal elements and its commitment to an enclave economy. Tea change’ was in no way a sea change for the better. The central perspective that runs through this collection is as follows. Essentially feudal though, the mode of production that thrived in medieval Assam sharply contrasted with comparable modes that coexisted elsewhere in India not only in scale but also in quality. The basis of this contrast was not so much in the realm of production relations, as in that of the productive forces. Therefore and for other reasons the transition from a pre-modem to modem society here was also of a different genre. Colonialism reduced the indigenes more or less to one dead level and built enclaves of capitalism where they hardly had any place. Neither E. A. Gait, nor S. K. Bhuyan, nor even H. K. Barpujari or Maheswar Neog—all historians of eminence— could aptly comprehend the process, because of the limitations of their conservative ideology and perspectives. They missed much of the dynamics of the medieval society and of the colonial domination that followed. A historical process is not determined by a mere series of accidents, nor is it determined by ideology or economic factors alone. Yet it is the predominant role of the material conditions of social life, and the class struggle within it, that underlies the dynamics of change. This is how I looked at the developments in Assam and, to my satisfaction, found new lines of enquiry opening up. Quite a number of younger scholars with a Marxist orientation and commitment to Northeast India as a subject of historical enquiry found keen interest in my writings and, in their turn, are already making significant

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contributions in the field. It is to their insistence that the present publication is primarily indebted. For more than sixteen years till recently, I had been on the academic staff of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta and before that for more than six years on that of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune. It is in these two institutes that my writings took their final shape and I am particularly grateful to the former for getting this collection published. I am also grateful to all those with whom I had the privilege to work together—I do not like to name only a chosen few—for every kind of help towards its preparation. Amalendu Guha ’Jamini Park' Ulubari, G. S. Road, Guwahati: 781007

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LIST OF TABLES Table No.

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 3.1 4.1 4.2 7.1

7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6

8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4

Page Population of the Hill Region : 8 Northeast India 1881 and 1891. Select Data on Extent of Cultivation 16 and Population Density 1853-75. Population of Major Castes and Tribes : 18 Brahmaputra Valley (1881). Distribution of Households by Caste : 26 Nowgong District 1850-51. Some Land Grants of 18th Century Assam. 54-55 Rice Economy of Assam : 1901-02. 72 Distribution of Indigenous Population 75*76 Groups in Assam Proper: 1901. Assam's Trade Statistics : 1808-09 150 (estimated at Goalpara opposite Hadira Chowki). Assam's Trade Statistics : 1832 to 1835 152 (recorded at Hadira Chowki). Revenue Receipts and Disbursements: 155 Assam Proper 1824-25 to 1837-38. Prices in Darrang District: 1833-1835. 156 Population of Assam Proper: 1826, 156 1853 and 1872. Wastelands Settlement Rules: Revenue 157 Rates of 1838 and 1854. The Assam Company's Statistics : 1840-59. 176 Total Area under Tea in Assam Proper: 1859. 178 Exports from Select Districts of Assam to 178 Bengal: 1852. Imports into Select Districts of Assam from 180 Bengal: 1852.

[ x v iii ]

8.5

8.6 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6

11.1

11.2 11.3 11.4

12.1

Total Cultivated Acreage in Assam Proper. Select Exports and Their Prices : Comparison Over Time. Tea Statistics of Assam Proper: 1875-76 to 1901. Average Price Index of Rice, Salt and T ea: 1861 to 1901. Average Monthly Wage of Agricultural and Plantation Labour. Density of Population Per Sq. Mile : Brahmaputra Valley 1872-1951. Index of cropped Acreage upto 1901 for Assam Proper. Percentage Area under Different Crops to Total Cropped Area in Assam Proper: 1882-83 to 1900-01. Area and Population of Assam Proper: 1872 to 1901. Tenure-wise Classification of Settled Acreage in Assam Proper 1897-98. Available Data on Ten Households Hiring Out Labour: 1888. Classification of Agricultural Population of Assam Proper: 1891. Opium Revenue and Consumption in Assam 1880-1921: Some Indices.

Sketch-maps 1. Physical and Ethnic Features : Northeast India. 2. The Homeland of the Ahoms.

181 181 200 201

201 202 202 203

220 237 250 255 292

3 75

ABBREVIATIONS [ Not many abbreviations have been used which need clarification. Those which need are given below. ] CUP DHAS GOI ICCR IESHR JARS JASB JBORS NAI PPH

The Cambridge University Press The Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, Government of Assam, Guwahati. The Government of India The Indian Council for Cultural Relations, New Delhi. The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Delhi. Journal of the Assam Research Society, Guwahati. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta. Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, Patna. The National Archives of India, Delhi. The People's Publishing House, New Delhi.

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1

The Geography behind the History I ntroduction *

Economic history essentially relates to the human factor which widely varies from people to people and from time to time. Yet an enquiry into the physical environment—location, rainfall, relief, soils, mineral resources, natural vegetation and all that—is not altogether a fruitless exercise for its purposes, since material culture is a product of man's action upon nature. Such an enquiry may at least enable us to arrive at some general statements about a country's past This is particularly so when relevant information from usual sources are either altogether missing or inadequate. Fringed on three sides and interesected in the middle by high mountain ranges, the northeast region of India was never entirely cut off from the currents of historical change that shaped the subcontinent In the valley of the Brahmaputra, the civilization flourishing in the Indo-Gangetic plains took root quite early. It was even enriched on occasions by direct or vicarious culture contacts with Chinese civilization. Pelliot has shown that from at least the 2nd century B.C., there was a regular trade route far several hundred years between eastern India and China through Upper Burma and Yunnan.1 The difficulties of a hilly and swampy terrain and the consequent relative isolation from the rest of the changing world could not stop culture contacts. The knowledge ofagriculturcand the smelting and working of iron and other metals had reached Assam long before the Gupta age. So numerous and extensive were the traces of former excavations for iron ores in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills that, early in the nineteenth century, such mining activity was believed to have continued for some twenty centuries.2 The Austric-speaking matrilineal

Northeast India indudes Arunachal, Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur and Tripura. However, in the present study the main focus is on the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam.

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MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

Khasis, originally representing a shouldered stone hoe culture, are believed to have entered northeast India from west China around 1000500 B.C.3 Their metallurgical knowledge appears, however, to be a later development. The fundamental change from stone age hunting and food gathering techniques to early iron age civilization in northeast India skipped the stage of copper and bronze. However, because of inhibiting geographic and ethnic factors, the spread of the iron-tipped plough in northeast India was somewhat halting, limited and uneven. Till this day it is fire-farming (jhum) and associated hoe cultivation that dominates the hill area. In the plains too, various forms of land-intensive shifting cultivation still stubbornly persist here and there, even after substitution of the hoe by the plough many centuries back. This phenomenon cannot be adequately explained without reference to the relevant geophysical factors and ethnology. References to the Kingdom of Kamarupa in our epics and puranas, rock inscriptions going as far back as the fifth century, subsequent epigraphic and archaeological ruins found in the region, and above all, the predominance of Sanskrit-based languages in the plains—all clearly testify to an early beginning there of the process of Sanskritization. Suniti Kumar Chatterjee argues that the 'Aryanization' of the ruling classes in the western part of the Assam area, that is Kamarupa, was completed as early as circa A. D. 400. According to him, the Brahmaputra valley definitely appears to have become a part of Aryan­ speaking India by A.D. 12004. But this view has to be accepted with some reservation. For, even thereafter many tribes of the valley continued to maintain their own speech, as well as their peculiar modes of cultivation, housing, funeral rites and religious beliefs. On the other hand, the Aryan way of life itself was permeated—as Yoginitantram (II, 9, 13), a presumably seventeenth century work, points out—with non-Aryan ways of the Kirata (Bodo-Kachari) people. The census data of 1872 and 1881 reveal that the region's hill population in toto remained non-Hindu and preliterate, while some one-half or so of its indigenous valley people could be designated as pure or recently Hinduized tribes. Hence, one may presume that the bulk of the medieval population of northeast India escaped Sanskritization despite their Hinduized ruling families. The greater part of this region remained independent of, though not detached from the successive Indian empires of the past This political isolation that w as progressively abridged only after 1826 is yet another influencing factor in the region's economic history.

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THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND THE HISTORY

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In the following sections, an attempt will be made to gauge the impact of both geographic and ethnic factors on the region's medieval material culture with reference to Assam, particularly the Brahmaputra valley. T h e E c o n o m y o f t h e H il l R e g io n

The Himalayan and the Meghalayan Ranges (in all 90,000 square miles) surrounding the Brahmaputra basin on its three sides, are peopled by various tribes speaking Tibeto-Burman languages. The only exception to this are the matrilineal Khasi-Jaintia people who speak an Austric language. None of these languages had a written form until the coming of the Christian missionaries in the field. The people of western Kameng in Arunachal however, had some two centuries ago adopted Tibetan as their written language. The rice economy of the hill region, supplemented by food gathering, hunting and fishing, was never self-sufficienL But the hills produced among other things cotton, long pepper, vegetables and in some areas oranges (sumathira). These, as well as rock salt, iron and wild forest products were from times immemorial bartered for the surplus rice, dried fish, silk and cotton piece-goods of the plains. Hill people used to come down to the plains every winter for their barter trade or marauding raids. Some of them even settled down on the banks of the hill streams in the foothills plains for an easier living. They thus served as a link in the channel of communications between the plains and the hills. This plains-hills continuum, through successive waves of migration from the hills to the plains, retarded the tempo of Sanskritization in the Brahmaputra Valley, despite its very early start Jhuming as a form of cultivation dominates the hill economy. Under this form, selected forest plots on hill slopes are cleared by slashing down and burning the jungles. These plots are cultivated continuously for some three years or so and then left fallow for several years. Cultivation involves hardly any tilling. Seeds are simply sown broadcast on the ashes, or are dibbled into holes with a digging stick or a hoe—the practice varying from place to place and from tribe to tribe. The sowing may be done for mixed crops on the same plot or far crops grown separately on different plots. The practice again varies according to the local custom. Jhuming is thus multiform. It involves the full and continuous utilization of a plot of land to the point of exhaustion. The shifting cultivator has an understanding of his environment He knows what crops grow best on what soils. He knows how many successive crops he can raise from a given plot and how many years of

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MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

rest it requires thereafter. His indices of restored fertility are the vegetational phases that follow the cultivation. The jhum system requires in the long run ten to fifteen times more land to maintain a family than what is required for wet cultivation on permanent fields. But over a year, even half-an-acre of virgin land under mixed crops might suffice for a nuclear family of five, allowing for the exchange of the surplus cotton for rice and taking into consideration the free jungle products.5 Shifting cultivation should be taken more as a concession to conditions of land abundance and the character of the soils than as a 'device of barbarism'. Moreover, animal-drawn ploughs are unsuitable for hilly tracts. In western Kameng as in Bhutan, the plough was introduced early under the Tibetan influence even on high altitudes. The plough used in Bhutan in the nineteenth century was found superior to that commonly used in Assam and Bengal. The plough in use is not unlike the Bengalee plough', wrote Ashley Eden, Tjut the pole connecting the plough and the yoke, instead of being straight, is curved; an angle is thus procured which sends the share a good depth into the ground.6 But the primitive all-wood plough used by the Buddhist Sherdukpen tribe of western Kameng is very light and fit only for the soft soil. The plough is not unknown to the other Monpa tribes of western Kameng. But the Apatanis who carry on transplanted wet paddy cultivation on permanent fields of the Rupa Valley in Arunachal on the other hand, do so only with hoes and not the plough. In Meghalaya plough cultivation was first noticed by the British around 1834 only in certain parts like the Jaintia Hills, where bulls and not bullocks were yoked for this purpose.7 Barring these few exceptions, the absence of plough has been a general feature of the hill economy as such. Nevertheless, permanent terrace cultivation, i.e., the cultivation of narrow, built-up land-strips on hill slopes co-existed with jhuming amongst advanced tribes. In this form of cultivation, the land strips are rimmed with mud and stones so that the rainwater or water led into them from neighbouring streams can be retained. Hoeing is carefully done and the terraced fields tend to be permanent hereditary property of the individuals. The terrace cultivation is widely practised by the Apatanis as well as the Monpas of Arunachal, the Maos and the Tangkhuls of Manipur, the Angamis of Nagaland and, in recent times, by the Khasis. Of all the hill tribes it is the Khasis whose agriculture has been traditionally the most diversified. Jhuming apart, they also divide up the bottoms of the valleys into little compartments by means of fairly

THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND THE HISTORY

5

high banks. Water is let in at will by means of irrigation channels, sometimes a mile or more in length. P.R.T. Gurdon who held the Khasi method of manuring to be 'much in advance of any system of natural manuring to be seen elsewhere in the Province' described their system of wet rice cultivation as follows :* The soil is made up into a thick paste in the Jaintia Hills by means of the plough and in the Khasi Hills through the agency of the hoe. Droves of cattle also are driven repeatedly over the paddy Helds until the mud has acquired the right consistency. The seed is then sown broadcast in the wet mud. It is not sown first in a seedling pad and then transplanted, as in Assam and Bengal.

Side by side with agriculture, the Khasis are traditionally used also to horticulture and bee-keeping. Production of grains has always been deficient in the hill region. Hence, the diet had to be supplemented with all kinds of cultivated and wild edible roots and greens as well as by hunting and fishing. No kind of vegetable oil or refined or semi-refined sweetening material was generally in use amongst the hill tribes until recent times. Their abhorrence to milk and milk products—except in certain pockets of Tibetan influence in Arunachal—persists till this day. However, the breeding of livestock as a source of meat supply and for ritual purposes, has been important in the hills. Pig-rearing and poultrykeeping are common to all tribes. Mithan (bos frontalis) as a semi­ domestic animal is present in almost all the hills; but oxen are found only in areas that have close connections with the valley. The simplicity of tribal society hindered specialization of economic activities. Some tribes, rather some villages within such tribes, were indeed specialized in crafts like weaving, pottery and basketry and in trading. The technology was much more backward than what prevailed in the valleys. For example, the potter's wheel, four-footed handloom, the oil press, the sugar mill and the foot-operated rice-pounder (Dhenki) were not known in the hills. Hillmen made little or no use of pack animals. They used to carry eveything, even the goods for barter, on their backs. Baskets, slung over the back and suspended by a stout strap across the brow, were used for carrying goods. Only in Bhutan and western Kameng, the use of yaks and ponies as beasts of burden was as common as the human transportation. Water mills were used in western Kameng, as in Bhutan, for the grinding of wheat which was rare in other regioris. Wooden block presses for printing religious books in their monasteries had been in use since at least the seventeenth century. But these had no impact on the people of the neighbouring hills and the plains of Assam. The only other tribe using

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MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

water mills were the Khamtis, who migrated from Upper Burma into Assam in the late eighteenth century. Extensive forest and wasteland resources made life easy in the hills in many respects. Timber, bamboo, reeds, thatching grass and canes were free forest products. These were used in the construction of houses or in making tools, weapons, canoes, traps, stamping blocks and pounding poles, snares, mats, baskets, and ropes. There was very little use of iron except for making weapons. Nevertheless mining and even the smelting of ores were carried on by some tribes. The greater part of the iron production in Khasi-Jaintia Hills was marketed in the plains. The despatch of iron lumps, hoes, arrowheads and even ploughshares from pre-British Khasi and Jaintia Hills for sale in the plains was estimated at anything between 20,000 and 50,000 maunds annually. Even so, the Khasis did not manufacture or use nails because of a taboo.9 The resistance of the tribal society to economic changes need not however be exaggerated. Wasteful methods of cultivation persist for lack of other simple alternatives within the reach of their under­ standing and economic means. The successful introduction and rapid spread of potato as a new crop in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills during the years 1830-40 and later in other hills may be cited as an example of their capacity to welcome a change. The fact that they had already been cultivating a similar but inferior kind of tuber explains this success. Maize, pineapple and chilly—these too contributions of the New World—were already firmly established crops in the hill region before the British arrived. The horticulture of the Khasis had also attained a high degree of specialization by then. In 1828 their gardens were credited with supplying "almost the whole of Bengal" wih oranges10, besides a quantity of pan (betel leaf) and tezpat (bay leaf). Most of the hill tribes had no historical experience of state formation as distinguished from their primitive tribal organization. The Tibetan administration had penetrated into certain pockets of Arunachal in the late medieval period. Amongst others, only the Khasis appear to have moved towards organized statehood, several centuries before the arrival of the British on the scene. The petty Khasi village republics of the Jaintia Hills managed a loose merger in the form of a kingdom with its authority pushed even over some non-tribal areas of the plains. The history of this kingdom of Jaintia where the ruling family adopted Hinduism, can be traced as far back as the fifteenth century. It

THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND Tfe*tfiSTORY

7

continued its existence till 1835. The Bodo-Kachari tribal state, on the other hand, had as its territory not only the North Cachar Hills, but also portions of the Assam plains—the narrow valleys of the Kopili, the Jamuna and the Dhansiri rivers. It partially retained these tracts to the last, despite repeated onslaughts from the neighbouring Tai-Ahom Kingdom (1228-1826) of the Brahmaputra Valley. Many border tribes of Arunachal and Nagaland were within the Tai-Ahom sphere of influence, but they maintained their autonomous existence throughout. The heartland of Arunachal however, was a sort of stateless no-man’s land between Assam and Tibet. Independent tribes there had relations with both. Even in medieval times, the difficult hill region was never closed to trade. There is evidence of the use of regular caravan routes through Bhutan and Arunachal by pilgrims and traders of Tibet and India, from the thirteenth century onwards. Similarly, some trade routes between the Brahmaputra Valley and Yunnan in China passed through the hill region. Because of difficult navigation on the Brahmaputra (to be explained below), the 130-mile land route passing through the Jaintia Hills from the ancient mart of Sylhet (now in Bangladesh) to Raha in the Assam plains, was also important during the medieval times. Jaintiapur (now in Bangladesh), the foothills capital of the State of Jaintia, served as a great entrepot for barter trade in cotton, iron, wax, ivory, betel leaves and cloth for salt, tobacco, rice and goats from Bengal in the early nineteenth century.11 Hence trading had already become an important economic activity for the Khasis, even in preBritish times.12 As early as the eighteenth century the cotton of the Garo Hills found its way to Bengal on a considerable scale, through a chain of foothills markets and fairs. Garo traders used to procure Bengal salt and sell it in the foothills markets of the Brahmaputra Valley. With the mode of cultivation described above, the hill economy could hardly have supported any sizable population. Even amongst the most advanced tribes, the density of population could not presumably have been more than 20 or so per square mile. Realistic conjectures can be made on the basis of the earliest available census figures which predate any appreciable demographic impact of the British rule in the region and are shown in Table I ’1.

8

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM TABLE 1.1

Population o f thè Hill Region : Northeast India : 1881 and 1891 District

1881

Assam!Meghalaya Khasi-Jaintia Hills Garo Hills North Cachar and Mikir Hills Other Areas: Aninachal Manipur Tripura Naga Hüls Lushai Hills(Mizoram)

167,804 109,548

1891

Density per sq. mile (1881)

197,904 121,570

28 35 12 ?

*24,433 77,765

noi. 221,070* 95,635* 96,480 nui.

n.a. tu l

137,442 97,556 43,634

(Less than 10) 67 23 31 (Less than 11)

SOURCElRelevant Census Reports [ 104 ] * In Manipur, three-fifth of its population lived in the 700 square-mile central valley. The actual hill people numbered only 85,288. In Tripura, the hill tribes (approx. 50,000) constituted slightly more than 52 percent of the population. The majority of the remaining 48 per cent were of migrant origin, and were living in the plains.

In 1881 the density of population per square mile in the Khasi Jaintia Hills and the North Cachar Hills was twentyeight and twelve, respectively. The average density for the entire hill tract, covered by the 1881 census, was nineteen per square mile. Aninachal was brought under census operation for the first time in 1961. The density of population there was hardly ten per square mile in that year. Assuming a static density of 10 persons per square mile for the medieval times, the hill region of northeast India might have supported at the most a population of 0.9 million. The actual population apparently was even less. T he E conomy

of the

P lains : T hree B ells

The Brahmaputra Valley (22,000 square miles) is an alluvial plain, about four hundred and fifty miles in length from east to west and with an average breadth of about fifty miles from north to south. The valley

THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND THE HISTORY

9

is shut in on every side except on the w est However, a number of narrow passes across die hills have facilitated trade and migration from times immemorial. For example, Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, a 13th-century historical work in Persian, was aware of India's trade with Tibet passing through as many as thirtyfive such passes lying between Tibet and Kamarupa.13 The 311-mile trade route from Udalguri in Assam plains to Lhasa via Tawang remained important throughout the nineteenth century. The valley is criss-crossed with a large number of tributaries of the Brahmaputra. The greater of the northern streams are snow-fed. Those from the south—except the Dihing—depend exclusively on the annual rains for their volume. They shrink and some even dry up during the winter. These tributaries, therefore, offer navigation facilites only on a limited scale. Many of them, and the upper courses of all of them are generally not navigable except for dug-out canoes in the dry season. On the other hand, the navigation of the Brahmaputra too in the rainy season, though favoured with westerly winds, is extremely hazardous, uncertain and dangerous for boats other than canoes. This is because of crashing banks, floating trees and difficult tracking along the junglecovered banks. This explains the preponderance of dug-outs on Assam waters as noted by several seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth century sources. Such dug-outs are generally capable of carrying one to two hundred maunds of goods or more. An exceptionally large-sized one (holong) could even carry up to eight hundred maunds. A moderate-sized boat used to take, on an average, four to six weeks to come from Dhaka to Guwahati. The 450-mile distance between Goalpara and Sadiya, the two ends of the Brahmaputra Valley, could be made, according to Butler in thirtyfour days by a budgerow of Bengal. 'At present the ordinary time taken by a country boat of 1,000 maunds' burden from Calcutta to Dibrugarh' wrote Major Vetch in 1853 'is as great as that of a voyage round the Cape to London by a sailing vessel.14' These circumstances should not be lost sight of in estimating the extent of the river-bome trade in medieval Assam. The total length of Assam's navigable rivers, given by Imperial Gazetteer (1885) as 3,711 miles for an area of some 24,000 square miles, has to be interpreted in the above context The Chapari belt Topographically, the entire Brahmaputra valley may be broadly divided lengthwise into three belts. In the middle lie the sandy alluvial banks of the Brahmaputra and the shoals and islands therein. This riverine belt known as the chapari area is heavily flooded during the

10

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

rains. Here, cultivaion involves annual slash-and-bum of the grass and reed jungles before the commencement of ploughing. Crops raised on such lands are highly uncertain because of frequent untimely floods. Traditionally, chapari lands used to be put under two major crops, early-maturing rice (ahu) and mustard, sometimes with the advantage of double cropping. There are on the Brahmaputra only a few naturally-protected locations like the townships of Goalpara, Guwahati, Tezpur, Silghat and Biswanath, where there are some scattered hills right on the bank itself. Everywhere else the Brahmaputra flows between soft sandy banks and overflows the country for several miles during the rains. So the sandy belt is subject to constant change for a breadth of some six miles or so on either side of the river. At places in the former district of Goalpara, it may extend even up to twenty miles from bank to bank. The nature of its frequently shifting channel can be gauged from certain recorded observations. Before 1790 the Brahmaputra used to flow down a channel—now unimportant—north of the Majuli island. At that time, the Dihing used to pass through the former's present channel. Comparing a map of 1790 with one of about 1860, Colonel Shakespeare further came to the tentative conclusion that the Brahmaputra's course below Guwahati had shifted about fifty miles southwards within this period.15 It is also probable that the Brahmaputra and the Lohit rivers were in the remote past flowing much closer to the Abor and Mishmi Hills than today. The preponderance of chapari lands in the Barpeta district of today appears to corroborate Shakespeare's contention. The parganah of Barpeta was so low that the village sites there, observed E.T. Dalton, were artificially raised 'and in the rains the whole country presents the appearance of a vast lake!16 Presumably the valley was not free from such ravages of the Brahmaputra in medieval times. The spread of civilization in the valley was subject to the constant pressure of these ravages. It is because of this changeful course of the river that the chapari belt remained long under shifting cultivation. Till the beginning of our century it was devoid of habitation, barring isolated pam bastis or temporary settlements of seasonal migrants who used to grow mustard, pulses and ahu rice. Apparently, medieval villages and towns were not founded close to the Brahmaputra except at the few naturally-protected sites, as mentioned above. The early nineteenth century administrative reports of British Assam note that for a distance of about two hundred miles below Sadiya, there was not a single river-side town or important village on the Brahmaputra.

THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND THE HISTORY

11

The Rupit belt Away from the sandy belt, the alluvium is more consolidated and mostly consists of clay. This is the rupit belt which stretches on either side of the chapari belt and it includes the most fertile strips of the valley. It is there that the low, flat fields of late-maturing transplanted paddy, interspersed with slightly elevated permanent village and garden sites as well as occasional mounds, are concentrated. The word rupit actually means 'transplanted'. The rainy season floods all these rice fields to the depth of a few inches every year. Besides abundant direct rainfall (75 to 150 inches), they also receive the annual spill-over of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries. However, the former's fertilizing influence should not be exaggerated. What is deposited is mostly sand, while the rich silt is carried off to the plains of Bangladesh. It is not so with the tributaries which are often tapped for gravitational irrigation. The whole rice plain turns into a luxuriant greenery that begins to dry up after September, and the ground is already hard by late December. It was in the rupit belt that the plough-using people had, in aU probability, their earliest permanent settlements. These low-lying flat lands were thickly forested under natural conditions. But the settlers had an abundant supply of iron implements and iron-tipped heavy ploughs to uproot the jungles. However, the clayey soil and a rainfall of 75 to 150 inches combined to foster thick unmixed forests of Sal, Nahar, Holong and other gregarious trees in many pockets, so that the task proved difficult even for them. Many such tracts in Goalpara, Lakhimpur and Cachar were obviously bypassed. People with inferior implements preferred as their habitat either the chapari belt (as did the Miri tribe which began to come down to the plains in the 13th-15th centuries) or the submontane belt (as in the case of the Bodo-Kachari tribes). In both cases, the scrubby and bushy grass jungles suited their slash and bum farming methods. The Submontane belt (Dooars) The submontane belt skirts around the heart of the valley all along the foothills. This belt of undulating and, at places, slightly elevated plains is under scrubby forests and high grass savannahs. In most places the belt receives a heavy annual rainfall of some 80 to 120 inches. The only exceptions to this are the contiguous narrow valleys of the Kopili, the Jamuna and the Dhansiri. In these parts the rainfall is roughly in the range of 45 to 60 inches. Numerous hill streams with their shallow and shifting channels make artificial irrigation an easy

12

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

proposition. Bodo-Kachari tribes made use of this opportunity in the past, as they still do. Weeding is as much difficult in the submontane as on chapari lands. Weeds grow so fast and require so much effort for their suppression that it is more economic to burn and plant fresh virgin plots than continue' cultivation on the same old plots. Thus, here too, a system of shifting cultivation with or without plough prevailed till recently. Undulating or sloping plains allow easy running off of water. So, the cultivation of transplanted wet rice here is somewhat limited, and the dry crops tend to predominate. Dry lands however can be levelled and turned into wet rice lands. It is this belt and the adjacent low hills which for centuries remained the habitat of the migratory Bodo-Kachari and allied people of the Tibeto-Burman linguistic group. Their methods of shifting hoe cultivation survived as late as the nineteenth century, as we know from Buchanan-Hamilton (1807-14), Fisher (1833), Hodgson (1847) and Dalton (1872).17 However, in low-lying lands, as a result of closer contacts with the setded population, they had adopted both the plough and wet rice (sali) quite early. But even there they had little attachment to their villages as they lacked in orchard cultivation. Jenkins (1851) praised them as efficient cultivators, but at the same time noted their unsettled habits.18 It is not possible to say when exactly the transition to plough cultivation began amongst them. There is an oblique reference in an old Assamese chronicle to the damming of a hill-stream of Upper Assam by a cattle-owning Bodo-Kachari tribe of the thirteenth century.19 This might suggest artificial irrigation as early as that date, but does not positively confirm plough cultivation as such. Domestic cattle were probably used only as a source of meat and not for drawing the plough. An analogous example may be given from recent times. The Meches, a Bodo-Kachari tribe of Jalpaiguri district bordering Assam, 'go in for artificial irrigation in a surprisng manner, and I have noticed their water channels more than a mile long', wrote Colonel Money, the Deputy Commissioner in 1875. But at the same time, he pointed o u t: The Mechei find the proximity of permanent cultivation not to be congenial to their own habiu.......I have of late observed that Mechei are using plough« much more freely than they used to do, and also that in many places they employ Rajbansii to plough for them.20

In 1875, then, the Meches were going through a process of learning the use of the plough from their more advanced neighbours, the

THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND THE HISTORY

13

Rajbansis. This happened despite their being experts in artificial irrigation. People of the rupit belt had also interests in the two other belts of apparently waste lands lying within their reach. They collected all sorts of materials for making their houses, boats, implements, mats and baskets, from these tracts. At selected spots on these tracts, often several miles away from their settled villages, peasants would erect their temporary clusters of huts known as pam basti, to carry on shifting cultivation of mustard, pulses and ahu rice. This type of cultivation was more prevalent in the old district of'Kamrup than elsewhere. The pressure of population on the rupit belt of north Kamrup led peasants of all categories to resort to this practice, irrespective of their tribe and caste. Butler has described how this form of agriculture in the former Barpeta Subdivision in 1847 differed very little from what is known asjh u m in g except for the use of the plough.21 During the early years of British administration, individual holdings for shifting cultivation on the common wastelands could not be settled otherwise than on annual leases despite the authorities' bias for permanent or periodic rights in soil. Today one misses the scene of burning grass jungles as described by Butler. For the settled areas in the chapari belt of the same subdivision of Barpeta underwent a 700 percent increase during the years 1911-30 as a result of largescale immigration from East Bengal.22 Side by side there also existed intensive cultivation of wet paddy and manured garden crops in Assam even prior to the thirteenth century. The mass of agricultural knowledge codified into the 'Sayings of Dak' is a common oral tradition shared between Lower Assam and Bengal and certainly pre-dates the Tai-Ahoms.23 In the diet of the valley people rice played a more important role than in the hills. Wheat was rare. A wide variety of edible greens as well as milk, fish, and meat when available, supplemented the rice diet. Apart from expensive rock salt and Bengal salt, an alkali substitute was also universally prepared from the ash of burnt waterherbs and barks of plaintain trees. Vegetable oil of any kind, hardly used by the hill tribals, was used in scant quantities in the plains. Bullock-drawn oil presses and oilmen’s castes were rare. Oil from mustard seeds used to be extracted in every house with the help of a short stone-loaded beam. Cultivation of sugarcane and manufacture of gur, though widespread, was more concentrated in the then districts of Kamrup, Sibsagar and Lakhimpur. At the beginning of this century the two districts of Sibsagar and Lakhimpur were, between them, growing

14

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

sixtytwo per cent of the total sugarcane production of the Brahmaputra valley.24 T h e E c o n o m y o f t h e P l a in s : A S ec o n d L o o k

From another angle, the Brahmaputra valley may be divided into two sub-regions—Upper Assam and Lower Assam.25 Historically, these two sub-regions had undergone dissimilar conditions. The western part of Lower Assam was never under the political control of the Tai-Ahoms. It constituted a part of the Mughal territory since the seventeenth century and after 1765, of British India. The remaining parts of Lower Assam were under the direct or indirect rule of the Mughals for several decades in the seventeenth century. It was in Lower Assam and north Bengal that the Koch (Rajbansi) tribe, too obviously of Bodo-Kachari origin, established their rule at the start of the sixteenth century. The Koch power was at its height when in 1562 the Tai-Ahom capital at Garhgaon was sacked by its army. Thereafter the Koch Kingdom was gradually encroached upon from the west by the Mughals and from the east by the Tai-Ahoms. As common heirs to the ancient Kamarupa, north Bengal as well as Assam shared not only a common history, but also a nearly common script and language through the medieval times. Lower Assam merges into the flora of the Upper Gangetic plains while Upper Assam is dominated by Southeast Asian flora. The differences in the natural vegetation as well as in the ethnic composition of these two sub-regions have become somewhat blurred through centuries of intermingling. They were presumably more pronounced in the past than they are today. Households in Upper Assam chiefly produce sali rice, but also such crops as sugarcane, pulse, oilseeds as well as ahu rice. Tea jungles used to grow there in wild state before 1840. Pre-monsoon rainfall of ten to fifteen inches and monsoon rainfall of fifty to seventy inches are ideal for rice; hence it is abundantly grown all over Assam, as also in Tripura and Manipur. In Lower Assam, both wet and dry rice, mustard, sugarcane and pulses grow. Potato and tea were introduced during the early British period. Jute, which is now important as a commercial crop, was, like indigenous rhea (urtica nivea linn.), a marginal garden produce in preBritish days. Poppy cultivation, unknown earlier, attained its ruinous importance only during the years 1770-1860. Its cultivation was

THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND THE HISTORY

15

prohibited thereafter. The early arrival of tobacco in Assam—the Portuguese brought it to India in 1508—is to be noted. A local chronicle of the seventeenth century mentions a Bengal merchant dealing in tobacco leaves (dhuapat) near Singri in central Assam in violation of the ban on the entry of foreign traders into the Tai-Ahom territory. His boats were confiscated and the tobacco leaves—but not the mustard seeds and pulses purchased—were forwarded to the capital for royal perusal. This decision to send only the tobacco leaves to the exclusion of the other confiscated goods, suggests its being a curio in Upper Assam in early seventeenth century.26 Both Welsh (1794) and Robinson (1841) later mentioned the existence of tobacco cultivation all over Assam.27 Throughout the medieval times areca nuts, pepper and cotton were important items of cultivation. Cultivation of indigo on a limited scale is traceable from the eighteenth century. Fishing communities cultivated rhea (rihalkankhura) as source of fibre for making their fishing nets and ropes. The Barak Valley The Barak valley, approximately 3000 square miles, comprises alluvial level stretches except where broken up by isolated hillocks and low ranges of hills which project from the surrounding mountains. The chief river is the Barak which is from 100 to 200 yards in width and, in places, over seventy feet deep. It is liable to overflow its banks during the monsoons, but does not shift its course. Consequently there are no chapari lands in these plains. The annual rainfall averages 130 inches or so, and is liable to create floods from June to October. Despite some differences in land formation and climate, these plains closely follow the broad pattern of the Upper Brahmaputra valley. The whole area remained thickly forested until it attracted considerable migration from Assam and Sylhet plains during the eighteenth century. Ivory, wax, cane, bamboo and timber were the exports from this area to Bengal.28 In fact vast tracts of land must have remained waste in the Brahmaputra valley throughout the medieval times. The 13th century Tai-Ahom conqueror is reported to have noted that "the country around Dihing was uncultivated and wild.29 Shihabuddin Talish, the author of Fathiya-i-ibriya (1663), also observed that there was a greater tract of uncultivated lands on the south of the Brahmaputra than on its north.30 Obviously, by north he meant the present districts of Barpeta and Nalbari and adjoining areas through which the Mughal army had

16

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

passed. In fact, the trans-Dihing forests continued in existence down to the early years of the British rule. But at that time, Assam's population was at its lowest level (less than a million) and forests and wastelands in every district outstripped cultivation. Some relevant available data consisting of an estimated percentage of the total area under cultivation in 1874-75, the density of population per square mile in 1872 and the estimated numb«' of persons maintained per square mile of cultivation, as of 1853, for each district, are given in Table 12. However, in the mid-17th century, the agriculture of Assam appeared to be in a far more flourishing condition with a considerably smaller area being occupied by forests and wastelands. TABLE 1.2

Select Data on Extent o f Cultivation and Population Density District

Percentage of

Density per

No.of persons

area wider

sq. mile of

per sq. mile of

cultivation

total area

cultivated area

(1874-75)

(1872)

(1853)

Goalptra

500

98

209

Cachar

200

99

nil.

Kamiup

19*9

146

690

Sibsagar

17*5

102

623

Nowgong

103

79

874

Darrang

9*5

69

535

Lakhimpur

4*2

29

637

SOURCElAdministrative Report, Assam, 1874-75 [39]; Census of India, Assam Report, 1901, [104], p. 10; "Statistics of Assam-July 1853" in Butler, Travels and Adventures [133], p. 268. Note :

These early data related to cultivation are not beyond doubt. The abovementioned old districts were reorganized recently. Now they number almost two dozen.

Nevertheless, large-scale fluctuations from time to time in the amount of cultivated area within a district must have been a general

THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND THE HISTORY

17

feature also in the past, because of frequent ravages of rivers, warfare and consequent population movements. What could be the population of Assam proper at the height of its prosperity during the first half of the eighteenth century ? One can only conjecture. Gunabhiram Barua's estimate of 2.4 million before 1769 appears to be plausible.31 The population came down to less than one million by 1830 because of the civil wars (1769-1806) and the Burmese invasion of 1817-24 and also because of the ruinous effects of opium on the people. It was restored to its former size only by the eighteen seventies, partly through natural growth and partly through immigration.

C o m p o s it io n o f t h e P o p u l a t io n : T h e B r a h m a pu t r a V a lley

The traditional pattern of population distribution was considerably affected by large-scale immigration since 1901. On the other hand, the first census of 1872 was imperfect and incomplete in many respects. Hence an attempt will be made to comprehend the ethnic and caste composition of the medieval population on the basis of the census data of 1881. The Brahmaputra valley had a population of 2,249,185 persons in 1881. Of this, an estimated 3 lakhs w oe of recent immigrant origin or immigrants themselves. The rest were indigenous. Muslims (208,431) constituted 9*3 per cent of the whole valley population, but as much as a quarter of the population in the then Goalpara district. The population strength of important plains tribes and Hindu castes are given in Table 1.3. A scrutiny of the Table suggests that almost onehalf of the indigenous valley population was composed of non-Hindu and such tribes as had been converted into Hinduism in the preceding two centuries or so. The Kalitas, more than half of whom were concentrated in the former district of Kamrup, numbered 241, 589 in 1881. They are regarded as a high caste and ranked next to the Brahmans (68,784), Daivajnas (17390) and Kayasthas. They are an agricultural community who are generally believed to have entered Assam from the west. According to Dalton, they were the earliest Indo-Aryan colonists of

18

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM TABLE 1.3

Population o f Major Castes and Tribes: Brahmaputra Valley (1881) (Total Population of the Valley: 2,249,185 persons) I Bodo-Kachan Tribes uninfluenced by Hinduism Kachan 265.418 Mech 57,885 Lahxng 46,077 Hajong 3.689 Gaio (plains) 23,373 II Bodo-Kachari Tribes in the procès* of conversion Rabha 56,285 Madahi 13,149 Mahalia 6,198 Sarania 4,718 Totila 2,539 m Castes formed of converted Bodo-Kacharis and allied tribes Borahi (extinct) (not reported) Moran Chutiya 59,163 Rajbansi/Koch

336,739

Total Bodo-Kachari Elements IV Miri (Mishing) Tribe V Hindu Castes Kalita 241,589 Ahom (Tai-Ahom) 179,283 Kaivaita 105,317 Dom (Nadial) 96,779 Katani and Jugi 81,931 Brahman 68,784 Ganak (Daivajna) 17,390

VI

Muslim

875,233 25,636

•

791,073 208,431 »

SOURCE.: Assam Census Report, 1981 (104) pp. 22-34 and 63-102

Assam. Whatever be their racial origin, they appear to have always been associated with plough cultivation, so far as knowledge goes. The 'Calita caste has some functional subdivisions within itself. These subdivisions, Mali (gardener), Kamar (blacksmith), Tanti (weaver), Sonari (goldsmith), Kumar (potter), Napit (barber) and Nat (danceracrobat) etc., together grouped as Sarukalita, are said to be debarred

THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND THE HISTORY

19

from the privilege of close intercourse with the Barkalitas (high Kalitas). In Sibsagar, a section of the Kalitas are functionally Naotalia (boat-makers).32 In practice, the functional subdivisions had never been very rigid. Here, incidentally, it may be noted that the Kalita-Kumars have been associated with the use of the potter's wheel, while the potters of the Hira caste did not know its use at any time. The Hiras do not use any furnace either, but bum their pots on the open surface. Hira women fashion the pots, while their menfolk bring the clay and sell the products. The Koches or Rajbansis (336,739) were originally a tribe of north Bengal and Lower Assam. They were given a Hindu caste status by the sixteenth century. Later it was found in Assam proper that this caste status was open to all new converts to Hindusim from various tribes. To become a Koch meant more than mere religious conversion. It meant the adoption of the plough in place of the hoe, of the mudplinth dwelling in place of the pile-house dwelling, and of cremation of the dead instead of burial. It also meant the gradual abandonment of pig-rearing, abstinence from liquor and the adoption of a Sanskrit-based neighbouring language in preference to their own tribal tongue. The conversion had some indirect economic impact as well. Absence of pigs around one's homestead proved beneficial for garden culture, which again encouraged settled habits. But the growing prejudice against ricebeer was perhaps one of the indirect contributory causes of the Assamese lust for opium in a later period. A tribal could progressively realize the caste status of a Koch through stages. "We do know for certain," wrote E.P. Stack "that a process of this kind goes on among the converted Bodo, who first become Sarania, Madahi or Totila, and then develop into Koch."33 It has been noted that in north Bengal and the adjoining districts of Lower Assam, an entire tribe was transformed into the new Hindu caste of Koch. Now, as this status was open to all neo-converts in Assam proper, the former preferred to be called Rajbansi, instead of Koch. Of the Koch who retain their proper names three divisions are recognised in Lower Assam. These are: i) Kamtali who abstain both from liquor and pork ; ii) Haramia who abstain from liquor only ; iii) Madahi who are Hindus but take liquor. The process of the promotion of Bodo-Kachari, Lalung, Mikir (Karbi) and other plains tribals up the ladder of Sanskritisation had been continuous. Yet the small twelve per cent rate of increase in the population of the Koch caste between 1872 and 1881 is somewhat puzzling. It may be safely assumed that a number of Koches specially

20

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

in the eastern districts, did return themselves as belonging to some higher caste, such as Kalita or KeoL34 The Keot or Kaivarta (105,317) is another agricultural caste, as distinguished from Jaloa Keot (Pani-Kaivarta) which is a fishing caste. Another fishermen's caste is designated generally as Nadial (or Dom) (96,779). The Hari (Brittial) caste was assigned the sweeper's duties by the Tai-Ahom rulers. Later, they converted themselves into goldsmiths. It is the Nadial, Hari, Hira and a few other untouchable castes which were put at the lowest end of the social scale. Yet another important caste is that of the Nath-panthi Jugi or Katani community (81,931). Although weaving and spinning were universal with medieval Assamese households, the spinning of the Pat (mulberry) variety of silk yarn was an exclusive function of this caste. Hindus though they were, the custom of burying the dead in preference to cremation survived among them. The Chutiyas (59,173) are another tribe converted gradually into Hinduism. Originally a hill tribe, they had setded down in Lakhimpur by the thirteenth century and had established a local kingdom. They were conquered and later absorbed to a considerable extent by the TaiAhoms. Despite this, they have survived as a separate Hindu caste. In 1911, sixtyfive per cent of the Chutiyas were enumerated in old Sibsagar and twentytwo per cent in old Lakhimpur district. Their original language, now almost dead, is believed to have been close to the Bodo-Kachari language. The Tai-Ahoms settled down in Upper Assam as migrants from Upper Burma in the thirteenth century. They belong to the Tai or Shan race which extends in scattered pockets from Assam to Tongking and southwards to Bangkok and Cambodia. They had their own written language which, although now dead, is still cultivated by a handful of their erstwhile priests. The original Tai-Ahom settlers liberally absorbed Chutiya, Moran and Borahi tribes into their fold, and after some three hundred years of separate identity adopted Hinduism and the Assamese language by the seventeenth century. They also adopted the mud-plinth dwelling and the practice of cremation. Since then they have been recognized as a Hindu caste in Assam. Although dominant politically, they were not regarded as a high caste. During the nineteenth century, their number increased from 128,980 in 1872 to 179,283 in 1881 and to 153,211 in 1901. More than ninety-four per cent of them are found in Upper Assam. Although they ruled over Assam for more than 600 years, they constituted hardly ten per cent of the total population in their dominion at any time. Later migrants of Tai race—Khamtis and Shans—were Buddhist by faith and numbered

THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND THE HISTORY

21

3,158 in 1881. The Chutiya, Moran and Thengal-Kachari communities came so much under Tai-Ahom influence that many of them described themselves as Ahoms before the Census enumerators. From Table 1.3 it would appear that more than one-third of the population of the Brahmaputra valley are ethnically of Bodo-Kachari origin. If we keep in view the process of conversion completed in the remote past and also the fact that some of the Muslims must have been converts from the Bodo-Kachari stock, we cannot but conclude that the Bodo-Kachari element in medieval Assamese society was much more prominent than what the census of 1881 suggests. By the term ’BodoKachari' is meant all such allied tribes as Boro, Kachari, Mech, Rabha, Dimasa, Hojai, Hajong, Lalung, Tiprah and Garo, scattered over different parts of northeast India. It is not unlikely that the Chutiyas and the Morans are also of Bodo-Kachari origin. The Bodo-Kachans and other tribes of Tibeto-Burman linguistic group, the Miris (Mishing) and the Mikirs (Karbi) of the plains, were learning the use of the plough from settled populations in course of the centuries. Before we close this account we may refer the reader to Table 1.4 at the end, which gives a detailed caste classification of households in Nowgong district for 1850-51. The indigenous caste structure of Assam does not reflect the existence of any trading caste of significance.Such castes are conspicuously absent in Upper Assam. But in Lower Assam there is a small trading community, now called Vaishya-Saud (Sunri), a counterpart of the Saha caste of Bengal. They have been carrying on trade from the remote past Chand Sadagar of medieval folklore is said to have belonged to this caste. Besides, the Kalita craftsmen of Kamrup, silk-weavers and bell-metal artisans, used to sell their specialized products as itinerant traders all over Assam. People of Barpeta were described as vigorous traders by the early nineteenth century British administrators. Their boats, laden with surplus mustardseeds of Assam, used to ply even on Bengal rivers. The folk literature of the sixteenth century referring to the trading activities of boatowning sauds is as much a living tradition with Lower Assam as with Bengal. This suggests the existence of river-borne trade between Lower Assam and other areas during medieval times. Merchandise carried by outgoing boats, according to literary sources, comprised black pepper, long pepper, ginger, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, incense etc.35 Muslim merchants in the Mughal period were very much interested in the aloe-wood (agar) of Assam. About trade in the Ahom period, Shihabuddin Talish (1663) writes: 36

22

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

Formerly once a year, by order of the Raja, a party used to go for trade to their frontier near Gauhati; they have gold, musk, aloe wood, pepper, spikenard and silkcloth in exchange of salt, saltpetre, sulphur and certain other products.

Assamese traders (mudai) went as far as Dhaka and other places with their boats. Trading activities were not the monopoly of any particular caste. Some Assamese merchants of the eighteenth century—such as Sibram Vairagi—were Brahman or Ganak (Daivajna) by caste. The Bengal merchants also came with their large boats (petola nao) to Assam.37 During the short-lived Mughal occupation of Lower and Central Assam in the seventeenth century there was a Mughal outpost in the village of Gorakuchi near Singri, which was interested in facilitating trade with western Kameng and Bhutan. But war with the Mughals forced the Tai-Ahom rulers to put an embargo on the entry of foreign boats into Assam. River-bome trade in Assam, however, could never be as important as that along the Ganges, because of difficult navigation on the Brahmaputra as noted above. Heavy rains and soft soils did not permit the use of wheeled carts for carriage until the introduction of metalled roads in the British period. Trade was further limited by the carrying capacity of canoes on rivers and of pack animals (limitedly used) and human carriers on land. Assam's balance of trade with the rest of India seems to have been distinctly unfavourable. We get a fair idea of the traditional river-borne exports and imports of medieval Assam, from the figures recorded for 1808-9. The exports to Bengal included, in a descending order of importance, raw cotton, lac, mustard seeds, muga silk cloth, muga silk thread, elephant tusks, slaves, bell-metal utensils, iron hoes, pepper and miscellaneous forest products—together valued Sicca Rs. 130,900 only. Imports from Bengal, valued Sicca Rs. 228,300, were mainly salt (84 per cent) and muslin (5 per cent); the rest were various luxury items. In that year trade was, however, at a very low level because of a prolonged civil war preceding the date. Nevertheless, the list fairly indicates the composition of Assam's trade with rest of India in late medieval times. In any case, it was by and large limited by the extent of local demand for salt T h e M a in S o c io - E c o n o m ic F ea t u r e s o f A ss a m ' s M e d ie v a l S o c iety

What has gone before is an attempt to weave together signifies geographical and historical phenomena and arrive at a genei.

THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND'THE HISTORY

23

framework of the socio-economic history of medieval Assam. The main conclusions that emerge from this attempt are as follows. Medieval Assam, being relatively isolated from the rest of India, had a peculiar socio-economic pattern of its own. The economy of its plains was very much integrated with that of the hills. Raw cotton, forest products, oranges, rock salt and iron from the hills were bartered for rice, dried fish, silk and cotton cloth from the plains. This symbiotic relationship was maintained through a chain of foothill marts and fairs where both sides m et This trade between the plains and the hills appears to have been no less important than what passed between the Assam plains and the rest of India, because of the limited scope of navigation on the Brahmaputra.This conclusion is drawn despite the fact that manual transport across the hills had greater limitations which, however, were overcome by the mass participation of the tribes in the transportation of the goods bartered. The total volume of trade, internal and external, was small ; so was the population as well as the total domestic produce of the region. What is to be noted is that the region's economy was far from what could be called entirely self-sufficient Assam could not offer enough goods to match the value of her demand for salt from Bengal. Hence there was an outflow of gold (collected from river sand) and also of slaves. The poorer sections of the population, and the better-off ones also in a considerable measure, used a preparation of the ash of burnt water-weeds or barks of plantain trees as a substitute for salt This consumption habit has survived till our days. Similarly, the low consumption of vegetable oil freed a considerable quantity of mustard seeds for export to Bengal. This contrasts with the present shortage of mustard seeds in the state because of the change in the population composition and the consumption pattern. Technologically, the Assam plains remained far behind the rest of India. Population scarcity, land abundance, and continuous migration from the hills to the plains—all combined to slow down the transition from shifting hoe cultivation to permanent plough cultivation not only in the hills but also in the plains. Even the plough cultivation was of a shifting nature over large areas of the submontane and riverine belts of the plains. Neither heavy ploughs drawn by several bullocks nor seed-drills were ever in use in this part of India. Rather, ploughshares made out of roots of areca-nut trees or bamboo often replaced the iron share in the local ploughs. The use of iron, bricks and wheeled carts was extremely limited although they were Imowr

24

MEDIEVAL AND EARWPeODONIAL ASSAM

Even the potter’s wheel was not universally used by the potters. Neither the construction of residential houses nor the building of boats made any mentionable use of iron. Only dug-out canoes without sails were generally made and used in the Brahmaputra valley. With some five men on each boat, they could be rowed with paddles or pushed along with bamboo poles at the rate of 8 to 10 miles a day, when other boats made little progress during the rains . The use of water mills for milling or grinding grain in some pockets of Arunachal was never imitated elsewhere in the region. Specialization on caste lines did not go far in medieval Assamese society. Weaving and spinning were universal with all Assamese women irrespective of caste and status, thus limiting the scope of professional weavers. Extraction of mustard oil and gur was carried on in individual households. However, there was specialization in the making of bell-metal and brass utensils, earthenwares, ornaments and a few other articles. In these crafts, a certain degree of perfection was reached. Since the sixteenth century, the manufacture of newlyintroduced guns and gun powder had been organized by the state on a high level of skill which contrasted with the general backwardness of the technology. Until the thirteenth century Upper Assam appears to have been thinly populated, because of poorer cultivation of the soil. Wet rice cultivation increased rapidly in this region under the Tai-Ahoms. A better supply of food led to a rapid increase of population and further extension of settled cultivation. This along with their superiority in weapons, enabled the Tai-Ahoms to carry on their expansionist wars against the Chutíyas and the Kacharis and to build up a strong state. Hundreds of miles of embankment-cum-roads were built by them primarily in the interest of extending wet rice cultivation. The rice economy of the Brahmaputra valley was capable of producing a considerable surplus. But as difficulties of export came in the way, production was limited by the absence of a local market This curb on the potentialities forced the Assamese peasants to find an alternative use of their land and labour in the cultivation of poppy, a new crop, during 1770-1860, for local consumption. This totally ruined the people and stagnated the economy for many years to come. The process of Sanskritization, going on slowly for centuries, gathered momentum during the period of the liberal Vaishnava movement under the guidance of Shankardev (1449-1568), Madhavdev

THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND THE HISTORY

25

(1489-1596), Gopaldev (1541-1611), Aniruddhadev (1553-1624) and others. The mass conversion of the Bodo-Kachari tribes and Tai-Ahoms to Hinduism from the sixteenth century onwards coincided with this movement Thus it generated a politico-religious upheaval amongst the people of the Moran tribe and also other socially lower castes who allied with the former all over the valley. United under the banner of a particular sect of Vaishnavism following the school of Aniruddhadeva, they fought against the Tai-Ahom ruling dynasty. A series of devastating civil wars (1769-1806) remained undecided and brought in its wake depopulation, disorder and all-tound decadence. This turned Assam into a labour-short economy. Medieval Assam had what was essentially a barter economy. Local coinage on a limited scale, however, started from the sixteenth century. Land revenue was paid in labour as a general rule, and in produce or money in special cases. Officials received a portion of the contributed labour in lieu of salaries. This state system38 could be worked smoothly for some five centuries or so because of the essentially tribal basis of the society itself; but from the middle of the eighteenth century it was facing a crisis. The most important towns had no more than a few thousand inhabitants in the medieval times ; and agricultural and waste lands encroached upon them on all sides. In no period did Assam have large nucleated villages. It had mostly a hamlet type of settlement scattered over the agricultural fields in an elongated, linear fashion along banks of tributaries of the Brahmaputra. The absence of big urban centres thus distinguishes the economic history of medieval Assam from that of medieval northern India. If we keep in mind this geographic environment and the ethnic composition of the people and try to read history backwards from the known recent past to the unknown, as Marc Bloch has done in his French Rural History, or D.D. Kosambi in course of his life-long research, many gaps in our knowledge of the region's economic past may be profitably filled up, despite the paucity of factual data for a decisive interpretation.

26

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM TABLE 1.4

Distribution o f Households by Caste : Nowgong District 1850-51* Caste-Group

No. of Households

(43,795) Koch Plains tribals (mainly Bodo-Kachari) Chutiya Ahom and Shan (Tai-Ahom) Kalita Keot Brahman Ganak (Daivajna) Bona Jugi Dom (Nadial) Chandal Han Nat Muslim Moria (Muslim) brass utensil makers) Kamar Kansan Kumar Patia (Mat-makers) Lonaree (Salt-makers) Miscellaneous

As % of total Households

(100) 8,532

19.5

7,877 1,458

17.9 3.6

1,877 5,458 3,735 1,475 126 1,751 2317 3,381 1,133 194 209 2,016

4.3 12.5 8.5 3.4 0.3 4.0 5.3 7.7 2.6 0.4 0.5 4.6

313 125 31 384 360 111

0.7 1.2 0.8 0.3 1.9

♦ The analysis here coven only nine mahals of the district —Nowgong, Koliabar, Mikirpur, Chaporce, Raha, Jamunamukh, Moning, Lakhiraj and Dantipur. SOURCE : Butler, 1854 [133], Appendix H, pp 266-7. We have presented the dau in an abridged form.

Notes 1.

Bulletin de l'Ecole Française de’Extreme, Orient (1904X pp. 142 ff. cited by Barua, A Cultural History Assam, [123], llOn ; also Leach, Political Systems o f Highland Burma [168], 238.

2.

Yule, JASB, pt2 . V ol.ll [100], 853.

THE GEOGRAPHY BEHIND THE HISTORY

27

3. The culture of shouldered stone hoes has been studied by Dani, Prehistory and Protohistory o f Eastern India [141]. 4. Chatteijee, The Place o f Assam in the History and Civilisation o f India [134], 35. 5. See the tabulated estimate by Hodgson for a Bodo peasant family in his paper in JASB, V0L I 8 [95], 740. Owing to an increasing population, the jhum cycle tends to shorten over time. Obviously, the shorter the cycle the less is the productivity.

6. Quote from Ashley Eden's Report (1864) in Political Missions to Bootan [69], 12223. 7.

Pemberton, The Report o f the Eastern Frontier o f British India [70], 220.

8. Quotes from Gurdon, The Khasis [162], 39-40. The only other hill tribes who were equally manure-conscious were the Monpas of western Kameng and the Apatanis. 9.

Mills, Report on the Khasia and Jaintia Hills 1853 [67], 4 and Allen, Report on the Admn. ofCossyah and Jaintiah Hill Territory [68], 30.

10. Letter from G. Lamb, Dhaka, 30 April 1828 in Foreign Secret Proc. [36], 14 Nov., 1828, No.3. 11. Ibid;, Pemberton, [70], 75,214 and 219. Sylhet (Shrihatu) finds early mention in several medieval sources. 12. In 1824, a major section of the people of many petty polities of the Khasi-Jaintia Hills were reportedly found dependent for their livelihood on trading activities. 13. Elliot and Dowson, ed.. History o f India as Told by Its Own Historians, Vol, 2 [27], 311ff. In early 19th century Pemberton, on his way from Dewangiri to Tasgong in Bhutan, met several parties—about 400 persons in all—leading their asses laden with salt towards Hajo. At Dewangiri, he had found that about 2,000 people from Tibet had assembled for a trading-cum-pilgrimage mission to Hajo.—Pemberton's 'Report on Bhutan' in Political Missions to Bootan [69], 77. 14. Anon, Calcutta Review, Vol. 21 [84], 394; Butler, Sketch o f Assam [132], 15; MCosh, Topography o f Assam [177], 28. Quote from Vetch to Mills, 22 June 1853 in Mills, Report on the Province o f Assam [66], Appendix C. The lofty boats, built with keels and rudders, which plied on the Ganges between Calcutta and Patna, suited the Brahmaputra only in the rainy season and would not suit its rapid and shallow tributaries. Generally, boats on the Brahmaputra used oars rather than rudders. They had no keels, so necessary for sailing. They descended with the stream and returned by the track rope. 15. Shakespeare, History o f Upper Assam [187], 5-6. 16. Dalton, JASB, Vol. 20 [90], 455-56. 17. Hodgson, Essay the First....... [82], 47, 154-56 and 180; Dalton, D escriptive Ethnology o f B engali 139], 82; Fisher to Robertson on Dharampur, Cachar, 12 March 1833, Foreign Pol, Proc. [35], 6 June 1833, No. 107; Buchanan-Hamilton, An Account o f Assam First Compiled in 1807-14. [38], 73.

28

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

IS. Jenkins to Board of Revenue,12 Nov., 1851, dengal Rev. Cons. [33], 31 Dec. 1851, No. 44. 19. Banhgaria Buiha Gohainar Bunnjf in Deodhai Asam Buranji [12], 100. 20. Quoted in D.H.E. Sunders Settlement Report of 1895 in Appendix 4, Census of India, 1951, District Handbooks-Jaipaiguri [105], CLXVL 21. Butler, Sketch o f Assam, [132], 21-23. 22. Report, Assam Prov, Banking Enquiry Committee, 1929-30 [65], 23. 23. According to Dak, the larger the number of dykes or ridges thrown across the field, the better will the Sali crop be. 24. An Account c f the Province o f Assam and Its Administration, 1901-2 [40], 23 25 .The present districts of Goalpara, Dhubri, Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon, Barpeta, Guwahati, Nalbari and Darrang constitute what is called Lower Assam. Hie rest of the valley is known as Upper Assam. The present Sonitpur, Marigaon and Nowgong districts of the latter region are together sometimes referred to as Central Assam. 26. Watt, The Commercial Products o f India [115], 796 and Deodhai Asam Buranji [12],

110.

27. Report by Welsh, Foreign Pol, Proc. [35], 24 Feb. 1794, No. 13A, Robinson, A Descriptive Account o f Assam [183], 65-84. 28. Letter from Raja of Cachar received at Calcutta on 29 July 1797, Prachin Bangala Patra Samkalan [81], 75. 29. Wade, An Account o f Assam [24], 17. 30. Talish, Fathiya-i'ibriya, 1663, tr. Sarkar, in JBORS VoL 1, [99], 179-94. 31. Bhuyan, Anglo-Assamese Relations [128], 1. Bhuyan revises the figure to 2.5 million. 32. Census of India, 1901, Assam Report [104], 133. The attempted distinction between Baikalita and Sarukalita was never observed strictly. Today, in any case, all the Kalitas together constitute an endogamous group; most probably it was also so in earlier times, the tendency towards fission being a passing phase. 33. Quote from Census of India, 1881, Assam Report [104], Ch. 6,66. 34. Ibid., 75. 35. Baiua, Studies in Early Assamese Literature [122], 17. 36. See Note 30 above. 37. Kamrupar Buranj, ed. Bhuyan, [13], 44.

2 The Historiographical Perspective i In northeast India we have a rich tradition of historical writing. Source materials on regional history for ancient and medieval periods— inscriptions, coins, sculptures, architectural ruins, chronicles and literary sources—all have been and are still being probed by many scholars. Standard secondary works apart, well-edited compilations of source materials are also available now in handy publications. These have considerably facilitated the future scholar's task. However, within the last few years so much new material—coins, inscriptions, images etc.—have been unearthed and so many new questions posed that there is no scope for complacency. A lot more has to be done in the matter of compilation of and systematic enquiry into the primary sources. For instance, the Catalogue o f the Provincial Coin Cabinet which was last revised in 1930 has now become totally outdated. So is the Descriptive Catalogue o f Manuscripts prepared long ago by Hem Chandra Goswami and printed at the Calcutta University Press.1 So far as ancient and medieval inscriptions are concerned, we are however in a more comfortable position, thanks to some recent publications brought out by the University of Gauhati and the Asam Prakashan Parishad.2 It is in the field of cataloguing the available old coins and manuscript chronicles and the publication of such catalogues with all necessary information regarding their physical condition and whereabouts that Government action is called for to supplement private effort. The Govemmentof Assam's resources in men and money should have been better engaged in this particular sphere rather than in the preparation of an 'official' political history. The search for and preservation of historical documents and objects and the creation of an infrastructure in the form of libraries, archives, museums and funding authorities should have remained the primary and proper area of the state's direct interest

in'hisSonczdTessafch.

K ? ■'jea

30

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

This brings us to the question of relations between the existing research bodies and the government. Historical research, if it is to be carried on with scientific competence and in a single-minded way, needs supporting funds from the public exchequer. Whether channelized directly or through agencies, such funds are always welcome if they are without strings. I have no knowledge of the situation in this region's other states. In Assam, however, the state's performance on this account does not appear satisfactory. The Kamrup Anusandhan Samity (estd. 1912), the oldest body for historical research in this region, continues to receive only a meagre grant-in-aid not worth mentioning and is in a moribund condition today. The journal it once used to publish is no longer brought out regularly. Associated with the memories of eminent scholars like Padmanath Vidyavinod, H.C.Goswami and K.L.Barua, this sick institution is today in need of nursing and preservation. The government should come forward and, in consultation with local historians and interested public bodies, find ways and means to turn it once more into an active research body while it continues to be autonomous as before. It appears that in spite of being aware of its special responsibilities towards the cause of historical research, the state government in Assam was never able to formulate a long-term policy on the matter. Instead of limiting its activities to the discovery and preservation of the objects of antiquity and to the task of encouraging autonomous scholarly bodies to take up creative research, it has always tried to intrude into even the latter sphere through departmental action; and that, too, haphazardly. Its still active Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, a legacy of the British times, is poorly staffed, though burdened with multifarious activities from the collection of antiquarian objects to the publication of source materials, the running of a research library and the routine drudgery of supplying answers to questions raised on the floor of the Assam Legislative Assembly. The result is that it has failed to live up to its past tradition. Yet another venture of the government after independence was to appoint a Special Officer with a separate establishment to collect materials for writing a history of the freedom struggle in the region. After wasting lakhs of rupees on the project during the nineteen fifties and early sixties, the project was finally closed down. Later during the Emergency a full-fledged department for preparation of the political history of Assam was created in the Chief Minister's secretariat almost overnight by a government notification dated 22 November 1975. The said political history having been prepared and published in three volumes by 1980, this department also was finally—and rightly—

THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVE

31

wound up. This kind of state enterprise in historiography on an emergency footing is probably unique in Indian experience. The Government's interest in promoting history is surely commendable, but not the drift and lack of direction in its relevant policy. The Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, unlike the aforesaid department, still maintains its existence. However, it is obvious that it can no more serve a useful purpose in its present form. It needs a total reorganization. Whatever antiquarian activities it is associated with should belong to an appropriate department of archaeology having a complete establishment of trained personnel. And for historical studies the present directorate, together with the Narayani Handiqui Institute, might be transformed into a full-fledged and autonomous research body with necessary state and university support. This suggestion, if accepted by the authorities concerned, I believe, will go a long way in meeting the needs of scholars engaged in historical research in this state. I have kept my observations limited to what has been and what can be done by the Government in Assam. In other States of the region the nature of the problems and tasks is different Organizations which have evolved or are yet to be evolved to promote historical research might not follow a set pattern. But here too appropriate relationships between government and autonomous bodies will have to be worked out

n In our region of seven sister states one cannot but note a degree of unevenness in the structuring of history of these states, particularly in terms of the time dimension. Assam is a well-charted field of enquiry with some relevant records going back to the fourth century, A.D. The historiographical literature on Assam is rich with its neat periodization into times ancient, medieval and modem. But this kind of neat periodization breaks down the moment the historian enters the parts of the region where literacy came rather too late. We have no knowledge as to how the hill areas were peopled and how they fared in ancient times. It is only after the thirteenth century that Tripura, Manipur and parts of Meghalaya begin to come within the reach of historiography, but only on the basis of legends, some late chronicles and other written records along with a few datable antiquarian objects. Consequently our knowledge of how they fared in medieval times is also extremely inadequate as compared to our knowledge of the Brahmaputra valley. In fact, for most parts of our region the starting point of proper

32

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

historiography falls within what is conventionally called the modem period of Indian history. It is then that, under British administration, a plethora of written records describing these parts as well as the tribes inhabiting them begin to appear, thus providing historians with some solid stuff to start with. Under the circumstances, the conventional periodization into times ancient, medieval and modem is hardly meaningful in our region outside the plains of Assam. In Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal in particular and partly also in Assam, Manipur and Tripura, pre-modem history as well as much of so-called modem history has necessarily to be prehistory and proto-history. If this be so, then the historian of this region has to be largely unconventional in his methodology as well. Here, more than any where else, the methods of oral history have a significant role to play, if we are to extend our present knowledge further backwards into past history. The Vaishnava charita-puthis in Assamese that throw light on the lives of Vaishnava saints and on many aspects of the then Assamese society were nothing but oral history, carefully recorded Airing the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Even today we could illuminate, as the charita-puthi authors did, many aspects of Assamese social development, on which extant records by themselves are silent, by way of recording and analyzing what people still remember of their past. For the hill areas the importance of such methods cannot be overstated. To some extent we could rework local histories backwards in these hill-tribal areas by way of collecting the geneological tables of the oldest chiefs and magician-priests, as well as the folklore still surviving amongst the tribes. This way some idea about their migration patterns, their ways of life in precolonial times and their interaction with the plaias-dwelling peoples could be formed. When did they replace their neolithic tools by iron tools ? When and how did they move from shifting jhum to permanent terrace cultivation and from hoe to plough in those places where such phenomena exist ? When and how was the firearm introduced and what was its impact on social and political organization ? Why did rudimentary state formations take place in certain tribal societies and not in others ? Such are the questions that historians in collaboration with other social scientists will have to answer. Oral history might miscarry unless the historian possesses an acute sense of the logic of historical development and is able to put what is gleaned from folk memory in its proper place on the appropriate timescale of related-known events. Its methodology, involving the use of interviews, questionnaires and tape-recordings etc., has greater risk of

THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVE

33

being incompetently handled than the conventional methodology. Public memory itself gets increasingly confused and blurred over time. Hence more care and rigorous training are necessary to make oral history fruitful. A beginning has already been made in this sphere by individual scholars as well as the North-Eastern Hill University, and we look forward to not only extensions of such research activities, but also to the perfection of the methods and tools in use through adequate academic measures at the university level. Enlightened British administrators, some of whom were also trained anthropologists, left behind systematic accounts of the tribes they studied. But they did this spade work with their nineteenth century imperialist outlook that had assumed an unchanging character for the oriental societies in general, and the hills tribal societies in particular, with a view to projecting the British rule as a legitimate agency of progress. Each tribe used to be described in isolation from the other tribes and from the world of the plains people. The resultant monographs followed a set standard pattern in which the tribes were depicted as so many fossilized segments of humanity, for whom trade and contacts with settled communities had no mentionable impact. These monographs also failed to see that the growing private property rights in stocks of grain, livestock, orchards and terraced paddy lands carried germs of a process of change within each tribe, however slow that might have been. Evidences of the tribes having a history such as the growth of link languages like 'Nagamese' and 'Arunamese'3, the evolution of some chiefdoms into statehood and the spread of wet rice cultivation and New World crops like tobacco, chilly and pineapple—all before the coming of the British—were not given adequate attention. The task before today’s oral historians is to dig up this history and push it as far back in time as possible on a scientific basis. Not the tribes as such, but some of their rituals and customs were indeed ossified relics of the past, comparable to fossils. Data of social anthropology on such relics, as those of historical and comparative linguistics, are surely useful for reconstructing the past. Similarly another sister discipline—archaeology—has also a special role in extending the historical time horizon of our enquiry into the hills tribal societies. Recently archaeology has made big strides in our region. Systematic excavations in the Garo Hills and the North Cachar Hills have added to our knowledge of the spread of the southeast Asian neolithic culture in our hills and plains in more definitive terms than before. A new vista for Indian pre-history has been opened up thereby. However, also significant for the historian of this region are the results of the excavations at Ambari, Itanagar and Malinithan that

34

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

throw a great deal of light on pre-thirteenth century Assamese civilization. Some day archaeology will be able to provide answers to some of our questions posed in connection with the historiography of the hill areas—say, for instance, the one regarding the introduction of iron in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills. When the neolithic people entered Assam from southeast Asia they did not possess any knowledge of iron. This knowledge, together with that of cattle-powered plough and wet rice was brought to Assam by the Indo-Aryans. In 1842 Lieutenant Yule was so much impressed by the numerous and extensive traces of former iron-mining sites in the Khasi Hills that he believed these to 'have occupied the population for twenty centuries'.4 In the absence of conclusive evidence, we simply do no know how and when the Khasis took to iron-smelting and the manufacture and use of iron implements. So far, the earliest evidence of iron manufactures of the Khasis comes down to us from the late medieval Assamese chroniclers. The typical shouldered iron hoe of the Khasis, which is still in use, might not be as old as Yule might have thought it to be. But surely it has a long history of development that could be traced from finds of shouldered stone celts in the neolithic sites of northeast India. In this connection, the excavations at the two Kamrup villagesof Sarutaru and Marekdola bordering on the Khasi Hills, recently carried on by S.N. Rao, throw some light.5 At Sarutaru, an undated neolithic site, seven shouldered stone celts resembling present-day Khasi hoes were found together with crude cord-marked pottery of the southeast Asian neolithic types. At Marekdola, its adajacent post-neolithic site, only one such stone celt was found together with fine Ambari-type pottery and other objects which are definitely datable within the ninththirteenth centuries (upper limit : 1292 A,D.) by a combination of carbon-14 and other methods. The two sites, between them, encapsulate the phase of technical progress of the shouldered hoe-using Khasis—from crude pottery to the use of wheel-turned pottery made in the plains, and as it appears, from stone hoes to iron hoes, though no iron objects were found on the same site. The significant point is that even so late as in the ninth to the thirteenth century period, the stone hoe had not altogether vanished even from the submontane tracts that were already in close contact with Ambari. The stone celt was still in use, as Rao concludes, for its symbolic, if not for its functional value. We may further conclude that, even if the Khasis had started entering the iron-age a few centuries earlier, the use of the stone hoe must have long persisted until its use was reduced to insignificance or to mere symbolism by the thirteenth century.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVE

35

In any case, once iron was in use, its abundant production led to certain economic and political changes within the Khasi society. With iron hoes the soil could be puddled into mud for wet rice cultivation more efficiently. On the basis of an increased rice production for consumption and a surplus iron output for trade with the surrounding plains, the Khasi society moved to the stage of state formation by the fifteenth century. From this time onwards we have a geneology of the Jaintia kings. Thus we find that time and space, when out of reach of our written records, could be probed by historians through a combination of oral history methods with those of archaeology, social anthropology and other disciplines. The ancient history of the Assam plains could also be extended backward beyond the the fifth or the fourth century A.D. The Mahabharata and several Puranas that were rewritten between circa second century B.C. and second century A.D., the Kalika-Purana of the ninth tenth century A.D. and the copper plate Prashastis of the Kamarupa kings—all contain elements of late-recorded oral history related to Assam's early Indo-Aryan settlers who were the carriers of a new civilization marked by iron, cattle, wet rice and the plough. Iron technology discovered in western Asia around circa 1800 B.C. reached India by 1000 B.C. and spread to Magadha by 600 B.C. It was on the basis of an abundant supply of iron ore in its neighbourhood that Magadha was transformed into a powerful state and empire. By then the Magadhans were already a mixed people. The Indo-Aryan newcomers intermingled with the Kiratas and other pre-Aryan elements. When did large-scale settlement of these iron-using IndoAryans take place in Assam then ? No late-recorded oral history can settle this issue, if archaeology does not give some clue. It is the considered opinion of scholars that the antiquity of Bhagadatta, as a historical personage should not be taken as far back as the Bharata War —tins probably took place around 900 B .C .-on the basis of a simplistic reliance on later interpolations in the original Mahabharata. Neither can we accept Bhaskara Varman's statement that his dynasty had been ruling for three thousand years.6 His claim only points to the fact that his dynasty's rule was quite old. The tradition represented by Banasura, Naraka, Bhagadatta and Vajradatta related to the early phase of the iron-using Indo-Aryan settlements east of the Karatoya. That the Buddhist sources carried no reference to Kamarupa or to Pragjyotishpura is significant7 This suggests that the Indo-Aryans had not crossed over to Kamarupa before 500 B.C. Archaeologically we only know that the iron age and the Maurya rule firmly reached the banks of the Karatoya by 200 B.C. Bands of Indo-Aryan adventurers

36

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

from Magadha must have had crossed the Karatoya by then and moved into the forested Brahmaputra valley in search of elephants, valuable timber and virgin lands for settlement. The Arthashastra commentator's (Bhattasvamin) suggestion that certain items of Magadhan trade originated in Kamarupa (though not clearly mentioned by Kautilya to that effect) appears valid in this context The alluvial plains of Kamarupa remained until its Aryanization thickly forested under the heavy rainfall conditions. Neolithic jhum settlements, however sparse, were till then found only on banks of hill streams and river-confluences, where land was cleared through the natural process of erosion and annual flooding and where the raw materials for a stone tool industry were available in plenty in the vicinity. Their agriculture was characterized by slash-and-bum and land rotation methods. The neolithic settlers' stone implements were not however equal to the task of uprooting the deep forests for agriculture. It was the newcomers equipped with shaft-hole iron axes and irontipped traction ploughs who cleared such forests on an extensive scale for permanent cultivation of wet rice, and they caused thereby a rapid increase of population on the basis of a more abundant rice supply. It was on this basis that the state or Janapada of Kamarupa emerged in due course, thus enabling us to move in this region from proto-history to history by the fourth century A.D.8 The Magadhi language emerged in a slightly different form as the dominant language within this state. m So far I have discussed in some detail how the existing areas of darkness in the history of the hills and plains of our region could be lighted up in the absence or paucity of contemporary written documents. The methodology has to be varied; and for the local historian, oral history methodology will be rewarding at least for the times conventionally styled as modern. Teachers and students of history, placed as they are in the region's several states, could effectively contribute to the writing of the history of their respective localities and states. I hope, the university and college departments of history would utilize their personnel in organized attempts at exploring the history of the districts in their respective areas by way of oral history methods and other means. My current field of enquiry being the history of medieval Assam under the Ahoms, I may be permitted to say a few words, not on any new findings but about the problems I face in this field.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVE *

37

• •

■

The most important source material for me is, of course, the buranjis., both published and unpublished. A complete printed catalogue of such manuscript buranjis showing their places of preservation and giving other ancillary information is long over-due. True that most of the representative buranjis are now*available in welledited, published versions. Even so, a catalogue is still necessary so that sceptical scholars could check the quality of the editing and translation to eliminate biased distortions, if any. Such distortions, even though not deliberate, áre possible since much of our buranjibased research was motivated either by the requirements of an alien administration or by the needs of a local patriotism, both liable to lapses. Yet another difficulty we face is in the matter of identifying the relative antiquities of the extant manuscripts. These have come down to us in their present form through a process of time-to-time copying, with the subject-matter undergoing abridgement, elaboration and extension at the discretion of the copyist-cum-chroniclers in that process. The extant manuscript copies belong to a period not earlier than the seventeenth century, and some only to the early nineteenth. Under the circumstances, it is high time that serious attempts are made on the basis of a scrutiny of the language and style to ascertain the relative antiquities of the stylistically disparate pieces that constitute the buranjis. Perhaps, scholars of Assamese and Tai languages could take care of this aspect It is also unfortunate that no specialized glossary has yet been exhaustively compiled to explain the terminology of the buranjis, giving their etymological roots and their original Tai equivalents, if any. In fact, many terms have already become obscure. For instance, much confusion persists in the meaning of such terms as Hatimur, Ghar-phalia, Lukhurakhan, etc. An exhaustive glossary will not solve the problem of getting at their meanings, but it will surely help further research towards solving it I have already pointed out that the history of Assam is a well charted field. It is particularly so for the medieval times in its political and socio-religious aspects. But even so, much of our received knowledge lacks a sense of dynamics. Take for instance, the Ahom political system—the Khel, the Paiks, the Pal-Seva, the Bar Chara, the Patra-Mantri and all that. While describing this system, our historians have given us more or less a static picture of what prevailed during the seventeenth and the early nineteenth centuries. They never bothered themselves with the question as to how this political system gradually developed since the times of Sukapha in response to the changing

38

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

situation and the growing needs of the Ahom society. Had the Khel system been the same from the very beginning, there would not have arisen the need for borrowing the term Khel from the Arabico-Persian vocabulary to denote it. Just as the Ahom tribal assembly hall called Hawlong (Bar-gharlbig house) was in due course transformed into the seat of the much restricted Bar Cha'ra (and Bar-Mel), so was the original tribal obligation of supplying volunteers for common defence and public work transformed into the more regularised paik system. From scattered information lying unnoticed in buranjis and also relevant information gleaned from studies of other Tai peoples, we could perhaps trace the evolution of the Ahom political institutions from their tribal roots. If much remains to be done in political history, the field of economic history remains almost barren. We hope that some of us would devote our efforts to this field. I need not emphasize while concluding my say that if we mean research on medieval Assam to be a serious business, we cannot afford to allow the Tai-Ahom language to die o u t The last scholars of this language have to be sought out and endowed with resources to keep up the tradition. The University of Dibrugarh once acted nobly and wisely in opening facilities for learning and cultivating the Tai language and literature.9 I wish this arrangement continues to exist and expand. N otes 1. 2.

Botham, Catalogue o f the Provincial Coin Cabinet Assam [5], Goswami, Descriptive Catalogue o f Assamese Manuscripts [4]. One inch excellent compilation throwing light on Assam's ancient heritage is Shaima, Inscriptions o f Ancient Assam [2].

3. Pidgin Assamese is widely used by the tribes of Nagaland and Arunachal both for inter-tribal communication and communication with the plains people. This link language is nowadays called 'Nagamese' in one area and 'Aiunamese* in the other. 4. Yule, *Notes on the iron of the Kasia hills...’ JASB, V ol II [100], 853. 5. Rao, 'Sarutaru...' in Man and Environment, VoL I [97], 40-43 and 'Continuity and survival...' in Asian Perspectives, VoL 20 [98], 191-205. 6. Sharma, [2], 38-81. 7. Ibid, Introduction, 0 ’3-0’4. 8. Cited ibid, 015. 9. Arrangements for Tai studies were once made in the Department of Assamese Language and Literature, Dibrogarh University, with Shri Bimal Barua as the lone teacher to teach the language. In the Department of History of the Guwahati University on the other hand, there has never been any provision for Tai language studies. There Dr. J-NPhukan has taken up research in Tai chronicles and culture at his own individual initiative. It is felt that consolidated efforts should be made by the Government and the Universities to promote Tai studies in Assam..

3 Land Rights and Social Classes i Throughout the ancient and medieval times Assam remained a very thinly populated region, because of its difficult terrain, an agriculturally retarded tribal population and its forests and swamps. Of some 24,000 square miles of its flat alluvial plains, very limited areas were habitable. The central belt of riverine tract, open to the constant alluvial and delluvial process of the Brahmaputra and covered with reed and grass jungles, was unfit for any permanent cultivation and habitation. The belt of submontane tract, also covered with reed and grass jungles and having a sloping surface, was unsuitable for settled agriculture. In both the belts the fast growth of irrepressible weeds as a result of heavy rainfall—once the jungles were burnt off—made continuous cultivation on the same plot of land beyond the third or even the second year extremely difficult and labour-consuming. Only various forms of shifting cultivation were suited to these two belts. Peasants shifted every year from one piece of land to another, preparing a new clearance by burning off its cover of bush and grass. Land under such cultivation must have been held only as a tribal or communal territory. This theory is supported by the recorded story of constant tribal migrations from place to place as well as, by such practices as are still extant in our times.1 Excepting a few sites protected by natural rocks right on the banks of the Brahmaputra, the only available area for permanent habitation and cultivation was the flat expanses of land between the aforesaid belts on either side of the Brahmaputra river. It is probable that during the twelfth/thirteenth centuries, this habitable area was much narrower and the forest-covered submontane strip much wider than they are today. It is in this flat plains area alone that the question of permanent, inheritable land rights could first arise in a significant manner.

40

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

n The extant copper plate land grants and rock inscriptions give us very little information about the pre-Ahom land tenure. All such epigraphic record relates only to grants made in favour of Brahman scholars, priests and religious institutions. So, the conditions described in them are certainly not representative of the general pattern of land tenure of the relevant period. Nevertheless, they throw some light on the conditions prevailing on the eve of the Ahom colonization of Upper Assam. The Bargaon and Sualkuchi copper plate land grants of Ratnapala as well as the Guwahatigrant of Indrapala (eleventh ccntury), the Assam grant of Vallabhadeva (1185 A.D.) and the two North Lakhimpur grants, dated A.D. 1392 and 1402, respectively2—all establish one important fact It is that the practice of land grants to Brahmans and religious institutions, which was initiated by the Kamarupa King Bhuti Varman3 in the sixth century, continued right up to the Ahom period (1228-1826) and highlighted certain common features. One such noticeable feature common to many of these inscriptions is that the royal donor, while giving away a piece of waste land, also makes gift of an inhabited village, or at least a certain number of peasant families, to the same donee. For example, the Bargaon plate records the grant of a tract of land together with its houses, paddy fields and wastelands. The Assam plate of Vallabhadeva records the grant of seven villages, along with rights over the people therein, to an alms­ house (bhaktasala). It also records, at the same time, the donation of another five persons as well as their wives and children to the same alms-house. The North Lakhimpur plate of 1402 issued by a Chutiya king, also refers to the grant of a whole village along side the grant of two hundred putis (1 puti= 1’33 acres, if the puli is the same as the later putaka or pura) of land as a benefice to a Brahman. Thus in many of the grants, the donated piece of land is matched with either the donation of an inhabited village or that of a number of persons or of both. It is so because in a sparsely populated region like Assam, grants of cultivable wastelands were meaningless unless farm labour was also made available. Under such circumstances, the transfer of a village to the donee made it possible for him to exact certain services from the villagers for the development and cultivation of the land concerned. It was a transfer of the royal rights over a portion of the subjects to the grantee. The other practice of donating a number of specified persons, along with a piece of land, suggests that there was

LAND fÖGHTS AND SOCIAL CLASSES

41

yet another class of farm people with a more servile status. They were probably slaves or were, at the least, bound to the soil. The latter practice continued also through the Ahom period till the early nineteenth century. The persons so donated and settled on the farms were known, during the Ahom period, as bahatia (derived from Vasai or habitation) and, if slaves, as dasa or golam or, collectively, bandi-beti. There must have been then, on the eve of Ahom colonization, hundreds of such agrahara grants all over the Brahmaputra valley. These Brahman settlements were outposts ot the Indo-Aryan civilization and its settled way of life in the midst of tribal lands. Knowledge of calendar, seeds, crops and cattle breeding had to precede any use of the plough. The Brahman settlers who immigrated often from a distance had this knowledge, as has been rightly emphasized by D.D.Kosambi. As pioneers in a wild territory, 'they were the main instrument of change to plough-village cultivation.'4 Another interesting feature of the land grants is to be noted. In alienating a piece of land, e.g. in Bargaon and Guwahati grants, it was felt necessary to notify the action to all persons in the district concerned. This indicates that the villagers must have possessed certain common rights over the land prior to its alienation. The Guwahati grant, particularly, contains many non-sanskritic place names, obviously of tribal origin. One cannot but conclude therefore that the relevant land grant was carved out of some common tribal lands. It is in this manner that proprietory estates were created in favour of Brahman recepients. Systematic encroachment on common lands, apparently waste but cyclically coming under shifting cultivation over a period of years, was made under the authority of royal charters. They were issued in order to encourage settled agriculture in a region where, as it appears, fire fanning, hoe culture and shifting plough cultivation predominated.5 Tradition recorded in early Assamese literature suggests that not only Brahmans, but Kayastha, Daivajna and other high class migrants were also favoured with royal land grants during the fourteenthsfi fteenth centuries. They were known as Bhuyans while they wielded political authority over their respectiye petty landed estates. As the weak kings of the period could not protect their subjects from the frequent Bhot and Bodo-Kachari incursions, the Bhuyans used to provide the necessary protection. Thus they were not only landlords but also warriors. Whenever there was a strong king, they would demonstrate their loyalty through personal attendance at his court At other times, they were almost independent and functioned through a loose confederacy of their own, which was known by the term Barabhuyan. One of these

. 42

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

powerful Bhuyans, Chandibar Kayastha (fourteenth century), commanded '80 shields'. According to legend, his liege-lord' was chotaraja Gandharvaray who was again a 'vassal' of the king of Kamata (Kameshwar). Chandibar's great grandson, the famous Vaishnava religious reformer Shankardev inherited and managed a landed estate which included, among others, thirty pairs of bullocks and one hundred and twenty cows.^The Bhuyans of different places were gradually subdued by the Ahoms and were resettled in new areas. Their appearance, at least as early as the thirteentlrfourteenth centuries, also suggests that some degree of feudalization of land had taken place in certain areas during the period of weak central governments preceding the full-fledged formation of the Ahom State. m It appears from the scant information contained in the Assamese chronicles that the bulk of the tribal population of Upper Assam, whom the Ahoms first confronted, were still carrying on primitive cultivation of dry crops.7 Arum roots, yam, edible fern, firewood etc. were initially accepted as tribute by the Ahoms from these conquered," but significantly no rice or paddy. That no serious or prolonged clashes did take place between the migrant Ahoms and the aboriginal Moran and Barahi tribes in the thirteenth century is understandable in this context With a traditional wet rice culture, the Ahoms were not interested in dispossessing these tribes of their lands which were suited to dry crops alone. The latter's villages were left undisturbed, so that certain services and token tributes could be periodically exacted from them. However, the local autochthons with their primitive techniques did not produce any substantial surplus which could support the several thousand Ahom migrants. So, from the very time of their entry into the Assam plains the Ahoms carried on their own soli (wet rice) cultivation.* It is to them that Upper Assam owes much of its settled cultivation. Permanent settlement in the valley did not only involve the cutting down and uprooting of trees in the low-lying wastelands and marshes, but also the levelling up of the surface. Further, bunds or dykes had to be thrown up here and there so that the fields could retain rain and flood water in the right quantity, which is so necessary for sali paddy. The migrants were equal to this task, as they had not only an excellent organization, but also plenty of superior iron implements.9 It appears that iron implements made in the Shan country of Upper Burma, e.g.

LAND RIGHTS AND SOCIAL CLASSES

43

the Nara dao, regularly found their way into Assam, although daos were produced locally as well. There were broadly two categories of land—raised or high lands, suitable as homestead or garden sites (basti and barf) and low-lying lands (rupit or row ti) all around, suitable for sali cultivation. Reclaimed land of both the categories was parcelled out into individual family plots, most probably according to the size and status of such families.10 An individual family could, of course, reclaim at its own cost more land than was allotted to it. But such a step presupposed a big family which, together with household slaves, could then provide the necessary labour. Land reclaimed through collective efforts necessarily belonged to the community. Hence, rights in land were in general not proprietory, except in the case of homestead and garden lands. Generally, every Ahom homestead had a bamboo-fenced garden surrounding i t It is not possible to establish with documentary evidence that the early Ahoms had some such pattern of settlement as described above. However, developments on similar lines in analogous situations elsewhere make it highly probable. Anthropological works on individual tribes of Southeast Asia and other regions suggest that originally land was owned, if not also worked collectively.11Gradually, division into separately worked family holdings was introduced as a result of the rising efficiency of the small holding. This theory is corroborated by the survival of an archaic form of landholding amongst the Khamtis, the nearest kinsmen of the Ahoms with a common language as late as the nineteenth century. About a Khamti village Cooper writes in 1873 : Although the chief is the lord of the toil, the whole community till it on the cooperative system, the chief having his portion allotted to him; after which the produce is divided between each house, according to the number of hands in it who have helped in the cultivation... Besides common land, small plots are also cultivated by individuals.12

Cooper's observation might or might not be accurate down to its minutest details. But that the concept of land ownership amongst the Khamtis was communal is essentially true. The early Ahom concept also could not be much different Fortunately, the thirteenth century Tais of Thailand, with whom the Ahoms and the Khamtis shared a common language and a common racial origin, left an important document which throws light on the subject. King Ramkhamhaeng’s stone pillar inscription (1292 A.D.) states:

44

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM If a common man, a noble or a chici fell tick and died, the home of his ancestors, his clothings, his elephants, his family, his rice granaries, his slaves, the areca palm plantations of his ancestors were all transmitted to his children.13

%

It is significant that the carefully drawn-up list of inheritable properties does not include the paddy lands. In the thirteenth century Sukhothai State of Thailand areca palm plantations and the homestead, together with granaries, were regarded as inheritable private property. But it was not explicitly so with paddy lands. It follows then that paddy lands perhaps belonged to the community, i.e. to the King as representative of the community. This medieval Thai practice is a key to the understanding of the Ahom system of land rights in Assam. IV At the time of the British take-over of Assam it was noted that hereditary private proprietory rights existed only in the case of home­ steads and gardens, but not in the case of paddy lands,14unless backed by specific copper plate grants. In fact the concept of communal land, embedded in the cultural tradition, remained very much alive in relation to the paddy lands. The villagers had, more or less, free access to unoccupied dry lands for fuel-wood and building materials or for grazing and temporary cultivation. As to the wet paddy lands, their distribution was however managed by the king as the leader of the community at large. Wet paddy Helds, excepting those included in royal farms, office lands, benefices created in favour of nobles, Brahmans and religious institutions, were all uniformly distributed amongst the adult male subjects who were not slaves. Each of them had the privilege of receiving a piece of wet paddy land as his ga-mati (land attached to person) and was obliged to render annually three to four months' service to the State. His quota of such land, in addition to his ancestral homestead and garden lands, could be supplemented by any amount of inferior land, which was initially free of tax. It could be supplemented even by an additional share of the wet paddy lands, in case such surplus land (ubar mati) was available after meeting the claims of all local paiks. Nominal taxes on additional landholding were introduced only in the later Ahom period.15 But this entire taxed portion of land and even a portion of ga-mati could be taken back if necessary by the crown, i.e. the community.16 The system as such would not have worked so smoothly till the end of the Ahom rule, had it not been backed by an age-old tradition of communal ownership of land.

LAND RIGHTS AND SOCIAL CLASSES

45

For the early Ahoms the recognition of permanent rights in homestead and garden lands was but natural. It was so because houses and perennial garden crops were fruits of individual labour which could be permanently enjoyed by their rightful masters only through permanent occupation. But the low-lying open fields all round the permanent villages were in their very nature a common territory. Reclaimed collectively, they were also protected against floods through continuous collective efforts in dyke-building activities.17Every year after the sali harvesting was over, the low-lying fields were temporarily thrown open as common grazing grounds, and this customary practice (garu udang dia) still remains very much alive in Assam. We may therefore conclude that under the Ahoms, the peasant held his fields with mere usufruct rights. His wet paddy lands always went back to the community when he died or became over-aged. His dry paddy fields too had no permanent location as they involved shifting cultivation. From later sources we know that the quota of tax-free wet paddy land per eligible adult male was fixed at two puras or about 2'66 acres. But it appears that in earlier times each family was allowed to hold as much land as it could reclaim and cultivate. However in practice, the family’s working capacity set the limit which could not go much beyond, say, 3 or 4 puras per adult male. But a prescribed limit became necessary when best lands in the vicinity of the villages became comparatively scarce as a result of population increase. Even this prescribed allotment had to be curtailed in later days in some crowded villages to provide land for those who had meanwhile attained the qualifying age of sixteen.18 Yet another reason behind the introduction of a fixed quota of tax-free landholding was the growing pressure on the treasury, as a result of confrontation with the Mughals. V Until the sixteenth century , there was no system of land survey under the Ahoms. With land in abundance and the population limited, the whole administrative edifice was based primarily on a periodic census of adult male population and the utilization thereof. Even after some progress in the introduction of land surveys in imitation of the Mughals19 during and after the reign of Gadadhar Singha (1681-96), the system remained basically the same. The entire paik population was divided into broad divisions under the general name of mel or d a g i. One group of divisions was devoted entirely to the service of the three great ministers, who could be appointed only from select clans. Each such division attached to a great

46

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

minister was known as his hatimur. Another group of divisions rendered its offices to members of the royal family, but were placed under the immediate control of a number of officers called Phukan, Barua and Rajkhowa. There were some fourteen divisions in this category. The third and largest division—also divided into a number of dagis under their respective officers—worked for the Rajah himself i.e. the State. Each mel or dagi, comprising some 1,000 to 6,000 paiks, consisted of a number of smaller divisions (Khel). A Khel again was divided into so many gots. Thus, a got, i.e. a unit of three or four persons, was the basic cell in the organization of the paik militia. Besides those already mentioned, a number of important offices were created during the first half of the seventeenth century. The hereditary chieftains of vassal states and tribes were another important element in their respective areas. One-third or sometimes one-fourth of the members of a Khel were always on state duty. This meant that one member of each got was obliged to be present in rotation at places appointed by the King or his officers "for such work as might be required of him, and during his absence from home, the other members were expected to cultivate his land and keep him supplied with food."20 In times of emergency such as war, the second and even the third member of a got might be called up at the same time. The superior officers recruited from blue-blooded families, as well as, those commanding units of 20,100 and 1 000 paiks were entitled to engage a certain portion—varying from five to ten per cent—of the paiks under their respective commands, in their private households and farms. Besides, the top officers and ministers were also provided with office lands in the vicinity of the capital, which they enjoyed till their dismissal or demise.21 Despite some later modifications, the military-administrative system of the Ahoms remained essentially the same till 1826 and thus betrayed its tribal origin. It resembled very much that of medieval Thailand and Vietnam, and also that of Manipur, Cachar and Jaintia.22 As we know from McCulloch (1858), the whole adult male population of Manipur was divided into several divisions (pana), each working for ten days in rotation, so that every male over sixteen years came on duty for ten days out of every forty in order to serve the king or his officers. This compulsory military or labour service (lallup) there went together with the enjoyment of a piece of land measuring about three acres. Two other kingdoms of Assam—Jaintia and Cachar—had a somewhat simpler system of exacting' compulsory personal service from their subjects. Thus, the organizational principle adopted by the Ahoms was not peculiar to them alone; rather it was a variant of what

LAND RIGHTS AND SOCIAL CLASSES

47

generally prevailed in many tribal societies of the past The gradation of officers in terms of command over units of 100 and 1,000, according to Bhuyan, was introduced in 1609.23 Also the term Khel, seemingly of Arabico-Persian origin and meaning a cavalry division in the original language, was a later introduction. But these influences could not hide the basic tribal origins of the system. The first Khels were presumably organized as localized kin-groups. They were severally or jointly in control of adjacent fields, pastures and jungles. We conjecture so because ancient Khels were often named locality-wise, such as Jokaichukia, Abhaypuria, Gajpuria, Silpania, Charingia and so on. Even the functional Khels were more like locality-wise clans or caste groups. But in later times, the Khels became mixed up and scattered throughout the state.24 But the officers kept their trace so that they could not escape their labour service. Sometimes, the Khels were split up at royal initiative so that new Khels could be formed and settled in remote areas.25 Exemption from manual service was allowed when a man was entrusted with some office or status. On grounds of high caste also, one could be exempted. In later periods, and particularly in Kamrup, the obligation of personal service was often commuted for a moneytax. Again, men with specialized skill were allowed to make in-kind payment or to contribute in terms of their specialized services alone. For example, the gold washers contributed a part of their product while the kakatis (writers) kept government accounts, in fulfilment of their obligations to the state. All those subjects who were thus exempted from ordinary labour, were known to have a chamua status. Some were even freed from their Khels and were called apaikan chamua. In the domain of Kamrup, because of earlier Mughal domination for some years, the people were more accustomed to money-tax in lieu of personal service.26 There, the ga-mati was therefore called jamma-mati. Others, organized into specialized Khels, were known as paikan chamua. The bulk of the paiks enjoying no such privilege were known as kanri (archer) paiks. At the lowest end of the social scale were the bandiffett (male and female domestic slaves) and the bahatia or serfs. VI The Ahom kings looked upon the paiks as alienable subjects. In doing so they emulated the royal donors of ancient Kamarupa. By issuing copper plate charters, they created permanent rights over considerable tracts of land in favour of the privileged few. The latter cultivated these chiefly with the help of slaves and assigned paiks. When the Chutiyas

48

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

were conquered at the beginning of the sixteenth century, one of their surviving princes accompanied by twelve families was granted a big tract of land neighbouring Darrang.27 This is the earliest known literary reference to the use of copper plates by the Ahoms in the matter of land grants. The introduction of devottar, dharmottar and brahmottar land grants is credited to Pratap Singha (1603-41) by one chronicler.28 Secular grants also were made for distinguished service to officers and members of the nobility. For example, King Sujinpha (1675-77) reportedly made a gift to his prime minister of many domestics and the people of Parbatianagar, along with permanent rights over a field in the riverine tract. Thgjerms of this particular grant reflect the general conditions under which the donated estates were held in the seventeenth century and, therefore, is worth quoting: Whoever of my family becomes king in future, must tiy to keep this right granted to the Buragohain. If the area of the land increases by alluvion, no other person should be allowed to take possession of the land.29

Sujinpha's grant has several salient features. First, the piece of land was permanently alienated. Secondly, a number of domestics besides the people of Parbatianagar were given to the donee. Thirdly, the piece of land was in the riverine tract, subject to an alluvial and delluvial process, i.e. in all probability waste land. It is obviously to encourage the cultivation ofwaste-Landsthat the grant was made. That is why not only a number of domestics but also the people of Parbatianagar were granted to the prime minister. However, while the domestics concerned became the property of the donee and could be settled as bahatia, the people of Parbatianagar were obviouslyl assigned only temporarily. However, the fact that the king could give away even his paiks is conclusively established by the later copper-plate charters, which we now propose to discuss. Of the fortyeight extant copper-plate land grants which are mentioned by Gait, three were issued by Gadadhar Singha and the rest by succeeding kings.30 Terms and concepts used in all these inscriptions are often reminiscent of those of ancient Kamarupa copper plates. Many of the obscurities of the latter could possibly be clarified, if a comparative study of the two sets were undertaken. A close examination of the published land grants of Rajeswar Singha (1751-69)31 reveals several features which are common with the ancient ones. These a re : i) a scrupulous description of the boundaries of the donated land; ii) notification of the act of grant to all people;

LAND RIGHTS AND SOCIAL CLASSES

49

iii) guarantee of permanent rights to the donee and his descendants over the donated land, subject to their regular praying for the king or for loyalty, according to the circumstances; iv) enlistment, of all taxes and exactions from which the donee was exempted; v) gift of persons together with land in many cases. Exemptions recorded are those from p a d (tax payable on employment as officer), panchak (levy on household basis for collective purpose), kar-katal (general taxes), bethbegar (personal ' service and forced labour), chor-chhinala(pmitive taxes/fines for theft and adultery), dhumuchi (escheat), maresha (fees on marriage),32 yavaksar (obligatory supply of saltpetre), jalkar (tax on boating and fishing waters) and from various tolls (dan and khut) at border-posts (chaki), markets (hat) and ferries (ghat). The recital of the long list of exemptions or surrendered royal rights appears to have preserved the form and style of the ancient epigraphic inscriptions. Incidentally, it may also be noted that the term chor-chhinala reminds us of a similar term, chauradharana in an eleventh century land grant of Indrapala 33 Of the land grants tabulated below, as many as seven involve the donation of some paik households to the several donees. They were freed from obligations of personal service to the state and were attached permanently to the donated lands for the benefit of the donees. However, both the donees and the persons donated continued to remain within the jurisdiction of royal puishments (7,a/adaa^i).

vn

\

In summing up, we once more stress the important features noted in earlier sections. It was not the village, in the sense of a territorial unit, but the Khel which dominated the socio-economic life. The land was held in community by the members of a Khel which was generally a localized clan or a caste-group, but not always so. Extant place names such as Changmai-pathar, Tanti-pathar, Sonari-pathar, Chowdang-pathar, Chungi-pathar, Hatimuria-pathar, Naobaic^a-pathar, etc. bear the tetimony of this.34 The concept of raij (public) is even today very strong in Assam; and woods, pastures and natural fisheries are generally regarded—whatever be the current law—as rajahua or common lands. In Assamese, raij means a body of raiyats gathered for a common purpose. All the Khels of a common neighbourhood together would constitute a raij.

50

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

However, in course of tíme the scope of royal rights steadily extended. The king had not only the absolute right to grant portions carved out of common lands as benefices to individuals, but could give away a portion of his commoner subjects as well, to the recepients of such benefices. British officers-Scott, Jenkins, Mathie, Brodie and others-made an on-the-spot enquiry into the question of land rights as they stood at the close of the Ahom regime. They were all convinced that, traditionally, the individual ryot had permanent rights only in his bari land,i.e. the homestead and garden lands. It will suffice here if we only quote from what Brodie reported from Nowgong to Jenkins. He used the word 'clan' for a K hel and forwarded his findings in the following w ords: The land appears to have been considered as the property of the different clans... On the death of a pyke his two poorahs did not descend to his son, but revertedlo that portion of the clan of which he was a member. To such a degree was this clan system carried, that a case was one day brought before me, where a girl being left an orphan was sold by her father’s clan, and there seem^ to be no doubt that each clan had the right to sell or give in marriage any female child whose father was a member of it, left without parents or near male relative. I consider lands to have been permanently vested in the clans, and nowhere else excepting the house and garden lands, which I have just said us hereditary in each man's family. But I think it can hardly be doubted that the head of the state had the right to make any grants he pleased.3^

Bogle and Robinson went a step further and concluded that not only the land, but the paik also was the property of the State,36 i.e. the King. Paiks could be given away at his pleasure. However, it should be noted that the donated paik did not become thereby a saleable property, although in many other respects he resembled a slave (bandibeti). He attained the status of a serf bound to the soil, through a transfer of the royal right to receive service from him. Neither were there saleable rights in land in general; particularly, in wet paddy lands. Even if a paik mortgaged his ga-mati or jamma-mali as it was called in Kamrup—what was mortgaged was in fact his right of cultivation only. In all circumstances the obligation of contributing labour, or commutation money in lieu thereof, remained with him and not with the mortgager. This is because the state did not take cognition of the fact of the mortgage.37 Even the hereditary landed propertyhomestead and adjacent garden lands-was unsaleable, as transfer of one's ancestral homestead land to anybody outside the clan was almost unthinkable. In the buranji literature I came across only two oblique

LAND RIGHTS AND SOCIAL CLASSES

51

references which could somehow remotely be associated with the concept of a land purchase. In both the cases, a troubled general declared in disgust that he had already purchased just four cowries' worth of land to provide for the grave.38 This can be dismissed merely as a way of expression, since it did not suggest any real purchase of land. In the absence of a proper money economy, land could not yet become a commodity there till 1826. Hence, land sales took place very rarely, that too only in Kamrup. Vffl Medieval Assamese society was based on a natural economy, with very little of specialization. It did not have any urban centre of the type known to the rest of India at the time. Even the capital was a mere conglomeration of villages within a wall of live bamboo-fencing which enclosed cultivated fields as well.39 Close to a hundred per cent of the people were associated, wholly or partially with land and cultivation. However, the society was stratified into a number of distinct classes. The top secular aristocracy was composed of the seven leading Ahom clans (Satgharia Ahom) who monopolized all important offices. The spiritual aristocracy was constituted of temple priests, goswamis and mahantas of approved satras (abbots of Vaishnava monasteries) and such Brahmans as were favoured with land grants. Besides, there were the vassal rajahs and border chieftains as well as other apaikan chamua of considerable means. All these categories of people had their hereditary landed estates or farms (khat). These were generally worked by bandi-beti and bahatia, but when the A/wMiolders were in office, also by the paiks assigned for their private work. The latter were for them also the source of various specialized services such as oilpressing, boat making, house building etc., and payments in cash or kind in lieu of service as well.40 The farms or khats were mostly developed out of wasteland grants, as in the case of goswamis who were given vast tracts in the five hundred square-mile river island of Majuli. Some had their khats spread all over the State. The king was the biggest of all khat holders and had a network of royal stores all over the country. Besides his own khats, there were khats to maintain the dowager queen, the queen, royal brothers and the princes and princesses along with their respective establishments. Many , others also had their hereditary khats. The nobility-both secular and spiritual-must have been quite rich as is evident from the way they spent. In mid-eighteenth century the

52

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

marriage dowry of a Barphukan's daughter comprised two elephants, ten horses, five hundred buffaloes, one thousand cows, one hundred slaves, three hundred wardrobes, eighteen pieces of gold utensils, eighteen pieces of silver utensils, one gold saddle and several sets of gold and silver jewellery.41 Spiritual lords (prabhu), i.e. the goswamis and mahantas, were not far behind. The inventory of the Mahanta of Moamaria Satra for example, included amongst others ten to twelve khats, four to five thousand buffaloes and eight to ten thousand attendants, besides thousands of tithe-paying adherents, during 175169 42 Immediately after British occupation of Assam, a Brahman of Kamrup was found in possession of fortyfive thousand bighas (about 14,876 acres) of brahmottar land. "A very large proportion of the land and all the best lands," said Bogle in course of his evidence before the Slavery Commission, 1841, "is held by Brahmins who are also principal holders of slaves."43 On the margin of this aristocracy were the apaikan chamua of small means who were freed from the Khels and from obligatory menial or any other service as paiks. The bulk of the people, however, belonged to the paik class who were again classified into two categories-Jfca/wi paik and chamua paik. Both were organized into Khels. But while the former were liable to obligatory manual service of any kind to the state, the latter were permitted to contribute periodically shares of the specialized products oir their skilled services. Many of the chamua khels such as those of goldsmiths, gold washers, braziers, fishermen, oil-pressers, and even farmers were mor^or less like guilds. The bulk of the peasantry were however kanri paiks. The chamua paiks were undoubtedly free men. So were the kanri paiks in so far as their residence at a particular place was not formally obligatory. As long as a paik continued to serve the king for the prescribed period, he was quite free in his movements.Secondly, he had his own homestead and garden lands and thus was independent of any landlord. He could even, collectively with his Khel fraternity, force the change of unpopular petty officers over the K hel44 Above all, his right to a portion of the Khel land for cultivation was indisputable. His gamati was as much a proof of his membership of the society, as it was a privilege. But all said, his condition was worse than a slave's in the later Ahom period, as we shall see in a moment. He could have lived better by bringing more land under the plough in the given context of unlimited supplies of wastelands. But as some one-third or so of his annual labour time was utilized by the State for its own purposes, he could hardly afford to do so. In times of warfare, when the second and

LAND RIGHTS AND SOCIAL CLASSES

53

even the third paik of a got was called to service, the burden on his domestic economy was at its highesL The system of land distribution was responsible for his holding being fragmented. His plot of wet paddy land was not necessarily adjacent to his homestead and garden lands. His dry lands were subject to constant shifting because of difficult weeding, the changeful nature of the river-bed and ethnic habits, and were generally available at a few miles' distance. He had to eke out his living from all these scattered plots of land. Conditions were still worse for some one-fourth to one-third of the mobilized paiks who were assigned as likchou to officers and had to work in the latter's private khats and households.45 Even a slave had better treatment because if he died or escaped, there was loss of property to the master. But it was not so in the case of a likchou who was neither possessed nor fed by the assignee. The likchous cOQtd avoid their unpleasant duties only by compensating the assignees with in-kind or money payments. At the bottom of the social ladder were the bahatia (serf) and the bandi-beti (male and female slaves). Perhaps slightly superior, but within the broadly servile class, were those paiks who were permanently withdrawn from their Khels and attached to the Satras (monasteries) and temples, for providing specific services to them. Such people were known as bhakat when attached to a Satra and, dewalia and paik, when attached to a temple. The temple paiks were entitled to one-and-a half to two puras of land for homesteads.46The servile class had no obligations of any kind towards the king or the state. The household slaves(bandi-beti) could be bought and sold, although the sale of a slave was considered highly discreditable.47Others of the servile class were attached to the soil and could not be generally separated therefrom for sale. The household slaves, bahatias, dewalias, bhakats and temple paiks—all had a kind of security which a kanri paik never had in times of frequent warfare. Because of this, kanri paiks often used to sell themselves to a rich man in contravention of the country's law. The powerful officers also, according to Bogle, at times took advantage of the imbecility of the government to make slaves of the assigned paiks, by usurping their land.4* Lastly, debt-slavery was widespread during the last days of the Ahom rule. Persons often mortgaged themselves for an indefinite periodMortgagers, called bandha were in course of time converted into

TABLE 3.1

Some Land Grants o f 18th Century Assam Date A.D.

1754 1754

1756 1757 1759 1759 1763 1764 1764

Name of donee and total amount of land donated

Nature of land grant

Dipteswar temple (490 puras) Sankhapani Medhi of Sundarikhel Sacra (more than 8 puras)

Devottar

Lakhsminath (60 puras) Dirgheswari Temple (426 puras) Tantrasiromani Bhattacharya & Bros. Narayan Sarma (49 puras) Jagjiu Satra (13 puras) Rajvaidya Dhananjay Sarma (128 puras) Visharad, son of Mahendra Brahman (more than 210 puras)

Brahmottar Devottar Brahmottar

Dharmouar

Other particularsLocationNun donated with the gnat -------

--------

(a) Surplus marshy

*Parganah Pubpar

Many Nil

]and(ubardaiani) 8 puras

much uncertain. Moreover, the yield of ahu rice is small and its quality inferior as compared to sali. Again, experiments have shown that if sali is sown broadcast, its yield decreases by about eleven per cent or so. The third variety of rice, known as bao, is suited to natural marshes and sometimes does not require any ploughing at all before sowing. Bao rice is generally sown broadcast. It matures late and its harvesting time coincides with that of sali. Like ahu, bao also gives per unit of land a lesser yield than sali. Moreover in case of sowing broadcast, the practice associated with ahu and bao, the seed requirement is at least twice as high as that for transplanted sali. Under the circumstances, the spread of sali cultivation, at the cost of the two other varieties of rice, may be taken as a progressive trend in agriculture. It involves crystallization of a large amount of labour into fixed capital. This point

THE XAI MIGRATION AND ITS IMPACT

65

will be taken up again. What now follows is an account of Ahom colonization of Upper Assam and how it encouraged this trend. A h o m C o l o n iz a t io n o f U pper A ssa m

The Ahoms contained themselves in the tract east of the Nam dang river and south of the Dihing for about three hundered years to avoid any serious clashes with the Chutiya and Kachari kingdoms. By far the greatest portion of this habitat was more or less liable to heavy inundations. Hence arose the need to guard the rivers by embankments. Moran and Borahi tribes, however, were subdued and progressively assimilated during this period. The Borahis became altogether extinct as a separate tribe, but a section of the Morans managed to survive in remote jungles of the present district of Dibrugarh as late as the census of 1891. T he valley Shans', says Leach while discussing the culture contacts between Shans and Kachins in Burma, 'ha^p everywhere for centuries past, been assimilating their hill neighbours ' . 7 The same process took place in Upper Assam through the Ahomization of the Moran and Borahi tribes and later, even of sections of the Chutiyas. This went on until the Ahoms themselves, along with those Ahomized, were converted to Hinduism during the period from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. In Ahom as well as Northern Shan language, kha is a contemptuous term meaning 'slave', ’savage’ or 'foreigner'. Autochthons of Upper Assam were described as kha. For example, the Borahi and the Miri (Mishing) tribes were respectively known as kha-lang and kha-kanglai. But the chronicles provide ample instances of a kha becoming an Ahom. Thereby a non-Ahom adopted the Shan (Tai) culture, the very essence of which in the words of anthropologist von Eickstedt, was "association with wet rice cultivation’’.8 The closely allied Moran and Borahi tribes practised shifting culti vation in the thirteenth century. No specific mention of this fact is made in early chronicles. But, if all the scant information available from early and late sources are pieced together, it cannot but lead to this conclusion. They lived in a sparesely-populated wild territory. Their number was estimated by Sukapha’s (1228-68) men at about four thousand in the area explored by the latter. The initial tributes offered to the Ahom conquerors as a token of their submission indicated the backward state of their economy. Their tribute consisted of firewood, a kind of edible tuber, edible arum roots and an edible fern known as dhenkia which are mostly gathered, and not cultivated, to this day. An

66

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

Ahom chronicle makes a mention of even the supply of brinjals from a Moran (Matak) family to Sukapha. But about any tribute from them in the form of rice or paddy, the chronicles are uniformly silent. This however suggests only the existence of a deficient and inferior riceeconomy, and not its total absence amongst the said tribes. For, described as they are by the chroniclers as consumers of rice-beer, they must have produced some rice. As, according to an old chronicle, they were dressed in scant cotton dhotis, it is likely that they produced cotton as well.9 The above reconstructed picture of the primitive agriculture of the Moran and Borahi tribes is corroborated by the evidence of an earlynineteenth-century British administrator. In 1839, Hannay found a section of the Morans of the wild interior still practising shifting cultivation. He observed: T h eir lands are high, and their cultivation is 'ahoo' crop o f rice, once a year, and large crops o f cotton and sugar-cane but on account o f scantiness o f the population, com pared to the extent o f land capable o f cultivation, their villages are scattered and the inhabitants are constantly emigrating to new sites, for the sake o f richer and newer lands. T here is com paratively little tree jungle in consequence o f this system having existed for ages, the jungle being grass and hollow bam boos.'10

The mode of agriculture which survived amongst only a section of the Morans appears to have been the general feature of their economy from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. With progressive Ahomization and later, Hinduization under the teachings of Aniruddhadev the area of shifting cultivation amongst them went on continuously shrinking. At the close of the nineteenth century only 1.5 per cent of the settled areas in the then Dibrugarh subdivision were reported to be under shifting cultivation. But meanwhile the ethnic composition of the population had also substantially changed. The early Morans and Borahis, therefore, appear to have been producers of ahu rice with slash-and-bum methods. They could hardly have any surplus rice over and above their subsistence. As better ricefarmers, the Ahom conquerors devoted themselves to wet rice (salt) cultivation and depended on the conquered for other kinds of tributes and services. Chroniclers credit Sukapha with the establishment of three royal Khats (farm or estate) through reclamation with the labour of the Moran servitors. One of these farms, the Gachikala Khat, was to supply provisions for worship of deities ; the second called BaraKhowa Khat for ancestral rites of the king ; and the third, the Engera Khat, for the royal household.11 On the farms of the Ahom king and his nobles, the autochthons were soon engaged to work as serfs. Such

THE TAI MIGRATION AND ITS IMPACT

67

Assamese words as bahatia and khatowal stand for serfs attached to farms. Upper Assam abounds with such place-names as Madarkhat, Tengakhat, Khatowalgaon, Bahatiyagaon, etc., which are reminiscent of the medieval serfdom. 'Every portion south and north of the Dibroo, with the exception of the Moran tract’, reported Hannay in 1839, ’was occupied by the khatowals of the Rajahs of Assam.’12 By ’Moran tract’ Hannay obviously meant the interiormost region inhabited by the surviving Morans where Ahom administration could hardly penetrate. In Sukapha’s times some of the Moran and Borahi families had to supply fuel-wood to the royal household or to look after the royal gardens. Others were engaged as hewers of wood, cooks, potters, medicine-men, valets, store-keepers and poultry-keepers. The Morans were later organized into several functional groups. One such group supplied the Ahom state with elephants and ivory ; another with wild vegetable dyes ; a third one, with honey. Their very functions suggested that these sections were forest-dwellers. A section of the Morans (Kapahia) dwelling outside forests was entrusted with growing cotton for supply to the ladies of the royal household.13 It may be assumed that the bulk of the Morans and Borahis gradually adopted the wet-rice culture of the migrant Ahoms and merged with the latter in course of a few generations. Only a small section stubbornly clung to their old practice at least till 1839. S o c io l o g y o f C u l t u r a l P r a c t ic e s

A scrutiny of the 1881 census of Assam suggests that almost half of the indigenous population of the valley consisted of non-Hindu and erstwhile tribes who had been converted only in course of the preceding two centuries or so. The Bodo-Kachari ethnic group alone accounted for some forty per cent of the total indigenous population of the Brahmaputra valley in 1881. This ethnic element then, in all likelihood, must have been even more prominent in the medieval times. The Bodo-Kacharis of today are mostly found on submontane tracts and low hills of north-east India. During the medieval times also, this distribution pattern of population was not much different The BodoKacharis preferred to remain at a safe distance from the periodically inundated areas near the Brahmaputra and kept close to the hill-streams. Because of their early initiation to artificial irrigation, they were more independent of the rainfall than others. The narrow valleys of the Kopili, Jamuna and Dhansiri rivers where the annual rainfall is poorest in Assam (only fourtyfive to sixty inches) formed the core of the

68

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

Kachan kingdom during the late Ahom period. But they were also living in heavy-rainfall areas. It appears that at the time of the Ahom immigration the bulk of the Bodo-Kachari and allied tribes were shifting cultivators and farmers of ahu rice. Nonetheless, their farming techniques were superior to those of the Moran and Borahi tribes who were ignorant of artificial irrigation. At the time of Sukapha's exploration of the valley, 'the country round Dihing,' the sparsely-populated habitat of the Morans and Borahis, 'was uncultivated and wild'.14 But it was not so with the Namoang valley then inhabited by the Kacharis. The impressive sight of 3,300 ghats on the river gave Sukapha an idea of the numerous Kachari population in the neighbourhood.15 Their settlement in the upper valley of the Paimali river alone was said to have a population of about 12,000.16 These figures may not be taken at their face value, but they undoubtedly suggest that the early Ahoms were impressed by the numerical strength of their Kachari neighbours. How was this population fed if they were not possessed of an agricultural practice superior to that of the less numerous Borahis and Morans ? By the thirteenth century, some Kachari communities appear to have already developed their peculiar form of irrigated rice cultivation in the submontane regions. There is an oblique reference in an old Assamese chronicle to the damming of a hill-stream by a cattle-owning Kachari tribe in the thirteenth century. The chief of the Borahi tribe is recorded to have complained to Sukapha as follows: 'The Paimali river has emerged out of the mountain. It does not flow since the Kacharis began to wash their cattle and pigs (there). '17 The complaint appears to have been against the same Kachari practice, as is found today, of damming a hill-stream several miles above the point at which the water-supply is required for the rice fields. Even today in areas inhabited by Bodo-Kachari tribes, several villages often combine to construct dongs (irrigation channels) up to several miles long. A dong is constructed to lead water from above the dam to a particular area where rice fields are situated. It was the irrigated rice cultivation of the Kachari tribe which laid the basis of their early slate formation. But their knowledge of irrigation and of domestication of cattle did not necessarily mean that they were using ploughs, nor did it mean that a large number of the K? haris had taken to settled agriculture. All evidence is to the contrary. Around 1809, for example, the Kacharis of Sidli and Bijni were still hoe cultivators. The Kachari Communities constantly retreated in the early decades of their confrontation with the Ahom

THE TAI MIGRATION AND ITS IMPACT ♦

69

immigrants without much resistance. This fact is perfectly in line with the general migratory habit of all Bodo-Kachari tribes who have been seen to leave old settlements for new ones at the slightest disturbance even in recent times. The thirteenth-century Kachari community of Paimali valley also did not hesitate to leave their irrigated sites on the mere approach of the Ahoms.18 They did not behave like a stable, settled population. Hence probably the Kacharis did not generally use the plough in the thirteenth century. Hoe cultivation as well as shifting plough cultivation coexisted almost with equal force in the nineteenth century amongst various Bodo-Kachari tribes of the valley. This can be firmly said on the evidences of Buchanan-Hamilton (1807-14), Fisher (1833), Hodgson (1847), Dalton (1872) and others.19 The current agricultural practices of the Apatanis of Arunachal and the Khasi tribes of Meghalaya demonstrate that fairly efficient wet-rice cultivation, transplanted or sown, could be carried on even with hoes.20 The Meches, a Bodo-Kachari tribe of Assam-Bengal border,were reported in 187S to 'go in for artificial irrigation in a surprising manner' and yet 'find the proximity of permanent cultivation not congenial to their own habits.' They were in that year still undergoing transition from hoe culture to the use of ploughs through contacts with their more advanced neighbours21, the Rajbansis (Koch) who were earlier converts to Hinduism from the same Bodo-Kachari stock. So in the early years of British administration in Assam most of the various Bodo-Kachari communities of the valley were either using hoes or were passing through a transition from hoe to plough. They were canying on shifting cultivation in some form or other. The only exceptions to this were thr well-settled Kachari villages of Upper Assam who had adopted the plough and sali rice culture side by side with ahu quite early. So it will not be incorrect to say that the use of plough, if any, by the Bodo-Kachari people in the thirteenth century was insignificant Even when the plough was adopted, it did not mean an end to the system of shifting cultivation. Their rice economy was dominated by ahu crop, and ahu lands were suited to shifting cultivation. On the other hand, the scope of cultivating wet-rice in their submontane habitat was extremely limited by the topographical conditions. Most of the undulating lands in such regions—the faringati or dry crop land—required fallowing after every three years or so of continuous cultivation. Hence, the habit of shifting cultivation stubbornly persisted under conditions of land abundance. This point may be further elaborated. Slope is an important factor in the cultivation of rice. Wet-rice grows on those lands which can

70

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

either be artificially flooded from the adjacent streams or be reduced to a dead level so that it can retain the rain-water deposited. In natural conditions most of the lands in the submontane and the riverine belts of the valley are not suited to wet rice. It is ahu rice which is grown on such lands. But much of the lands on which ahu crop is raised, as observed by W. Robinson (1841), could be converted into rupit (i.e. transplanted salí) land by careful husbandry and paying attention to levelling and draining'.22 In this respect, the Ahoms had a definite superiority over their neighbours. The Bodo-Kacharis, having a preference for the submontane tract, did not undertake reclamation of the low-lying flat lands of the ewe of the valley. Nor did they take any particular care to level up their undulating or sloping fields. But the Ahoms did both. They had better organization and better iron implements to do the job.23 They had the habit of taking much care to levelling up farmsites. As an example, a casual mention in a chronicle of such levelling-up activity in the royal farm Jaykhamdang in the early seventeenth century may be cited.24 It was during the several centuries of Ahom rule that much of Upper Assam was turned into a flat level land. 'In this country they make the surface of field and gardens so level', wrote Shihabuddin Talish around 1663, 'that the eye cannot find the least elevation in it up to the extreme horizon*25 The Ahom administration had built hundreds of miles of embankments with a view to increasing the extent of wet rice cultivation. We may now conclude that in the thirteenth century while wet rice culture was traditional with the Ahoms, the tribal population of the valley including the Bodo-Kacharis, were associated with the ahu crop. Under slash-and-bum methods, it could have been grown even without hoeing or ploughing, like 'hill rice' in some hilly areas of today. But we have no exact knowlege in this respect. In later times ploughs were extensively used on the ahu fields, but under a shifting type of cultivation as described by Butler. This tribal tradition of shifting cultivation was continued for long obviously also by those Hindu agricultural communities who were converts from the Bodo-Kachari tribes. Even their advanced neighbours did supplement their settled agriculture with this form of cultivation in Lower Assam. This happened despite the age-old process of Hinduization which involved a gradual economic transformation of the tribes. The process of acculturation was not really a mere one-way traffic.

THE TAI MIGRATION AND ITS IMPACT

71

Shifting cultivation goes with the ahu, and not with the sali variety of rice. Sali is transplanted while ahu and bao are generally sown broadcast. Under conditions of dong irrigation of the Bodo-Kacharis, ahu is also transplanted. However, transplanted ahu or kharma -ahu is cultivated to a limited extent Ahu is sometimes sown broadcast even on wet lands. It is then called asra-ahu. But both kharma-ahu and asraahu are less productive than dhulia-ahu which is sown in dry pulverised fields. Cultivation of ahu, however, is almost universal with all agricultural communities over a greater part of the valley under geographic compulsion. Only its extent varies from area to area. But the geographic compulsions as such are not insurmountable, as was pointed out by Robinson. All these details are given here to facilitate the understanding of the sociological background of the relevant cultural practices , even at the risk of repetition. Table 4.1 suggests one interesting thing. As one moves from the district of Sibsagar, the cradle and core of the Ahom dominion in the eastern extremity of the valley—towards the west or towards the north— one finds that the importance of sali in the total rice crop goes on decreasing. This is no doubt largely a result of the given topographical conditions. But apparently the sociological factors also had a role. Topographically, the valley can be divided into three eastwest belts : (a) the submontane tracts, (b) the riverine tracts of the Brahmaputra, and (c) the low-lying fields dotted with elevated housing and garden sites in the flat core of the valley. These three belts pass through all the relevant districts. Yet the percentages of the total rice lands under sali in the Sibsagar and Lakhimpur districts are the highest, being ninetytwo per cent and eightyfive per cent respectively, as of 1901-2 (see Table 4.1). It was in these districts that about ninety-four per cent of the Ahom population of the valley was concentrated in the last century. In Sibsagar subdivision alone, for which we have no breakdown data and where the Ahoms formed an absolute majority, the percentage of sali to all rice lands was still higher, may be, almost one hundred per cent. Of the two subdivisions of the then Lakhimpur district, Dibrugarh was adjacent to the subdivision of Sibsagar. Dibrugarh had 98‘5 per cent of its settled areas under permanent cultivation while North Lakhimpur, situated on the other side of the Brahmaputra, had only 61 per cent of its settled areas under such cultivation. North Lakhimpur, like Kamrup and Goalpara, had hardly any Ahom population till the census of 1881.26 Mr

72

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM TABLE 4.1

Rice Economy o f Assam : 1901-2 __________________________ (Area in 1000 acres) Total District

Goalpara Kamrup Darrang Nowgong Sibsagar Lakhimpur

Acreage under each variety o f rice

Estimated normal returns in lb. per acre

acreage iwider Rice

A hu+

Bat?

Soli

Ahu .

Bao

Soli

n.a. 420 195 144 308 127

n.a. 124(30) 36(18) 42(29) 23(7) 17(13)

n.a. 85 8 30

n.a. 211(50)

850 800 850 800 750 800

n.a. 650 n.a. 700 n.a. n.a.

1000 900 1000 1000 800 1000

2 2

151(77) 72(50) 283(92) 108(85)

Figures within brackets denote percentages of total rice acreage of respective districts. * 67 per cent of all bao was sown in Kamrup, and only 3 per cent in Lakhimpur and Sibsagar districts. +Ahu in Sibsagar district was largely cultivated by the Miri (Mishing) tribe on Majuli island. SOURCE : An Account o f the Province o f Assam 1901-82 [40] pp. 23 and 26.

In Darrang seventy-seven per cent and in Nowgong and Kamrup fifty per cent of all ricelands were under sali (see Table 4.1 ). This distributional pattern of the rice crop is significant from the point of view of economic history. The significance lies in the fact that the yield of sali is fifty to two hundred pounds higher than that of ahu or bao rice per acre of cultivated land (Table 4 ' 1). Further, sali cultivation involves, more than 50 percent economy in the seed-rate and even a greater economy in the use of land. It is no surprise that the salioriented agriculture of the Ahoms in Upper Assam yielded a higher surplus than the largely ahv-oriented cultivation of others. I have tried to establish that in medieval times the Kacharis and other tribals by and large practised shifting cultivation of ahu and were more used to sowing broadcast then to transplanting. But sali cultivation with its technique of transplantation gradually spread amongst them through their deepening contacts with the process of Sanskritization from the west and with the expanding Ahom administration from the east. As to the agrarian evolution of the Chutiya tribe nothing can be firmly stated. The Chutiya kingdom was situated in a heavy-rainfall area (100 to 120 inches) criss-crossed with shallow hill-streams. They came

THE TAI MIGRATION AND ITS IMPACT

73

under Hindu influence even before they were conquered by the Ahoms. Most probably, like the allied Kachan tribe, they had also initially an ahu rice culture. We have already mentioned that even as late as the close of the last century, 39 per cent of the settled areas of the then North Lakhimpur subdivision—part of their original habitat— accounted for shifting cultivation. There is no tangible evidence that the Chutiyas had any ingenuity to overcome the topographical compulsion in earlier times.27 It may, therefore, be assumed that they were more or less in the same stage of agricultural development as that of the Kacharis at the time of Ahom migration. However, they reached the stage of state formation earlier than the Kacharis. A h o m c o n t r ib u t io n t o t h e R ic e c u l t u r e o f A ss a m

To say that wet rice (sali) cultivation was the essence of Shan culture does not mean that it was not there in Assam before. The Brahmaputra valley was already a rich rice bowl supporting the big Kamarupa empire of olden times. Such an empire could not have been possible without a substantial economic surplus from its rice fields, Sali cultivation in the Assam plains was at least as old as the process of Sanskritization itself. There is ample evidence for that. But in contrast to Upper Assam under the Ahoms, Lower Assam had never such extensive community investments in the form of man-made embankments and dykes as could have converted much of ahu and boo lands into sali fields. In 1841 Robinson observed that much valuable land there—then covered by reeds or abandoned owing to periodic floods—might be recovered by adopting a general system of bunds. ■Nearly every stream in Upper Assam' he wrote 'was anciently bunded'28 Wet-rice culture in Lower Assam was limited by the extent of the flat terrain. The growing Sanskritization did not prove to be a factor encouraging either lift irrigation—it was not so necessary in rain-rich Assam—or water control by large-scale dyke-building. Fifty per cent of rice lands in 1901-2, were under ahu or bao crops (Table 4.1) and shifting cultivation survived in the former district of Kamrup, the ancient seat of civilization. 29 Obviously the assimilated tribal elements within the Hindu society there were still obstinately clinging to some of their traditional habits. The Ahom rule of about two hundred years there (17th-18th centuries), frequently interrupted as it was, did not obviously have an impact on the local rice economy. But in Upper Assam the story was different. From the very beginning the Ahom state treated all wet-rice lands, but not the other lands and housesites, as a common national pool. From out of this

Gaurisagar

o Charingiagaon

Fort............. 'V C iS I Tank............ [□ Rivers.......... Villages........ Outer mud embankment of Gargaon Roads.......... o

L.

o %tTH]77??C

o f T»mn^ 2 Miles -I

D»'

TABLE 4.2

Distribution o f Indigenous Population Groups in Assam Proper: 1901 Indigenous population groups Bodo-Kachari tribes uninflu­ enced by Hinduism or in the process of conversion (Kachan, Mech, Lalung, Hojai, Garo, Rabha, M ah alia, etc.) Miri and Mikir tribes Moran Koch/Rajbangsi Chutiya* Ahom and other Shan elements Kalita Dom/Nadial Kaibarta Kewat/(Mahisya) Kayastha Brahman Ganak (Daivajna) Saha/Sunri Jugi/Katani Other indigenous tribes/castes Total indigenous population (1608,257) Indigenous population as % of total district population (1891)

Sibsaear No. %

17,656 16,723 1,676 25,808 54,587 99,129 34,475 23,564 587 20,615 3,442 12,177 2.081 475 8,622 11.839 333,456 73 8%

(5 3) (5 0) (05) (77) (164) (29 7) (103)

(251)

(100)

Lakhimpur No. %

24,222 18,640 4,130 6,243 17,206 50,410 4,694 12,185 522 2,457 1,088 2,465 170 212 3,162 6,138

(157) (121) (27) (40) (11*2) (327) (30)

153,944

(100)

(186)

60'5%

D a m n s* * No. %

88,624 5,111

(36 7) (25)

-------

Noweone % No.

65,063 48,124

(209) (160)

(225) (1'5) (1'3) (80)

240.985

(100)

(275)

78 2%

126,704 13,813

(23 2) (25)

-------

-------

54,338 3,546 3,136 19,470 7,988 246 14,239 1,301 4,741 8,121 574 19,957 9,593

Kamruo No. %

49,907 10,468 5,265 24,034 26,223 97 20,553 2,656 7,430 348 1,009 22,076 27,171

(160) (3 4) (1*7) (77)

310,424

(100)

(343)

90'2%

99,973 1,036 475 129,939 14,826 22,468 37,239 4,207 24,738 5,967 16,423 17,484 34.926

(183) (02)

545,218

(100)

-------

c22'7)

(331)

85 9%

Figures within brackets denote the population of each group as percentages of the indigenous population of the respective districts. * The Chutiya community was so much influenced by the Ahoms that many of them described themselves as Ahom-Chutiya, thus creating a problem for the census enumerators. ** Of the old Darrang District, Tezpur subdivision might be taken as part of Upper Assam, and Mangaldai subdivision as part of Lower Assam. The Bodo-Kacharis of the district were mainly concentrated in the latter subdivision. [40] SOURCE¡Estimate by B. C. Allen in Subsidiary Table-3, Assam Census Report, 1901 [40] pp, 29-30 (Adapted).

THE TAI MIGRATION AND ITS IMPACT

77

The Ahoms also showed remarkable wisdom in avoiding the heavily flooded banks of the Brahmaputra, while selecting the site for their settlements. Although the Brahmaputra contains a large quantity of matter in suspension, its overflow deposits only the sand in Assam, while the rich silt is carried off by the strong currents to the plains of Bengal. Sukapha made a wise choice of the banks of the river Santak for settling down because he 'found that equal quantity of the water of the river weighed twice that of the Dikhou river.33 It is from there that the Ahoms spread themselves all over the low-lying flat plains of Sibsagar and adjacent areas. In the seventeenth century even organized colonies of mixed population were planted at state initiative at far ends of the dominion.34 In this way their wet rice culture was spread in new areas. Finally, it may be noted that one of the dozens of sali varieties in Assam today is known as Ahom sali. It is one of the most highyielding varieties, and was developed recently as a selected seed strain (Strain S.L. 70) with an yield of more than 3,000 lbf.per acre, in suitable conditions, by the Department of Agriculture, Assam. It might have originated amongst the Ahom cultivators, but the supporting evidence is yet inconclusive. Another glutinous variety of sali, known as bora, used to be produced in one of the three royal farms of Sukapha even as far back as the thirteenth century.35 The Ahom word for this rice, khao-nung, is almost the same as the Thai word, khao-nieo, in Thailand.36 This indicates early association of this variety in Assam with the Ahoms. Taking all facts and circumstances into consideration, one cannot but conclude that the Ahom migration and their administration were primarily responsible for the spread of sali cultivation in the eastern half of the Brahmaputra valley. The high yield of sali crop enabled the initial nine thousand or so of Ahom population to multiply rapidly by ensuring enough supply of food. By the middle of the eighteenth century their number increased to about two lakhs, i.e. to an estimated nine per cent or so of the total population in their dominion. The existence of a substantial surplus helped the Ahom state not only to subjugate the Chutiya, Kachari and Koch powers in the Brahmaputra valley, but also to confront successfully the Mughal invaders for a prolonged period during the seventeenth century. Their capacity to build up a network of embankment works for controlling the distribution of flood and rain water in a desirable way over a considerable area was the key factor on which their rice economy thrived.

78

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

S um mary

Of the three varieties of rice~ahu, bao and sali—grown in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam sali is the most productive. Its yield is the highest per unit of cultivated land as well as per unit of seed input. It is associated with the technique of transplantation and requires lowlying level fields to hold rain or flood water. The production of sali therefore, is limited to the extent of such terrain. In contrast to the valley’s relatively higher lands (faringati) suitable for dry crops, the low-lying level lands are annually rejuvenated by silt-rich floods. Consequently they require no fallowing. Any increase in the extent of such lands for sali cultivation, is therefore an indicator of agricultural progress. Wet rice culture is traditional with the Ahoms. Their migration to Assam from the east in the thirteenth century and subsequent expansion of their rule positively encouraged the extension of sali cultivation in Upper Assam. They built with communal labour a system of massive dykes and embankments unparallelled elsewhere in India. Through this device, the distribution of flood water was controlled in such a manner as to transform much of existing ahu and bao lands into fields suitable for the sali crop. In other words, Ahom initiative and administrative measures progressively provided for huge public investments in land improvement. As one moves from the cradle and core of the erstwhile Ahom dominion in its eastern extremity towards the west or to the north one finds that the importance of sali in the rice crop pattern of the valley goes on diminishing. This suggests some correlation, though not measurable, between the influence of the Ahoms and the importance of sali in the valley's crop-pattem. Lower Assam where Ahom influence had been the least both politically and sociologically, never had there been any system of massive embankments and dykes as found in Upper Assam. This is certainly one of the reasons why sali crop today is more widespread in Upper Assam than in Lower Assam. Had the topographical limitations of the rice lands in Lower Assam been partially overcome as in the Ahom sphere of influence, sali cultivation would have been widespread there too.

THE TAI MIGRATION AND ITS IMPACT

79

Notes 1.

According to Reverend Endle the Bodot Kachari, Mech, Rabha, Dimasa, Hojai, Hajong, Lalung and Garo tribes have so much in common that they may be grouped together as the Bodo-Kacharis. The Chutiya, Moran and Borahi tribes are also supposed to bear close affinities to the group: Endle, The Kacharis [142], 5.

2.

Sharma, Inscriptions o f Ancient Assam [2], 159.

3.

Fitzsimmons, ed., Thailand [143], 59-60.

4.

For a brief comparative vocabulary, Grierson, Linguistic Survey o f India, Vol. 2 [155], 127-40.

5.

Quote from Ahom-Buranji, tr Barua [23], 10. Emphasis ours.

6.

Quote from Butler, Sketch o f Assam [132], 21-3 (emphasis ours). It was the use . of the plough which distinguished this form of shifting cultivation from what is known as swidden or jhum cultivation. The latter is associated with such tools as the dao, hoe and digging stick.

7.

Leach, Political Systems o f Highland Burma [168],

8.

Von Eickstedt quoted ibid, 37.

9.

Relevant data in this paragraph are collated from Asam Buranji,cdBhuyan [11], 5 ; Ahom-Buranji [23], 38 ; Dhekial-Phukkan, Asam Buranji [22], 49 ; Deodhai Asam Buranji [12], 100-102.

10.

Quote from Hannay to Jenkins, Sadiya, 4 April 1839, Foreign Pol. Proc. [35], 14 August 1839, No. 105. Emphasis ours.

11.

Tamuli-Phukan, Asam Buranji Sar [20], 10. The mention of sali cultivation by chroniclers goes as far back as Sukapha’s rule (1228-68). Deodhai Asam Buranji, [ 12],

12.

41.

8.

Quote from Hannay to Jenkins, Sadiya. 4 April 1839, Foreign Pol. Proc. [35],

13.

Endle [142], 87 ; Hannay, JASB, VoL 7 [94], 675.

14.

Quotes from Wade, An Account o f Assam [24], 18.

15.

Ahom-Buranji [23], 46.

16.

Deodhai Asam Buranji [12], 101.

17.

For quote, ibid, 100.

18.

Ibid, 101.

80

19.

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

Buchanan Hamilton, An Account o f Assam, First Compiled in 7507-74(38],73 ; extract from his account of Rangpur reproduced in Census of 1951, West Bengal District Handbooks, Jalpaiguri [105), cxxxvi to cxxxix ; Fisher to Robertson on Dharampur, Cachar, 12 March 1833, Foreign Pol. Proc. [35), 6 June 1833, No. 107 ; Hodgson, Essay the F irst...[82], 146-7, 154-6 and 180 ; Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology o f Bengal [139], 81 ; Ashley Eden’s report dated 1864, Political Missions to Bootam [69], 61 ; Baden-Powell, Land Systems o f British India, Vol. 3 [75], 417-18.

20.

Furer-Haimendorf, The Apatanis and Their Neighbours [146], 13 ; Gurdon, The K hasis [162], 39-40.

21.

Col. Money, Deputy Commissioner of Jalpaiguri on the Mech, quoted in Census of 1951, West Bengal District Handbooks, Jalpaiguri [105], Appendix IV.

22.

Quote from Robinson, A Descriptive Account o f Assam [183], 88.

23.

See above "Land Rights and Social Classes" in this volume.

24.

Asam Buranji Sar [20], 28. A sloping site might have been found all right for settlement by its former occupants, but not so by the newcomers, the Ahoms. This is suggested by the extant Tai place-name nazira (na=field ; zi=slanting ; ra* much). Sarbananda Rajkumars note, LikPhan Tai, Vol. I [206], 83.

25.

Quote from Talish, Fathiya iibriya, tr. Sarkar; JB O R Syol. 1 [99], 179-94.

26.

Census of India, 1881, Assam Census Report [104], Ch. VI, 65. For the extent of shifting and permanent cultivation Allen, Assam Prov. District Gazetteers [101], VD3— 148 and 251.

27.

Ibid, 251.

28.

Robinson, [183], 222.

29.

For example, in the then subdivision of Barpeta, 50 per cent of the settled areas were under shifting plough cultivativation. However, as a result of large-scale immigration from East Bengal, the subdivision later recorded a 700 per cent increase in permanent cultivation during 1911-30. Report, Assam Prov. Banking Enquiry Committee, 1929-30, Vol. 1 [65], 23, Allen, Assam Prov. District Gazetteers [101], 199.

30.

Quote from Robinson [183], 317. Emphasis ours.

THE TAI MIGRATION AND ITS IMPACT

81

31.

Jenkins to Secy., Pol. Dept,. 22 July 1833, Foreign Pol. Proc. [35], 11 Feb. 1835, No. 90, Ptra 53. Emphasis ours.

32.

For example, Asam Buranji Sar [20],17,23,26-7,32 and 41.

33.

Ahom-Buranji [23], 46.

34.

Deodhai Asam Buranji [12], 70,130-1; Barbarua, TungkJmngia Buranji [15], 23.

35.

Asam Buranji Sar [20], 10.

36.

Pendleton, Thailand [182], 159.

5 From Tribalism to Feudalism: 1600-1750 E a r l y S t a t e F o r m a t io n : P r e - A h o m R o o t s

Surely the Ahom political system was not a wholesale importation, nor was it entirely an autonomous growth in Assam. It did have certain pre-Ahom elements, taken from the civilization rooted in the region during the days of the ancient State of Kamarupa. While highlighting the political changes under the Ahom rule, continuity as a factor is not to be lost sight of altogether, though this aspect is not elaborated hoe. While assimilation to Indo-Aryan ways of life in the Ahom dominion was slow in the three initial centuries, it reached a turning point by the beginning of the sixteenth century. Thereafter, the story was one of a relatively rapid assimilation and fusion in respect of language, caste, religion, technology, etc., even though the Ahom state continued to maintain many of its distinctive features. Assamese society, though a segment of Indian society at large, exhibited in course of its evolution several distinctive features not shared by the latter. The multi-caste village community based on jajamani relations was unknown to Assam. There was no urbanization at all. The number of specialized castes remained extremely limited and the division of labour minimal. Weaving of cloth was generally carried on in all households by women irrespective of their caste status. The revenue system was based on a corvee payable to the state. Besides, the use of slaves and serfs in agriculture was of more than marginal importance. All these distinctive features indicate the continually inhibiting influence of tribalism on the evolution of medieval Assamese society. Several tribal state formations1 alongside of a fragmented political system known as the bhuyan-raj flourished during the thirteenthsixteenth centuries. The term bhuyan or bhaumik is etymologically

FROM TRIBALISM TO FEUDALISM : 1600-1750

83

derived from bhumi meaning land and signified a landowner or landcon trailer. A caste-differentiated Assamese-speaking people under the Bhuyans formed the core of the society and coexisted with numerous tribal settlements representing diverse languages and uneven levels of cultural development The Bhuyans often grouped themselves together locality-wise either under the hegemony of an overlord (bar-raja) or formed a confederacy (bara-bhuyan) headed by a chief (shiromcmi) Bhuyan. Petty kings craved for the tide of 'Kameskwar' (Lord of Kamarupa) and still more for the tide of "panchaGaudeskwar" (lord of the five Gaudas). 'When such a claimant was strong enough, the neighbouring Bhuyans recognized him as their liege-lord and paid personal homage at his court. Otherwise they remained independent Most of the Bhuyans were Kayastha by caste; others belonged to Brahman, Daivajna and Kalita (a dominant peasant caste) castes. Some were of local royal descent; others, particularly the Kayasthas, were often migrant-adventurers from north India. Various surnames used by them such as bhuyan, giri, ray, dalai (dalapati) and khan sugget that they were a class of estate-holders at the village level. They based their claims on erstwhile royal grants of land along with serfs, and/or on their own armed prowess which was needed to protect the villages from frequent tribal incursions.2 Thus the Bhuyans, big and small, appear to have constituted a squirearchy which wielded hereditary political and economic power at the intermediate and grass-root levels. Apparendy the hierarchy of the power structure was at times vertically quite deep in the following order; pancha-gaudeshwar (Lord of five Gaudas) kameskwar (Lord of Kamrupa) bar-raja or chhota-raja bar-bhuyan or shiromani bhuyan (mahagrameshwar) sa.ru (minor) bhuyan or grameshwar (Lord of the village) paik (free peasantry) and bandi-betUbahatia (slaves/serfs) Even after their suppression by the expanding Koch and Ahom states, the Bhuyans did not lose their local influence and were absorbed into the lower echelons of the new machinery set up for corvee collection (in the capacity of kakati, gomostha, thakuria, bara and barua), for they constituted the traditional elite having a formal education in arithmetic, the use of arms and scriptures (ankat, shastrat, shastrat pargat). The syllabus of this formal education generally included lessons in vyakarana, bharata, purana, bhagavata, nyaya, tarka and kayasthika or kaitheli-vidya (i.e. arithmetic and mensuration). Shankardev and Madhavadev—both Vaishnava preceptors of Kayastha

84

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

and Bhuyan descent, had this kind of education. So had Shankardev's son.3 The Bhuyans in their heyday were mostly followers of the Shakti cult Together with Shaivism and secretly practised Tantric-Buddhist magic cults, it dominated the Assamese religious sphere. The heterogeneous local tribal deities, mother-goddess cults and fertility rites were all absorbed in the growing Hindu pantheon. The fragmented semi-tribal political system and embryonic feudal relations within a tribe were projected in the religious thought of Assam. Thus the cult of the Ahoms integrated existing lord-vassal relations with such concepts as heaven and earth, spirits and ancestors.3 The rudimentary Ahom state had at its base many agricultural village (ban) settlements, each made up of a certain number of big or small families belonging to different family-groups (foid). Each such settlement had a well-defined territory including wet rice fields, wastelands, forest tracts and house sites. Several such settlements together formed an intermediate administrative unit or domain with one of the village settlements as the headquarters (che) of the noblemen governing it. At the apex of the several domains was the king who appointed the nobles to their respective offices and could dismiss them when necessary. The king could himself be removed by the council of great nobles. The decentralized nature of the early Ahom state apparatus was reflected in the Tai term for political rule : kin mung kin ban mung, i.e, 'to eat country, to eat village’. By the term mung was meant either the kingdom as a whole or any of its constituent chiefs' domains. It originally signified a chiefs village or town governing the surrounding territory. At the ban level all wet rice lands were communal property, but were separately cultivated by family units. The holders of wet rice lands had to render service to the community, which in practice meant service to its nobles holding office at the state and village levels for purposes of defence and public works. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century there was a complete absence of minted money and the extent of trade was negligible. Thus the state organization had a peculiar quasi-feudalistic structure. NeoVaishnavism with its emphasis on a monistic world view, pacifism and equality of all before God, could not easily penetrate such a fragmented society until a basis was created for its further consolidation.

FROM TRIBALISM TO FEUDALISM : 1600-1750

85

G r o w t h o f t h e A h o m S t a t e a n d it s F e u d a l iz a t io n

If the sixteenth century dominated by the expanding Koch kingdom was a formative period for Assamese society, the next one century and a half was the period of its steady consolidation under the Ahoms. The extension of plough at the cost of hoe cultivation and of wet at the expense of dry ricelands alongside a general agricultural expansion—a process that was going on for some time in Upper Assam—led to a rapid increase in the surplus produced. The consequent rise in population provided the Ahoms with the material base for their further economic and political expansion. Fire-arms, introduced in the area first in the 1530s, were increasingly put to use and, by the sixteen sixties excellent gunpowder, matchlocks and cannon were manufactured locally. Coins were for the first time struck by the Ahom, Koch and Kachari kings during the years 1555-1648, though on a very modest scale. Thus the earliest extant Koch coins bear a date equivalent to A.D. 1555, but nearly a century passed before the first batch of extant Ahom coins were struck. The continued use of cowries and Mughal coins was supplemented from the mid - seventeenth century onwards by frequent local minting. This indicated a slow growth of the market in Upper Assam. In 1662 there was only one narrow bazar road in the Ahom capital, and the only traders in that bazar were the betel-leaf sellers. 'It was not the practice', reported Shihabuddin Talish, 'to buy and sell food in the market-place. The inhabitants store in their house one year's supply of food of all kinds and are under no necessity to buy or sell any eatable'.6 However, by 1739 we find prices of various foodstuff being quoted in a copper plate grant. This suggests a change in the situation, which is corroborated by the fact that the Ahom mint was constantly at work, and silver coins of smaller denomination were being increasingly issued from the close of the seventeenth century.7 During the seventeenth century some new crops such as tobacco, chilly and pineapples8 and new crafts such as brass metal casting were introduced. To meet the needs of the expanding population salt and saltpetre had to be increasingly imported from Mughal India mainly against the export of forest products, mustard-seeds, inferior gold extracted from sand-washing and muga silk. Surplus rice, dried fish and handloom manufactures of the plains were offered in exchange for raw cotton, lump iron, rock-salt and forest products from the surrounding hills . Traders of Lower Assam carried on trade by river within and beyond Assam on a modest scale during the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries.

86

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

The basic structure of the Ahom state was undergoing slow changes towards a centralization of the corvee and political authority. The man­ power available for rendering service was of two broad categories : (i) chamua paik, i.e., those hable to render non-manual service or allowed to contribute a share of their produce in lieu thereof and (ii) kanri paik, i.e., those liable to render manual service as ordinary soldiers and labourers. Both categories were grouped in manageable divisions (dagi), further grouped village-wise and/or function-wise according to convenience. The paiks came in rotation for active service in their respective units.9 Three or four of them, all presumably belonging to an extended family or at least common neighbourhood, were expected to complete between them a man-year of unpaid service. This is evident from the fact that a man-power census was taken in 1510 and that the royal demand for corvee during Suklenmung's reign (1539-52) was set at ’one man for every four (e-poa) per household'. However, the system had its loose ends. ’Some Ahoms complied with, some did not. Only the conquered subjects', a chronicler commented, 'perform whatever work is given to them'.10 Obviously the rudimentary state as an organ of coercion vis-a-vis the dominant tribe was underdeveloped in the sixteenth century. The militia or the man-power pool was made up of all adult males, Ahoms as well as non-Ahoms, in the sixteen-to-sixty age-group with the exception of the members of the nobility, priests, slaves and attached serfs. The tribal Jhum cultivators of frontier tracts were also generally excluded. The militia constituted the army in times of war. In times of peace it was engaged in various public works such as dambuilding, land-reclamation and water control; it was also in part made available to the royal family and the office-holding nobility for private work on their big farms. Those kanri paiks whose unpaid service was thus allotted to the office-holders—the latter received no salaries—were called lik'chou (personal retainers). Every household customarily possessed three types of land : (i) a homestead plot surrrounded by a garden and bamboo groves, held as private property; (ii) dry crop lands reclaimed at private initiative and (iii) a portion of the communally-held wet rice lands, subject to redistribution from time to time. The possession of the third category of land alone was linked to the paik service to the community. Evidently wet rice lands were distributed after providing for the private demesnes of the chiefs, as was the medieval Tai practice in Vietnam.11 The distribution of this residue was egalitarian in the sense that the same amount of wet rice-land was given to each adult male i.e., paik,

FROM TRIBALISM TO FEUDALISM : 1600-1750

87

as is evident from later practice on record. Forests, marshes and wastelands constituted common land to be jointly shared by all. The militia attached to the king, to members of his family and to other chiefs continued to be loosely organized till about the end of the sixteenth century. An individual derived his right to land not from the king representing the superimposed state, but presumably from his immediate village community (ban) headed by a chief. His service obligation to the state, therefore, was a transferred obligation which he originally owed to his ban. As such, the ban still acted as some sort of a restraint on the centralized authority. This is evident from a couple of recorded cases. In the mid-sixteenth century an Ahom householder was able to resist successfully royal encroachment on his land even for such a purpose as the founding of a capital city.12 About a hundred years thereafter king Pratap Singha who had a few paternal fields in village Revati, had to conciliate the Ahom villagers with a feast and gifts of clothes to get additional lands for further extension of his farm there.13 It was the sudden political expansion of the Ahoms into the relatively more advanced areas of Koch-Hajo as well as a demographic expansion that hastened certain significant reforms during the first half of the seventeenth century to strengthen the state apparatus. A fresh man-power census was undertaken, several new administrative-military offices were created and above all the militia was reorganized into wellknit divisions of six thousand persons each, now called khels. Many functional khels were also created. These were subdivided into units of thousand, hundred and twenty. The khel system was a remodelling of what existed rather than an innovation. The registered paik's customary right to hold a piece of wet rice land was now strictly limited to a prescribed norm of two puras or 2'66 acres per paik. His obligatory state service continued to be three or four months in rotation. He could enjoy his allotment (ga-mati i.e. body land) as before, free of any other taxes. But for wet lands over and above this norm he had to pay now a tax generally in kind (palpasa). To measure land for this purpose a standard measuring rod was introduced for the first time.14 Thorough land surveys, as in Mughal India, were undertaken in the 1680s and were completed for the whole state by 1751. A number of skilled surveyors from Bengal migrated to Assam and settled in service there during these years. The khel-v/ise organization of the people coexisted with the parallel village organization. Thus around 1830 Darrang had 147 villages organized into 39 khels and Naduar had-123 villages organized into 45 khels.15 Villages in Assam however were not nucleated; they were

88

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

generally hamlet-type linear settlements along river banks. The imposition of a limit to a paik's tax-free holding of wet-rice lands suggests that the old villages were already facing the problem of scarcity of land owing to overcrowding and that the state was facing a growing need for resources in forms other than labour-rent. This is also indicated by the introduction of a small toll (katal) payable in cowries or in kind on fisheries, muga silk farms, markets and fairs, ferries and frontier customs barriers (phat) early in the seventeenth century.16 The surplus population, once identified, was redistributed in a planned manner. Individuals were separated from their respective households in old villages and settled in colonies in desolate areas. This helped to break up the clans and broaden the social and territorial base of the Ahom state. Attempts were made on the model of the multi-caste villages of Mughal India to settle in every new village at least two households each from as many as fourteen castes. Some of these, such as the Muslim braziers (maria), were functional.17 The village pattern surviving in Upper Assam until the early British rule suggests that these attempts were infructuous or they suffered a setback because of the Burmese practice of carrying off artisans in particular, as slaves during the short period of their occupation. The gradation of militia officers in terms of hundred and thousand was influenced, according to some scholars, by the Mughal system. The Assamese term khel for a division (or a clan in a different context) is obviously derived from the Arabic-Persian term kheil, meaning a cavalry division or a tribal clan. However, the centurion system appears to. have had its roots in the traditional Tai military organization. For, similar principles of organization prevailed in medieval Thailand as well.18 The aforesaid reforms were an attempt on the part of the Ahom monarchy to strengthen itself by transforming the nobility into a military-administrative service and disrupting their personal bonds with the paiks. By putting the peak in an extraterritorial khel and providing for inter-khel transfers, the king could now abridge his nobles' hold over cohesive geographical units like the ban, and the bond between the king and the paiks c o u ld correspondingly be strengthened in consequence. Simultaneously, the Mughal part of Koch-Hajo was dividedabout 1621 into a number of parganahs and subjected to a land tax preferably payable in cash, as in the rest of Mughal India. This system was more or less retained there even later under the Ahoms with only slight modifications. The land allotment allowed per paik was slightly higher in that part than in Upper Assam. Besides, the assessed pecuniary tax was generally retained there in lieu of personal service.

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The society that was being integrated by the twin processes of the neo-Vaishnavite movement from below and the political unification from above continued to be feudal in its essence, both in its political and manorial aspects. The element of political feudality was only marginally undermined by the aforesaid reforms which were more antitribal than anti-feudal in their nature. In fact, during the same period half a dozen or so of border tribal polities with hereditary rajahs, as well as the Darrang and Kachari kings, were stabilized as vassals (thapita-sanchita) vis-a-vis the Ahom State, their patron. As to the manorial aspect, the favoured priests, together with the nobles and the king, constituted the dominant class. They all had their tax-free private agricultural farms (comparable to the lord's demesne) which were cultivated by their own slaves and attached serfs settled thereupon. These slaves and attached serfs were not numerous and, together they accounted for hardly ten per cent or perhaps less of the total population. Another estimated thirty per cent or so of the entire kanri paik labour force (i.e., of the free peasantry) were allotted as likchou (personal attendants) by the state to the office-holding nobles.19 They were a special category of temporary quasi-serfs enjoined to work on the big private farms. They directly worked for the parasitic class to provide them with a surplus. Together with adult male slaves and attached serfs, they formed about one-third or so of the adult male population. Apparently the likchous were treated worse than slaves. For whereas the master had to feed his slaves and was materially affected if the latter died or ran away, the self-maintained likchous involved no such responsibility or risks on the part of the master. Such likchous were only temporarily assigned to him during tenure of his office. The likchou was, therefore, liable to unbridled exploitation subject only to customary checks. H in d u iz a t io n a n d D e t o b a u z a t io n

The earlier state formations depended on kinship and feudal ties, but with the rising authority of the monarch there began a search for a universal religion to teach ih e people to be obedient, patient and submissive. The Koch monarchy initiated the process which was continued by the seventeenth century Ahom kings and still later by the Kachari kings too. Pratap Singha found it prudent to patronize Shaivism without relinquishing his Tai-Ahom faith. He also revived the old practice of making brahmottar, devottar and dharmottar land grants to brahmans and temples. He was the first Ahom king to engage learned brahmans in place of Ahoms for diplomatic missions abroad on

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the consideration that the former were more clever. However, all these changes only indicated the groping for a proper religious policy to find stable allies from amongst the non-Ahoms. During Pratap Singha's reign the mahapurushia sect of neo-Vaishnavism was subjected to much persecution and several of their gosains or preceptors, among them Mukunda Gosain, were put to death.20 This kind of selective royal oppression of neo-Vaishnavite groups took place from time to time. During the hundred years ending in 1750, except for the last half of Gadadhar Singha's reign, the Ahom kings generally showed due respect and courtesy to the neo-Vaishnavite gosains and made grants and endowments for the maintenance of their monasteries. Several important monasteries (satras) were also set up under their patronage.21 Having lost much of its earlier idealism, the neo-Vaishnavite movement had already split into a number of distinct sects. For all of them thesharan had become a stereotyped ceremony symbolizing the bhakat's (devotee's) total submission to his guru. The bhakat had to seek spiritual protection of the guru by prostrating himself before the latter. Clearly the feudal model of a personal bond between a patron and his client had affected the principles of the satra organization. Irrespective of sects, all the tithe-collecting satras also invariably hankered after power and grants of estates and serfs. They could, however, be placed under two broad categories, which we shall,for convenience call left and right wings. Issues such as idol-worship, observance of brahminical rites, celebacy as a necessary condition for monkhood and especially, the propriety of the initiation of a Brahman by a Sudra. divided them. Left-wing satras had generally Sudra gosains. Like the founders of the movement, they invariably believed that there was nothing wrong in a Brahman being spiritually initiated by a Sudra. Naturally, they gained a strong foothold amongst the despised castes as well as the tribal neophytes. Consistently opposed to the left-wing trends, the Ahom court pursued over the years a 'divide and rule' policy, discouraging the nonconformist and encouraging the conformist satras. The most brutal persecution was carried on during the last five years of Gadadhar's reign. However, after his death the policy was reversed by his son, Rudra Singha. A conference of Vaishnava gosains of all sects was convened by him in his capital in 1702 for a debate on the controversial religious issues. The outcome of this conference was a royal decree forbidding Sudras from initiating Brahmans. Exemplary punishment followed any violation of the ban. The head of a certain satra was punished even for discarding idol-worship. At the same time,

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official patronage was extended to all conformist satras headed by Brahmans. Selected gosains were given the privilege of blessing the Ahom kings at their coronation and reportedly as many as 1,230 big and small satras received recognition from the state. All this happened during the reign of Rudra Singha, not himself a Vaishnava by faith.22 After a long period of hesitation Rudra Singha finally decided in 1714 to throw his weight in favour of the Shakti cult as the most suitable faith for a reigning monarch and the ruling class. A stable alliance had meanwhile been forged between the monarchy and the right-wing of neo-Vaishnavites. Thus from the beginning of the eighteenth century—more than six decades after the first adoption of Hinduism by one of them—the Ahom kings became staunch Hindus. Instead of burying they now began to cremate their dead in Hindu fashion. Pile-houses on raised platforms began to give way to mudplinth houses. The Ahom language was almost completely replaced by Assamese at the court The grant of land and serfs to Brahmans, Hindu temples and even neo-Vaishnavite satras increasingly became an extensive practice. Two factors account for the earlier policy of all-out persecution during the few years immediately preceding Rudra Singha's reign. The satras had grown very rich and therefore the confiscation of their wealth including gold idols was held to be justified. Secondly, the country had become full of gosains and bhakats who naturally claimed the traditional priestly privilege of exemption from the kanri paik and likchou services, thus seriously inconveniencing the state.23 Indeed, this second factor might have been a major motivation behind the neoVaishnavite upsurge, which in turn, provoked its persecution. The satras had become the refuge of those who wanted to escape the corvee. Gadadhar's selective and discriminating persecution during the years 1690-6 aimed at removing the married but not celibate bhakats (monks) from the satras. Bhakats belonging to the four highest castes— Brahman, Daivajna, Kayastha and Kalita— were left unmolested, but those of the intermediate and low castes were hunted o u t expropriated and forced to interdine and eat forbidden food. Many of the gosains were tortured, even killed; as for example, Baikunthanathdev (d. 1691) of the Moamaria (Mayamara) satra. The followers of neo-Vaishnavism were forced to work for the construction of a 117-mile road which was named dhodar aii_'the road of the lazy'. However, despite such a savage persecution the satras could not be isolated from the people. As they could not be crushed, they had to be tamed. The persecution was stopped even before Gadadhar's death and a new policy was cleverly formulated by his successor, Rudra Singha.

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Those gosains who were Brahmans were restored to their respective satras in full honour. Even the Shudra gosains were allowed to go back to their vocations, but were now forced to wear a distinctive badge and abandon their Brahman bhakats. It was with this humiliation that Chaturbhujdev was installed as the head (1696-1748) of the Moamaria Salra. This 'divide and rule' policy succeeded in rallying the forces of brahmanism and right-wing neo-Vaishnavism on the side of the Ahom court as against the left-wing satras. The latter sought refuge in remote tribal areas and amongst the lower castes as well as the poorer sections of the people. They continued to preach, often secretly, according to their faith and in another half-century there appeared popular uprisings under a religious garb almost all over Assam. These developed into a prolonged civil war in which the left-wing Maomaria satra played the most significant role. C o n c l u sio n

A process of Sanskritization and detribalization was going on during the century and a half under review. But as fresh batches of tribal peoples from the hills were incessantly settling down in the valleys of Assam, the process was halting and never complete. Yet within the given situation of the hills-plains continuum the early semi-tribal semi-feudal state formations progressively acquired marked anti-tribal features The ruling tribal families adopted Hinduism, but unlike in midIndia did not attain or seriously aspire for the Kshatriya or Rajput status. This happened to be so despite the fact that Brahmanical validation through flattering and miraculous myths about their origin was not lacking. This had an important implication. No caste cleavage was created between the commoners and their ruling hierarchy within the same tribe, though this observation perhaps does not apply to certain Ahom clans of allegedly low origin who remained degraded. In spite of their prolonged political rule, the Ahom, Kachari and Koch tribes were admitted into the Hindu society as new castes with a status much inferior to that of the four high castes including the peasant caste, Kalita. Though considerably Ahomized through intermarriages, the Chutiya tribe was also able to preserve its separate identity as a new Hindu caste of a low status. Koch was an omnibus caste which accommodated within itself tribal neophytes from different Tibeto-Burman linguistic groups. A converted tribal of this group in Assam first became a Sharania and

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*% A

then developed into a Koch. However, all Koches of Goalpara, like those of north Bengal, who claimed descent from the original ruling tribe that had first adopted Hindusim, preferred to call themselves Rajbansi in due course rather than Koch. The Kalita caste tended to divide itself into several functional sub­ castes—bar-kalita (agriculturist), kumar-kalita (potter), mali-kalita (gardener), kamar-kalita (blacksmith), nao-talia (boat-maker), tanti (weaver), etc.,25 but no fission actually took place. The possible role of neo-Vaishnavism as a deterrent in this matter might be profitably investigated. Apparently the Daivajna caste during this period continuously improved its status under royal patronage and equalled the Brahmans in prestige. This was because of the importance given to astrology practised by them and this had no parallel elsewhere in India. Muslim prisoners of war and adventurers settled down in Assam in appreciable number during the period under review. They were, according to Talish (1663), 'inclined more towards mingling with the Assamese than towards association with Muslims’.26 Aurangzeb granted revenue-free land in 1667 to Hindu temple priests in KochHajo, while an Assamese king made a similar grant to a Muslim faqir later on.27 The influence of Mughal India is seen in the introduction of such crafts as tailoring, brass metal casting and manufacture of nerfume from roses. The initial resistance to the use of the Mughal-type sewn dress at the Ahom court was overcome by the end of the seventeenth century and the Assamese court dress closely followed the Mughal model. Two important functional khels, those of the Farsi-Parhias (Persian translators) and the Khanikars (artisans), were composed of Muslims. Incidentally, the caste of Muslim braziers that emerged had a low status, much despised because of its other occupation of liquor-brewing. We do not come across a developed trading and banker class as such in Assam. The contradiction between the estate-owning aristocracy and the free peasants (paiks) with small holdings, who had to periodically suffer a quasi-serf (likchou) status ultimately found expression in a religious conflict. There was conflict also within the ruling class itself—the king, his nobles, temple priests, other privileged Brahmans, the erstwhile Bhuyans and the newly emerged satras—which called for a redistribution of the expanding economic surplus and political power. The method and agency for distributing increasing surplus and the fixation of relative shares of the religious and political functionaries were relavant and crucial issues in a period of all-round expansion. The Ahom court did not make any land grants to Brahmans and their temples until the end of the sixteenth century, but this policy was

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reversed later. They received increasingly liberal grants of estates and serfs particularly during the eighteenth century. Among the beneficiaries were the newly-emerged satras.M Economically such grants facilitated colonization and extension of agriculture to wastelands. Politically they created new bases of support for the centralized authority. Influential satras and petty tribal chiefs were absorbed into the ruling class. Thus the estate-holding class was deliberately expanded. Any commensurate expansion of the class of farm slaves and serfs was, however, not possible. Its main source of supply being the prisoners of war, and the state being entirely dependent on the militia for self-preservation, too many serfs out of the free population could not be afforded. In fact, free paiks and their male children were not allowed to be sold into slavery. Hence the slave-and-serf base of agriculture remained extremely narrow despite abundance of land. The servile class on the whole was treated well, at least better than likchous. Having no obligation to fight, its members had a secure life as well. On the other hand the free peasantry faced increasing insecurity on account of frequent wars and ruthless exploitation by the official aristocracy which was allowed to exact unpaid likchou service from them. Those from low castes suffered most. It appears that debt-slavery was also developing as an institution.29 Hence the neo-Vaishnavite movement continued to have its appeal to the peasantry. It offered limited opportunities to them for an upward social mobility and imbued them with a sense of human dignity. Besides, by becoming bhakats they could vicariously challenge and even attempt to evade the obligation of manual service. These possibilities gave a militant turn to the movement in the second half of the eighteenth century.30

N otes 1.

The earliest of these, the Chutiya Kingdom in the northeast comer of Assam, was absorbed by the Ahom State by 1523. The Koch Stale was founded in 1509. By 1581 it was virtually bifurcated into two states-Kochbehar in north Bengal and Koch-Hajo in Assam. The latter was mostly absorbed by the Ahoms in the 17th century. Only the Kachari State, reduced to vassalage from time to time, continued to exist separately. All these states had expanded in their formative stage through the suppression of the Bhuyans.

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2.

For information on the Bhuyans, Gait, A History o f Assam [ 149J, 39-46; Neog, Shri Shri Shankardev [201], 1016, 35-36, 55-56, 78-83 and 91 ; Sadar Amin, AsamBuranji [19], 24.

3.

Neog [201], 37-38, 87 and 120. A variation of the syllabus, as in the case of young Shankardev, might have included the Ramayana, Kavya, Shruii and Smriii as welL Dates of death given for Vaishnava preceptors in Assam are generally reliable, but the same can not be said of their dates of birth.

4. 5.

Neog, Purani Asamiya Samaj am Samskrili [202], 19-31. For the Tai religion, Dang Nghien Van, ’An outline of the Thai in Vietnam', Vietnam Studies, voL 8 [140]. 188-93 ; Gurdon, Encyclopaedia o f Religion and Ethics [93], 235-6 \Ahom Buranji, tr. Barua [23], 1-23.

6.

Quote from Talish, tr. Sarkar, cited in Gait [149], p. 153.

7.

Gait [149], 222n. There was a total absence of copper currency in Assam.

8.

Ibid., 146; Deodhai Asam Buranji [12], 110.

9.

A similar system prevailed in medieval Thailand (1350-1767). After an administrative reorganisation in 1454, the whole population there was divided into civil and military groups. Each division called lakh was placed under a noble and, again, subdivided into two groups Svay or those exempted from personal service obligation upon payment of tax and Prai or those called up in rotation to serve as soldiers and labourers. In return for his service to the state a 'Huu freeman enjoyed his ancient right to as much land as he and his family could cultivate. Thompson, Thailand the New Siam [189], 292r-3, 313, 541 and 675 ; also Graham, Siam [154],235-6.

10.

Gait [149], 87 ; Quote from Satsari Asam Buranji [14], 21. Tr. ours.

11.

Dang Nghien Van [140], 20.

12.

Satsari Asam Buranji [14], 20.

13.

'David Scott's historical notes about Assam' in White, Historical Miscellany, Vol. 2 [29]. Scott's notes are based on manuscript chronicles he consulted and compared. The fields mentioned belonged to King Sukampha (1552-1603). Pratap Singha extended and consolidated them to found a big farm known as Jaykhamdang. Also see Sadar-Amin [19]. pp. 39-40.

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14.

Satsari Asam Buranji [14], 26-27,76-77 and 136.

15.

White, Historical Miscellany, Vol. 1 [29], 12 and 206.

16.

Satsari Asam Buranji [14], 29 and 138.

17.

Ibid., 26 and 77 ; Deodhai Asam Buranji [12], 70 and 130. The latter source refers to the drive for colonization and setting up of new villages even after 1648. Also see Ahom Buranji [23], iii and Sadar-Amin [ 19], 44,57 and 63.

18.

Thompson [189], 292-3,313,541 and 625.

19.

In 1826, the lickchous constituted 29 per cent of the registered paiks in the 1800 sq. mile Chiefdom of Muttak (Matak) and 24 per cent of the paiks in the Chiefdom of Sadiyakhowa—both offshoots of the Ahom State. This is worked out from two relevant documents—No«. 66 and 118, respecdvely-in Aitchison, ed., A Collection o f Treaties .T;[6], 203 and 300. During early British rule, 1825-26 to 1830-31, the dues of all officers in charge * of khels were put at 27 per cent of the total revenue demand in occupied Assam each year. -Neufville to Scott, Foreign Pol. Proc., 10 June 1831 [35], Nos. 5156. According to Wade, in the late 18th century everyone in the militia hierarchy starting from a Bora upward was entitled to the corvee of two out of every twenty paiks put in his charge. This means that leakages of this kind at diffemt levels, when added up, could have been as much as 34 to 40 per cent for a khel of 6000; and perhaps, this was the maximum limit. Wade, An Account o f Assam [24], Introduction, xv-xvii. According to another source on the other hand, the proportion of paiks in an officer's jurisdiction which could be alienated as likchous varied from five to ten per cent Dhekial-Phukkan, Asam Buranji [22], Our own estimate is based on all such available calculations.

20.

Gait [149], 123 ; Satsari Asam Buranji [14], 7 5 ; Sadar-Amin [19], 63-64.

21.

Gait [149], 289-90.

22.

Tungkhungia Buranji [15], 30-31; Gait [149], 290.

23.

Ibid., 173-4 and 288 ; Satsari Asam Buranji [14], 117-8 and 149; Tungkhungia Buranji [15], 14 and 26-27.

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24.

For a discussion by E. P. Suck of this process in the 19th century, see Census of Lidia, 1881, Assam Report [104], Ch. VI, 66 and 74 ; also Dhekial-Phukkan [22], 88. On their conversion to Hindu Vaishnavism, the Mikirs (Karbi) also entered the omnibus Koch caste. Butler, Travels and Adventures in the Province o f Assam... [133], 137.

25.

Census of India, 1901, Assam Report [104], 133 ; Dhekial-Phukkan [22], 87-88.

26.

Gail [149], 153.

27.

Annals o f the Delhi Badshahate, tr. Bhuyan [25], 15-18 and 233 for Lakshmi Singha's copper-plate grant of 1780 A.D. and Aurangzeb's two Sanads of 1667 A. D.

28.

For jealousy expressed by the Ahom princes at the sight of the wealth and power of the Satrap tcc Satsari Asam Buranji [14], 117-8; Tungkhungia Buranji [15], 14. %

29.

Needy peasants mortgaged their labour to well-to-do households against loans. This system was quite prevalent in the 19th century and can be traced back to the early 17th century. The famous statesman Momai Tamuli is said to have bonded himself in his early life to his nephew for a loan of four rupees. See Bhuyan, Lachit Barphukan and His Times [127], 17.

30.

For a more exhaustive study of the state formation process in medieval Assam, The Ahom political system : an enquiry into state formation in medieval Assam : 122S-1714’ Social Scientist. VoL 11 [159].

6 Peasant Uprisings and the Feudal Crisis There is now enough evidence to show that the peasant uprisings described and analysed below essentially reflectd a political conflict between the feudal ruling class and different segments of the exploited peasantry.* The contending classes themselves might not have been collectively self-aware ; in any case the peasants were not. Yet the people by and large decided to be on this or that side of the barricades during the prolonged civil war (1769 to 1806) according to their own respective class positions. This happened in spite of their lack of a strong explication of consciousness of class identity in either camp or, in the case of the peasantry, of even any co-ordination and sustained unity beyond local limits. The Assam ease once more shows that class was not primarily a subjective happening, but an objective formation, and that peasant resistance to exploitation was inherent in the relationship of such objective formations. Substitution of class by the Weberian concept of status-group within a hierarchy may be all right and even useful to a historian as a descriptive category, but in no case does it help him to radically explain change. A series of popular revolts repeatedly shook the foundations of the 600-year old Ahom Kingdom. Described in the Assamese chronicles as the Moamaria/Matak troubles, this was indeed a lingering civil war that ended indecisively with both sides totally exhausted and ruined. As a result of the massacres and the famines that followed, the population came down to one half of what it had been. The Moamarias were followers of the Moamara (Mayamara) Satra, a numerous neo-vaishnavite sect drawing its members from all castes and ethnic groups by the time the troubles started, with a preponderance of tribal neophytes and 'low' caste people, such as the Morans, a plains tribe frequently and interchangeably referred to as 'Mataks'. * The term ’tribe’, ’peasant’, and ’feudalism* are used here in ihcir broad senses, there specific contexts and contents being noted where ver necessary.

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Despite an apparent concern for accuracy, the extant chronicles of the period are in spirit partisan and generally biased against the rebels.1 Contemporary English records—by-products of the East India Company’s armed intervention in favour of the tottering regime—view the events simply as a law and order problem.2 Yet a third important source is received tradition preserved in late quasi-historical accounts of neo-vaishnavite monasteries that became involved in the struggles. This tradition is now available only in a distorted form.3 An examination of these materials reveals the democratic and antifeudal character of the revolts. S. K. Bhuyan suggests that the Ahom feudatory lords held to the bulk of the people the same relation 'as the Normans did for generations in England', and that by right of conquest they enjoyed hereditary privileges in the soil and in all important public offices. The 'attachment of the subjects to their immediate over lords, viz. the kheldars to whom they were tied by hereditary obligations,' he notes, 'was greater than to their distant government at the capital'.4 He draws a casual analogy with the English civil war between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads.5 Neither his analysis nor the mechanical analogies he draws, however, takes our understanding of the feudal crisis and its dialectics far enough.6 Hence an attempt is being made in the following pages to reinterpret the known facts and stretch the analysis in new directions for an understanding of the social forces then in operation. In doing so I have drawn largely on some related enquiries made by me into the field.7 This study is in three parts. The social development towards feudalism and its replication in ideology, i.e. the origins of feudalism and neo-vaishnavism and their subsequent interaction, are traced in Part I. In Part II a narrative of the three successive phases of the civil war is presented. Conclusions are drawn in Part III.

E c o n o m ic a n d S o c ia l B a c k g r o u n d

The neo-vaishnavite movement in Assam, led by Shankardev and his disciples—Madhavdev, Damodardev and others during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—popularized a monotheistic cult of bhakti and a congregational form of religious practice that dispensed with expensive ritual. Its message was that anyone irrespective of birth, caste or status could attain salvation by taking refuge in its four elements : (i) God, (i) guru (preceptor), (iii) the fraternity of bhakats (devotees) and (iv) nama (the chanting of the divine Name). It enjoined devotion to Vishnu alone to the exclusion of other gods, their temples

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and even their prascida (offerings made before them). This new faith spread rapidly, involving in due course a majority of the Assamese people.8 Based on the teachings of the Bhagavata-purana, it came to be known in Assam as the bhagavatii dharma or eka-sharana-namadharma. Associated with it was a cultural renaissance, humanist in content and popular in form, in literature as well as in the vocal and visual arts. While in its basic features it resembled the movement that spread through the whole of India, the bhakti movement of Assam had nevertheless several that were distinctive. Dasya was its commended form of devotion; a master-servant relationship as assumed to exist between God and man was projected into the relationship between the guru and the proselyte. For God and the guru were deemed to be one, being different only in body. The concept was institutionalized in the form of the sharan ceremony, i.e. the formal spiritual initiation or ordination of the proselyte. It highlighted the total submission of the latter to his guru and to the three other elements of the cult.9 In return, the guru took the proselyte under his spiritual protection. Clearly the feudal model of a personal bond between the master and his serf was projected into this relationship. The proselyte regularly paid a tithe (guru-kar) to his spiritual lord. The most distinguishing feature of Assamese neo-vaishnavism is, however, a network of decentralized monasteries (satra), each headed by a guru (designated as the mahanta, goswami or satradhikar). Proselytization was their most important function. Such monasteries proliferated, and by the end of the seventeenth century ideological differences had created four competing orders or samhatis—(i) Brahma, (ii) Purusha, (iii) Nika, and (iv) Kala. The first upheld the supremacy of the brahmans in all matters even within the vaishnava fraternity ; it zealously conformed to Vedic rites and to idol worship ; and it invariably had brahman abbots. On these points the other three orders had varying degrees of reservation. The most non-conformist of them was the Kala-Samhati, which originated from the interpretation of the teachings of Shankardev and Madhavdev by Gopaldev. Interestingly, all these three reformers were kayastha by caste and bhuyan by status.10 It was the monasteries of the Kala-Samhati that had the largest following amongst the despised castes and tribal neophytes. The Moamara Satra belonged to this order. The monasteries had generally originated from the camp head quarters of the early neo-vaishnavite missionaries. Vamshigopaldev (1548-1634), a brahman, Aniruddhadev, a kayastha of bhuyan descent, and Bar-Yadumanidev (1564-1618) were amongst those who carried the

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neo-vaishnavite message to the rural masses of eastern (Upper) Assam. In the course of time there came to be several hundred monasteries in the Brahmaputra Valley, each linked with a number of villages. Each village had its own community prayer-hall (namghar) for holding religious discourses and village meetings. Both Satras and Namghars were simple constructions of wood and bamboo with thatched roofs. The monasteries gradually evolved their own hierarchy of functionaries to manage properties and collect tithes from the initiated devotees. Many of the monasteries grew rich, particularly when endowed under royal patronage with grants of waste-lands and serfs. The proselytizing function of the monasteries helped the ongoing process of sanskritization of the Ahom and the tribal folk in the Brahmaputra Valley. The Ahoms were accepted as a low-ranking new Hindu peasant caste. The tribal neophytes, admitted first to the lowest rung of the caste ladder, had opportunities of upward social mobility through emulation of the higher castes. Individuals and groups moved not only from animism to vaishnavism, but also from tribes to peasant castes ; from pile houses to mud-plinth houses ; from the burial practice to cremation of the dead ; from liberal food habits to abstinence from liquor, beef and pork ; from a shifting to permanent cultivation, and so on.11 Agriculture was multiform, with its settled and shifting sectors coexisting side by side. The Assamese-speaking Hindu mainstream of the population as well as the Tai-speaking migrant Ahoms cultivated transplanted wet-rice (sali). As literate plough-using peoples, they were long accustomed to live in politically organized societies. The remaining population belonging to tribes with diverse languages were associated with shifting slash-and-bum cultivation with hoes and digging sticks. They raised dry-rice (ahu) sown broadcast. A section of the Bodo-Kachari tribe were of course passing from hoe to plough and from dry-rice to wet-rice cultivation. Though united by the communication channels of the Brahmaputra and its navigable tributaries, the Assamese, Ahom and tribal settlements had long remained segregated from each other in several medieval states which were then at uneven levels of sophistication. However, the aforesaid process of social and economic change was accompanied by a gradual acceptance of Assamese—the dominant language of the valley—via an intervening phase of bilingualism, since the end of the fifteenth century. This coincided with the process of feudal consolidation in space and hierarchy. The scene was dominated from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century by two rival political systems : (i) loose confederacies of

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hierarchical petty feudal chiefs (bhuyan raj) thriving on the ruins of an erstwhile imperial tradition that was Kamrup, and (ii) rudimentary semi-feudal state formations emerging directly from tribes, e.g. the Chutiya, Kachan and Ahom Kingdoms. A continuous expansion of the permanent wet-rice cultivation sectors meanwhile enabled the disparate peasant societies to yield an increasing surplus and thus lay the basis for a more sophisticated state system. The extension of transplanted wet-rice cultivation was particularly rapid in the Ahom Kingdom. This led to an increase in the population, which in turn facilitated further extension of cultivated acreage.12 Having absorbed the Chutiya Kingdom by 1523, the Ahoms continued to expand their domain southward and westward at the cost of the Kacharis and the bhuyans. The Koch Kingdom too expanded at the cost of the petty bhuyans of western Assam about the same time. The Koches clashed with the Ahoms, defeated them and even sacked their capital in 1562. The former's superiority stemmed from an economic base that had an earlier and closer involvement with Hindu society and a relatively greater division of labour in terms of professional castes. Mutual contact between the Koches and the Ahoms gave rise to an integrative process that helped both, but the Ahoms more. In the course of the seventeenth century the latter were to emerge as the masters of the whole Brahmaputra Valley excepting a few Parganahs still remaining with the Mughals. Incidentally, in the Ahom Kingdom, peasants' private property rights were not recognized over wet-rice lands. Such rights were vested in the community represented by the King. Every household customarily possessed three types of land : (i) a hereditary homestead plot held as private property, (ii) dry-crop lands reclaimed at private initiative and held as private property as long as cultivated, and (iii) a portion of communally-owned wet-rice lands subject to redistribution from time to time. Forests and marshes were villagers' common lands.13 Before the rise of neo-vaishnavism, the bhuyans and the tribal chiefs were patrons of localized mother goddess cults, rooted in degenerate Tantric-Buddhist and tribal fertility rites. Their magicoreligious faith reflected the existing fragmentation of society; cruelty and bloodshed were sanctified as necessary conditions of survival. The Tai-Ahom religious cult, a form of animism tinged with elements of of ancestor worship, had the same sp irit; its hierarchy of gods for example was only a projection on the mental plane of the incipient trans-tribal feudal society the Ahoms lived in.14 At that unconsolidated stage incipient feudalism, like its tribal base, lacked a world view. But the ongoing process of abridgement of political fragmentation, as

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noted, warranted the advent of a new ideology, a universal religion, by the early sixteenth century. The Koch king Naranarayan (1540-84) found the neo-vaishnavite movement happily falling in with his ambition to bring North Bengal and Assam under his suzerainty. After all, sword and the Bhagavata served a common purpose : both attempted to bring disparate tribes together and weld them into an integrated social order. Ek dev ek sev, ek vine nahi kev—this neo-vaishnavite concept of undivided loyalty to one deity alone could not but indirectly help the ideal of one people under one monarch. Even the Ahom kings, who were initially hostile or indifferent to the movement during the sixteenth century, gradually felt the need for winning it over to their side. By the mid-seventeenth century we have an Ahom king embracing the faith. For neovaishnavism was essentially a feudal ideology that was helping to detribalize a society in transition. The above is obviously not a sufficient explanation of the advent of the new ideology in Assam ; there were other factors too. By the sixteenth century a stratum of artisans still linked with agriculture had emerged from peasant society, particularly in western Assam. The increasing volume of trade, however limited still in absolute and relative terms, necessitated not only considerable mobility on the part of these elements, but also local coinage to augment the money supply which, until then, consisted of only cowries and Bengal currency in limited circulation. Introduction of muskets, cannon and gunpowder in the region since the sixteenth century tended to strengthen a reigning monarch in relation to his subjects. Under the circumstances, the political and cultural consolidation of the valley emerged as an immediate possibility. These developments needed a supporting ideology that would cut across tribal and early feudal fragmentations then in existence, and legitimize the feudal rule. The popularity of neo-vaishnavism stemmed from its democratic content—its creed that all men were equal in the eyes of God, that the expensive rituals were meaningless and that a spiritual preceptor could be chosen from any caste even by a brahman. There was no fundamental challenge to the existing caste rules, only an attempt to modify them at the spiritual level. For example, social taboos in regard to commensality, not to speak of intermarriage, were strictly conformed to. The neo-vaishnavite attitude to the observance of Vedic rites and to the worship o f idols in day-to-day life was ambivalent and compromising. Ideally a bhakat, a devotee free from worldly attachment, was not to observe the shraddha and such other rites, nor worship idols. Nevertheless, these rites were enjoined on householder

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bhakats, and they were permitted to worship idols.15 Thus neovaishnavism compromised with conservative forces to enhance its acceptability. For the same reason it also conceded that a ruling monarch was duty-bound to observe all traditional rites, including blood sacrifices, for the welfare of his subjects.16 Despite its preaching of ahimsa, it hardly reacted to the inhumanly cruel forms of execution and other corporal punishments then in vogue. Nor was the institution of slavery condemned by the reformers, though there is evidence of their being kind to oppressed slaves. Among those who responded first to the bhakti movement were some learned kayastha bhuyans, recently dispossessed of political power, a few brahman intellectuals and many professional artisans and traders. Madhavdev and Vamshigopaldev had taken up trade before joining the movement. Narayandas (1495—?), alias Bhabananda, prospered as a trader and used his wealth to promote the cause. Mathuradas, who rose to be the abbot of the Barpeta Satra, was the head of a weavers* guild. Damodardev had twelve weavers as his apostles.17 There is evidence to show that weavers and members of other professional castes and crafts joined the movement in large numbers and continued to maintain their special links with the monasteries, particularly in western Assam.18 In due coourse the peasants also were drawn into the movement. That the movement succeeded, despite its limitations and compromises, in materially undermining the influence of the traditional priests is amply indicated by the indignation it aroused in their camp. Neo-vaishnavite preachers were charged by them with lnterdining, violating Vedic rituals and subordinating brahmans to sudras. The former generally pleaded not guilty to these charges, but there were always some extremists among them who would push the ideology to its logical end on such matters. For example, in the reign of Pratap Singha, Mukunda Gosain, who was a brahman by birth, held brahmanical marriage rites, the sanctification of new tanks and the wearing of the sacred thread as unnecessary rituals. He even dared perform his own daughter's marriage without the accompanying vedic rites. Mukunda and Balbhadra Ata were executed under royal orders for their non-conformist views. Even Vamshigopaldev, their preceptor, who held more conservative views on such matters, had his monastery burnt and was forced to go underground for many years. Another extremist, Nityanandadev of the Moamara Satra, was executed in c. 1650 on charges of nonconformism.19 However, it was this non­ conformism that attracted the tribal population towrds the movement; for it suited their liberal ways of life. Under the twin impact of neo-

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vaishnavism and tribalism, a further development and proliferation of castes by way of fission was arrested. For example the Kalita caste, which tended to split into several functional castes (nat, mali, kumar, kanhar, kamar, etc.), was able in the long run to resist such a fission. Sanskritization of the tribal and Ahom societies and the growing religious conflicts of the seventeenth century warranted the formulation of an official religious policy. Himself a non-Hindu, Pratap Singha came to patronize brahmans and Hindu temples with grants of wastelands and serfs. The neo-vaishnavite monasteries were then excluded from such favours. Later, after his death, some of them too began to receive royal patronage. But the persecution of other monasteries continued. For example, the abbots of four Kala-Samhati Satras— Moamara, Makajan, Dihing (Bahbari/Silikhatal) and Sesamukh—were arrested around 1673. A palace coup, engineered by an influential disciple of one of these Satras, however, helped them escape unhurt20 Persecution was most indiscriminate during the last half of the reign of Gadadhar Singha. At first he forcibly dispersed all married monks from their respective monasteries. Later all these monasteries were burnt and their properties confiscated. Monks not belonging to the four higher castes (brahman, daivajna, kayastha and kalita) were condemned to hard labour on construction sites. The sudra abbots and leading members of a number of Kala-Samhati satras, including Vaikunthanathdev of Moamara, were executed in 1691. These punitive measures were taken as all religious preceptors and monks used to claim exemption from their universal militia obligation.21 Repression drove the neo-vaishnavite movement underground rather than caused its collapse. Hence the State was forced to revise its religious policy early in Rudra Singha's reign. He rehabilitated the persecuted monasteries. A conference of neo-vaishnavite preachers held under his orders at the capital in 1702 decided against spiritual initiation of brahmans by sudra preceptors. The sudra preceptors who had argued against the decision were all forced to hang small earthen jars around their necks as a mark of admonishment. Four of them belonging to the Kala-Samhati were among those forced to shift their headquarters to new places. A royal order was proclaimed forbidding henceforth the acceptance of brahman disciples by sudra preceptors. Later Chaturbhuj, the abbot of Sesamukh Satra (belonging to the KalaSamhati), then living at Moamara under royal orders, was punished on charges of admitting two brahman disciples. Two sudra abbots of NikaSamhati monasteries were forcibly expelled for refusing to do idol worship.22

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Rudra Singha prepared a register of recognized monasteries and appointed an officer for their supervision. Meanwhile, the Shakti cult of the Bengal school was found by him to suit the ruling family best. In accordance with his last wishes, his son Shiva Singha (1714-1744) was formally initiated to this cult in 1714.23 Thus the Ahom religious policy finally anchored on an alliance between the monarch, the Shakti worshippers and the brahmanical sections of the neo-vaishnavites. This policy was largely guided by political considerations. It aimed at and succeeded in driving a wedge between the brahmanical and other elements within the neo-vaishnavite movemenL Under royal patronage, a number of conformist monasteries emerged as big landed proprietors. They had hundreds of slaves, serfs and tenants on their estates, and they were exempted from all tax obligations to the State.24 In Ahom society one's position was largely determined by birth and the highest state officials had to be recruited exclusively from the seven families (sat-ghar) constituting the Ahom nobility. This was why the Ahom nobility from the very beginning, held the social gap that existed within the Assamese Hindu society as legitimate. They even made common cause with the brahmans against the non-conformism of neo-vaishnavism, since it tended to promote an egalitarian social outlook. The need for an alliance with a section of the neo-vaishnavite movement arose gradually as the feudal class expanded in space and hierarchy. It materialized when the movement had already lost much of its early idealism. The right wing of the movement allied itself with the ruling class, while the left wing, represented by the Kala-Samhati Order, stuck largely to the democratic content of the ideology. Finally, during the feudal crisis that followed, only the Moamara Satra of the aforesaid order continued to uphold its protestant ideology boldly. The ruling feudal class was composed of three distinct groups : (i) the traditional Ahom nobility (gohain), (ii) the spiritual lords (prabhu), i.e. priests and abbots some of whom were non-brahmans, and (iii) the hereditary vassal chiefs. All of them including the king had farms cultivated by serfs and slaves. The militia, divided into a number of divisions, was made up of adult males aged between 16 and 6 0; slaves, serfs and privileged persons of noble birth were exempt. Members of the militia received tax-free strips of wet-rice land from the community on a tenurial basis. Militia divisions were twofold : (i) kanri paik units consisting of ordinary soldiers-cum-labourers, and (ii) chamua paik units providing non-manual services. Customarily, one-fourth of the strength of a unit was always on public service through a system of rotation. In other words, a group of four militiamen provided between them one man-year of service to the State. When someone

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was on militia duty, his farm and family were looked after by the other three members of his group, his co-villagers. In an emergency the levy used to be temporarily increased to onehalf of the strength of a unit on an ad hoc basis, and even up to two-thirds, depending upon the season and at great risks to the economy. The members of the non-manual service wing had to contribute a share of their products to the State if they were artisans, or they contributed specialized services in accordance with their respective skills. Junior officers in charge of units of twenty, a hundred and a thousand enjoyed the status of chamua paiks. Senior officers were recruited from the nobility. The militia was engaged not only in defence activities, but also in the construction of public works such as roads, dams, temples and palaces. They also worked on royal farms.25 In lieu of salary the officers of different categories were allowed the usufruct of large tracts of lands and stipulated portions of an estimated twenty to thirty per cent of the mobilized paiks set aside as their temporary servitors (likchou).26 The latter were deployed to work for officers to whom they were allotted. But they often had their obligations commuted by those officers for a payment in kind ; or in cash, after money circulation had made some inroads into the natural economy. For the unpaid labour extracted from temporary serfs could not be very productive. Slaves and bondsmen suited them better. Even when slaves were employed, production was not organized on a largescale basis because of the limitations of technical knowledge. The form in which slave labour was economically exploited pertained to the pure form of serfdom or tenancy. This system of surplus extraction for the maintenance of the State and the nobility exhibited a certain degree of centralization. In Assam the king as the representative of the community gradually established his claim to theoretical ownership of all communal wet rice lands and wastelands. On the other hand, homestead land developed clearly as the tax-free private property of those in possession. Besides, feudal landed properties were also created by way of royal grants of wasteland tracts on which slaves and serfs were settled. But in terms of acreage or population, this last form was not yet the major one, though its domination over the whole system was indisputable. In any case, the State controlled the distribution of communal wet-rice lands cultivated by the peasantry ; it organized the mobilization of the surplus in the form of a central labour p o o l; and it finally redistributed this surplus amongst the various elements of the ruling class. The system thus increasingly assumed a form of centralized feudalism (if one can use the term in a qualified sense) from the seventeenth century.27

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Having been granted in perpetuity huge tracts of tax-free wastelands and portions of the paik population to cultivate them, the favoured brahmans, abbots and temple priests constituted a class of spiritual lords. They exacted labour-rent in general, or a rent in cash or kind in lieu of it, from their tenants. These spiritual lords owed no military or fiscal obligation to the State. Lastly, several hereditary vassal chiefs, all of tribal origin, were allowed to enjoy autonomy in their respective territories (desh), subject to an obligation to supply a fixed contingent of soldiers to the Ahom king. The precise term for this kind of vassalage was sthapit-sanchit (established and protected). Yet another term, sevakata or seva (service) came into vogue to denote this relationship. The centralization of the feudal system was limited not only by vassalage but also by tribalism and kinship ties. The chain of authority from the King-in-Council down to the lowest officer, a captain of twenty, had its loose ends. The unit of twenty, linked with a supply base of eighty adult males (later sixty), was headed by the group’s natural leader, the headman of their village or clan. S. K. Bhuyan rightly suggests that not only the units of twenty, but also those of a thousand, were placed under the command of such officers as were acceptable to those commanded. On occasion such junior officers had to be removed from their command when the ranks so demanded.28 Here was indication of some popular control retained over the militia At the higher levels of the command too, the kinship ties had an accepted customary role in maintaining the balance of power between the 'great' families. Three of the provincial governors had to be appointed customarily from the royal family, and other governors respectively from the other 'Great' families. Their interrelations, subject to an oath of allegiance to the king, maintained the balance at the apex of the power structure. If the three great counsellors could combine, they had the customary right to depose the king and nominate another from the royal clan. Thus the militia and the bureaucratic crust at the top still betrayed its original tribal character to a considerable extent.29 The lingering semi-tribal, semi-feudal nature of the State—itself a reflection of the meagreness of the available quantum of surplus— headed towards a crisis even before its anti-tribal task was completed. The superimposed centralization was somewhat tenuous. The unresolved contradictions between feudal and tribal elements within the militia were one important factor in the civil war between the rulers and the ruled in the second half of the eighteenth century. The other and more important factor contributing to the crisis was the inroads of money into the natural economy. The revenue settlement

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introduced in Kamrup under the Mughals had encouraged the peasants to pay their land tax in cash if they could, rather than in kind or labour service. This system was retained there with minimal modification even after the final incorporation of Kamrup into the Ahom Kingdom by 1682. On the Mughal model a land survey and settlement for the whole kingdom was completed during the years 1682-1751. Militiamen (paiks) continued to enjoy tax-free wet-rice lands to the extent of about three acres per head in the rest of the Ahom Kingdom as before. However, it was no longer possible for them in the new situation to conceal the excess wet lands in their possession for which they were now supposed to pay a money tax.30 For, the availability of land records and a trained survey staff after the 1680s gradually enabled the State to squeeze the defaulters. This had repercussions on the discipline of the militia. For example, with a view to forestalling the new rent-roll, four thousand paiks of Darrang staged a long march for protest demonstration in the Ahom capital in 1770. The king had to stay the unpopular settlement, then and there.31 Yet another form of protest was the large-scale evasion of paik services. Despite the census of manpower from time to time a considerable number of the eligible adult population took advantage of the weak machinery of the State to avoid getting their names entered on the paik register. One convenient form of evasion was to join a monastery as a householder monk. The customary exemption of religious functionaries and monks from paik service encouraged thousands to join the monasteries as monks and thus claim such exemption. Monasteries in remote places, with abundant wastelands all around suitable for dry-rice, served as ideal refuges for disaffected paiks who were ready to leave their wet-rice plots to evade their militia obligations. Since homestead plots and dry-rice fields reclaimed from wastelands at personal intiative were customarily tax-free, the monasteries played a colonizing role in attracting peasant settlers in new areas.32 Once money had infiltrated into the natural economy on a modest scale, chamua and kanri paiks of high caste and superior birth were generally allowed commutation of their obligations to the State for a money-tax. Being so privileged, they were then designated as a-pa’kan chamua. Thus in the Ahom Kingdom there emerged five broad social status-groups : (i) the nobility—temporal and spiritual—who did not pay any taxes for the lands and estates they held and had their cultivation carried on mainly by serfs,tenants and slaves ; (ii) the apaikan chamua—the gentry as well as the exempted peasants and artisans who paid only a money-tax ; (iii) paikan chammua,

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I.e..artisans, literati and skilled deople who were exempted from contribution of manual labour but had to pay taxes in kind or specialized service ; (iv) peasants subjugated to manual labour service for the benefit of the State and its officers ; and (v) the servile population consisting of slaves bondsmen and private serfs, whose statuses differed only slightly from each other. Of the five social status-groups. the most numerous were those of the fourth category. It was the number of ploughs and draught animals owned and not landholding that was the measure of the well-being of a peasant household. A rich peasant operated on the basis of a large family unit and, in some cases, also one or two bondsmen. Broadly, these five status-groups could be reduced to three social classes : (i) the feudal lords, (ii) the free peasantry and peasant-cum-artisans, subjugated only to the State, and (iii) the servile population subjugated not to the State but personally to the King and other feudal lords. By the eighteenth century the money element in the revenue collection had increased considerably by earlier and local standards, and this was not without reason. There was an organized internal market in betelnuts and leaves. Expanded external trade relations had meanwhile led to an increasing exchange of the region's elephants, aloe wood, pepper, long pepper, musk, spikenard, mustard-seeds, gold, silk, etc., for salt, saltpetre, sulphur and luxury cotton cloth from Mughal India. There was a concomitant growth of a chain of foothills markets. Assamese traders procured forest products from the surrounding hills in exchange for rice, dried fish, silk and cotton cloth in these marts for re­ export to Mughal India. The resultant increase in economic activities led to some degree of specialization, particularly in Kamrup, where artisan castes began to attain their functional importance on the northIndian model. Sualkuchi, Ramdia and Sarthebari in Kamrup developed as centres for silk weaving, oil-crushing and bell-metal casting, respectively.33 Skilled artisans from outside were encouraged to migrate to Assam and were systematically settled there. From the closing decade of the seventeenth century, the Ahom mint 'was constantly at work and small coins weighing 48 and 24 ratis respectively were issued', followed by still smaller coins, weighing 16, 12 and 3 ratis and a regular gold currency in the eighteenth century.34 The increase in the supply of currency clearly indicated a growing market Under the circumstances, better-off peasants and artisans had by now some command over a ready cash. Naturally they looked forward to commutation of their corvee obligations for a money tax (in case such taxes could not be got rid of altogether) and to entry into the superior chamua status. There were no jajmani relations-based

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nucleated 'village communities' in the Ahom Kingdom. Aritisan crafts, even petty trading activities, were generally combined with agriculture in the same peasant homes. Even functional castes—there were only a few—were involved in agriculture. Further development towards specialization needed freedom of movement including occupational mobility on the part of the peasant-artisans and peasant-traders. But this was lacking under the compulsions of their periodic service obligations. Commutation of service, or of payments in kind for a reasonably low money-tax would have helped solve this problem. However, since the functioning of the State apparatus was dependent on the militia system, the rulers could meet this general craving for an upward mobility only up to a point—to the extent the State was in need of a money revenue. It was reluctant to extend this privilege to new people other than those belonging to the higher castes. It also pitched the money-tax high. The conflict on the question of both the form and the quantum of rent payments between the ruling class and the subjugated people consisting of the peasants, artisans and traders emerged as a major contradiction in eighteenth-century Assamese society. The centralized extraction of surplus and its redistribution amongst the competing groups of the ruling class faced a crisis with the sharpening of this contradiction. Even the nobility, temporal (mostly Ahom) as well as spiritual (mostly brahman), was ridden with infighting. The perpetual grant of thousands of acres of tax-free land by the State to the latter as devottar, dharmottar and brahmottar estates in consideration of winning new allies was detested by the temporal nobility.35 It was under such circumstances that the social protest movement was transformed into an armed conflict, under the leadership of the extremists among the neo-vaishnavites. Within the subjugated peasantry the most discontented were the Dafla-Bahatiyas and the Morans on special grounds of their own. The former were foothills dwellers assigned with certain obligations to hillmen coming down from the Arunachal hills into the plains every winter. The responsibility of paying an annual subsidy (posa). committed by the Ahom Government to the hillmen devolved on these Bahadyas over and above their standing obligation to the State, reduced on this consideration to one-third of the usual norm. The total burden however turned out to be heavier than the norm, since they paid their dues partly in kind and cash and partly in the form of manual labour.36 That they would join the ranks of the rebels in due course was only natural.

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The Morans, a plains tribe, were migratory slash-and-bum cultivators in the sparsely-populated tracts lying north of the Burhi Dihing river. The early Ahom migrants established close contacts with the southern section of this tribe. In due course these Morans living south of the Dibru river underwent a process of Ahomization and later, of sanskritization. As a result, many of them had gradually adopted the plough and wet-rice cultivation. A few were even adopted into respectable Ahom clans. A number of farms were worked by Moran serfs for the Ahom nobility. A portion of the Moran population was also shifted to the Ahom habitat. Thus the southern Morans became relatively integrated with the Ahom society and territory.37 But the forest-dwelling Morans, mostly living north of the Dibru river and at a distance from the Brahmaputra, were virtually left undisturbed in their habitat which was only nominally under Ahom rule. Their obligation to the State was limited to supplying, in lieu of militia service, a variety of products such as elephants, fuel, ivory, honey, bamboomats, raw cotton and vegetable dyes. Both sections of the people adhered to the Moamaria Vaishnava faith. Their main crops were ahu (dry-rice), sugarcane and cotton.38 Both the northern and southern Morans (upper and lower Mataks) long retained their independent spirit They were described by one British officer in 1839 as 'a rude, fanatical, stiff-necked people, accustomed to a very light assessment and who have always exercised considerable share in their own Government...there exists a greater spirit of equality in the community, and their chiefs exercise less authority over the people than I have seen elsewhere in Assam'.39 It was in the seventeenth century that Aniruddhadev, a kayastha disciple of Gopaldev, brought the message of neo-vaishnavism to the Morans. However they became devoutly attached to the Moamara Satra much later. The office of the Guru devolved from father to son in the same lineage. As in other Satras of the Kala Samhati Order, in the Moamara Satra too no idols were worshipped. Nor did it accord any spiritual supremacy to brahmans. Though denied now by its presentday head, apparently the Satra had held very liberal views in the past in regard to commensality and connubium. It also appears to have taken a lenient view of certain cults practised in total defiance of caste and sex taboos. Those cults were a legacy of the suppressed Tan trie tradition that died hard amongst the people of Assam.40 The guru was identified with the Godhead, and his authority was supposed to be supreme. Nevertheless the Satra fraternity built a democratic and egalitarian tradition that suited the tribal way of life.41 That is why the teachings

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of the Satra attracted the Morans. They all became disciples of the Satra by the mid-eighteenth century. The Moamara Satra had a large following among all sections of the people including Ahoms and brahmans. But its close association with the despised Morans, untouchable fishermen and men of other depressed castes was widely noted with alarm by conservative circles.42 Not only was the Satra denied royal patronage, it was also repeatedly persecuted.' Nevertheless it continued to function and preach amongst the people through a network of village-based tithe collectors, designated as gaonburha (village elders). At the time of the uprisings, there were reportedly seven such pontiffs, headed by a Bar-gaonburha or chief elder. On the eve of the civil war the Morans had their tribal economy and organization still basically intact in the region north of the Dibru river. Any superimposed authority, whether that of the Ahom State or that of the Moamaria Guru, could function only through their own tribal organization. Neither the royal nor the religious authority over them was in practice absolute. In the course of their revolts against the State there were many occasions when they even flouted the advice of their Guru whose authority in theory was said to be subject to none. Any explanation of the tenacity of the revolts in terms of blind obedience to the successive Gurus is therefore untenable. The causes were deeper and were inherent in the socio-economic situation. T h e P e r io d o f C iv il W ar

Conditions of peace, internal order and relative prosperity for several decades before and during the reign of Rajeswar Singha suggest a rising population, presumably reaching its heretofore highest level— an estimated three million or so—on the eve of the civil war. Nevertheless, the signs of a deepening crisis were already visible in the body politic. Never before was the ruling class so sharply divided by sectarian disputes. There were too many claimants to the limited number of offices. The militia could no longer be effectively mobilized and commanded. For the first time in the annals of the kingdom, several high officers had to be punished one after another for refusing to go on active service on the plea of ill health. An expedition sent in aid of the King of Manipur perished on its way in inhospitable forests because of the state of things. That the militia was facing a manpower crisis despite a rising population was obvious from Rajeswar Singha's new order that required three paiks, instead of four, to complete between them one man-year of service to the Stale. This increased the

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period of obligatory service from three months to four months per paik—a 33 per cent increase in the load that must have been detested by the common man.43 The widening gap between population and the effective supply of manpower was the cumulative result of a prolonged process of three types of leakage : (i) the alienation of portions of the paik population to an increasing number of devottar, dharmotiar and brahmottar grantees during the eighteenth century ; (ii) the increasing commuta­ tion of paik service for a money-tax under compelling circumstances ; and (iii) an increasing evasion of obligatory service by the remaining paiks under conditions of land abundance and proliferation of neovaishnavite Satras in remote and desolate areas, as explained above. The growing strength of the monasteries, particularly of the non­ conformist ones drawing resources from voluntary contributions, contrasted sharply with the visible decadence of the State apparatus. The Moamara Satra, for instance, had reportedly ten to twelve agricultural farms, four to five thousand buffaloes, substantial quantities of gold and silver, eight to ten thousand servile dependants and a following of ten to twelve thousand monks. The number of its lay disciples ran into several lakhs.44 After prolonged persecution and humiliations for over a century, the Satra found the times most opportune at last to demonstrate its power under the leadership of its abbot Astabhujadev (d. 1770). The opportunity was provided by the Guru's decision to establish a new campus at Khutiapota in the Maloupalhar—an extensive, undulating plain, swampy and partly forested, which served the neighbourhood as fishing, hunting and grazing grounds. Thousands of devotees worked for five days to raise a mound there for housing the Satra. This demonstration of manpower unnerved the State authorities. Misunderstandings between them and the Satra grew ; and on several occasions the functionaries of the Satra were publicly insulted. No longer ready to lie low, the latter began to spread disaffection secretly among the people. Neither was the Government sitting idle. It won over to its side the influential Dihing Satra, also of the Kala-Samhati Order, to counteract the influence of the Moamarias.45 The First Phase o f Revolts Open conflict broke out after Rajeswar's death when Ragh Neog, a leading Moran disciple of the Satra, was flogged on 15 September 1769 for alleged short supply of elephants in fulfilment of the feudal dues. In November 1769 the Morans raised the standard of revolt with open support from the Satra. They won over three exiled Ahom princes

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to their side by diplomatic manoeuvers with the promise of the throne to each of them. Virtually prisoners in their hands, the three princes were used to bring dissension into the enemy camp. Led by Ragh Neog, Naharkhora Saikia (also a Moran), his two kaivarta wives Radha and Rukmini, Govinda Gaonburha and Bayan Deka, the rebel forces inflicted defeat upon defeat on the royalist troops and liberated the entire territory north of the Burhi-Dihing river. Compared to the royalists, they were ill-armed, many carrying only supposedly charmed bamboo-sticks. Their strength, however, lay in the intelligence they received, the guerilla tactics they adopted, and the sympathies they roused among the common paiks of the royalist camp.46 After a series of defeats King Lakshmi Singha (1769-1780) was told by one of the Ahom nobles: I have found that the attitude and feelings of our people have assumed a dangerous shape. Those who are sent to the war submit themselves to the Morans, while others desert the field.47

On another occasion, an Ahom noble was reported to have said : The fishermen as well as their religious head have no sense of right or wrong. They are sure to attack the royal boats, plunder the goods and assault the occupants;.'48 Even among palace attendants in the capital there were people who regularly leaked out secret information to the rebel camp.49 Under such favourable circumstances the rebels advanced and occupied the capital, which remained in their hands for about five months, from 21 November 1769 to 11 April 1770. Once sure of victory, the rebels liquidated the three Ahom princes who were with them and proclaimed Ramananda, son of Naharkhora, the new king. Coins were struck in his name. The deposed king fled the capital, but was soon brought back a prisoner. Administration was cleansed of the nobles. All offices of importance, so long held by blueblooded Ahom nobles alone, were thrown open to the commoners. Three Morans were chosen for the offices of the three Great Counsellors. Ragh was installed as the Barbarua and two ordinary Ahoms as governors of Sadiya and Marangi respectively. Similarly new men were installed in other key posts (excepting one in which the incumbent was retained). An ordinary kanri-paik of the village of Kalugaon was sent to Guwahati as the Barphukan, i.e. the governor and viceroy for western Assam. Rukmini, one of the two women leaders of the revolt, was also sent to Guwahati to help the new governor. The deposed officials of the erstwhile regime were executed. Thus the seizure of power was complete. The entire influence of the Moamara Satra was thrown on the side of the rebels. Their leaders went to Khutiapota, the headquarters of the Satra in Maloupathar, to pay

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homage to the Moamaria Guru. The abbots of the four great monasteries of the Brahma-Samhati Order as well as other monasteries were forced to contribute large sums of money and pay homage, under severe penalty, to the Guru of the Moamara Satra. For months, thousands were daily administered sharan by the Moamaria Guru through a simplified ceremony.50 Evidently the peasant insurgents had an immense hatred for privileges based on birth ; but in the absence of a revolutionary programme, they could not think beyond putting new wine in the old boules. Their desire for social equality and a liberal administration did not fit into the feudal state apparatus they wielded. The men who led them came from the upper stratum of a trans-tribal peasant society that was already exposed to a proces of differentiation. Some of the leaders came from the Ahomized section of the Moran tribe, and they had held junior officer's ranks (Neog, Saikia, etc.)under the old regime. Hence, once installed in the high offices, they tried to ape the erstwhile Ahom officers in their behaviour pattern. Ragh seized wives and daughters of many Ahom nobles and kept them in his harem.51 In fact, as the new Barbarua, he demonstratively coveted all the symbols of power and privilege the Ahom nobles had till then exercised. The Guru of the Moamarias, who was the de facto owner of the huge properties of their Satra, pleaded for a compromise with the traditional nobility.52 But nobody listened to him. A section of the Moamarias was not satisfied with a mere change of government. Headed by Bayan Deka and Govinda Gaonburha, they left the capital in disgust and set up their headquarters at Sagunmuri. With bamboo-sticks in-their hands they roamed about the countryside, singing rousing mystic songs of which only some obscure fragments have survived. 'Oh people : the time is out of jo in t; hold your sticks ready’ appears to have been the refrain of one of the songs they sang.53 The rebels had turned the old land-revenue-cum-militia system upside down. But meanwhile the surviving nobility took full advantage of the dissensions in the rebel camp. A coup was planned in a secret meeting in which an ex-queen in Ragh's harem took the leading part. The royalists assassinated Ragh in his harem on 11 April and reoccupied the capital. The defeat of the insurrection of 1769-70 was followed by a general massacre of the Moamarias all over the country. Among the thousands killed in action or executed later were Ramananda, whom the rebels had set up on the throne ; also Naharkhora, Radha, Rukmini, Astabhujadev and his son Saptabhuj. After the restoration a Sanskrit drama written by a court puindit was staged to celebrate the victory. In this drama the pundit, true to his

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salt, characterized the civil war as a war between forces for and against religion. The forces of Shaivism, Shaktism and Vaishnavism were shown to be on the side of the royal camp, and all sorts of bandits and 'slaughterers of cows, brahmans and children' on the side of the Morans. Characters representing the insurgent leaders were vulgarized in this drama54 The Moamaria forces were liquidated as quickly as they had come to power. Those at Sagunmuri under Govinda Gaonburha's command resisted heroically for a while, but were finally defeated. Govinda was pursued and killed. Yet another group of Moran peasants in the interior led by Lephera, Paramananda, Obhotanumiya, and Tanganram held out for about eight months. Finally, they too were completely routed. The survivors were resettled in new villages.55 Thus the first revolt came to an end within one and a half years. But the discontent persisted and spread in new areas where the religious influence of the Moamara Satra was minimal. The protest demonstration in the capital against the land settlement by four thousand paiks from Darrang in 1770 has already been mentioned. The Second Phase: Foreign Intervention The Moamarias, lying low since then for more than a decade, raised once more their standard of open revolt in April 1783. An armed group of them launched a daring surprise attack on the twin capitals of Gargaon and Rangpur, but were repulsed after a heavy hand-to-hand fight. A general massacre of the Moamarias throughout the kingdom followed, and it continued for one month and a half. The waters of the rivers could not be drunk and people could not walk along the roads. Even the water and the fish of the Brahmaputra,' writes a chronicler in 1838, 'became tainted with the stinking smell of corpses. Half the country was depopulated.'56 Thereafter the kingdom was apparently at peace, but only for a few years. The years 1786-94 once more witnessed people's uprisings on a scale unprecedented both in tom s of their sweep and grip. The Morans north of the Dibru river once more rose in revolt under the leadership of Badal Gaonburha and Charal. A people's army consisting of the Moamarias and Dafla-Bahatiyas was raised by Harihar Tanti at Japaribhita, a foothills village on the north bank of the Brahmaputra. The Morans of Rangdoichong too revolted. A contingent of the rebels then freed Pitambar, a grandson of the late Moamaria Guru, from the custody of the Auniati Satra.57 Pitambar allegedly performed the Brahmaghna (brahman-slaying) sacrifice. The Moamarias then occupied the river island of Majuli. They set on fire the monasteries of Garmur,

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Dakhinpat and Auniati—all of the Brahma-Samhati headed by brahman abbots.38 Later the abbots of Bareghar Satra and Budhbari Satra, both of Kala-Samhati, were executed presumably for their collaboration with the royal side.59 The rebels went on taking village after village until they finally encircled the royal city of Rangpur. The royal forces were defeated at the important battles of Sagunmuri and Bhatiapar. In another battle, the forces led by the vassal chiefs of Rani, Luki and Topakuchi were routed. So critical was the situation that hundreds of monks of Garmur and Dihing Satras, and even the Ahom priests, had to take up arms in defence of the tottering regime. On 19 January 1788 the king and most of its inhabitants fled the capital. The evacuated city was taken by the Moamarias, and it remained in their hands for the next six years. The concerted rebel operations were guided by ordinary people like Harihar Tanti, Kalia Bhomora, Bidur, Howha, Tamai, Parsad, Phophai, Bharat and Sarbananda.60 Bharat was a distant, relation of the late Moamaria Guru in the male line, while Sarbananda was a Matak of Chutiya origin. No attempt was however made this time to establish a centralized rebel administration over the liberated areas. Harihar Tanti ruled over a large tract on the north bank of the Brahmaputra and his lieutenant, Howha, in the 500 square-mile river island of Majuli. Sarbananda was elected a Raja in the Moran habitat with his head quarters at Bengmara (present Tinsukia). Bharat was installed as the King in the capital. Bharat till 1797, and Sarbananda till 1795, regularly struck coins in their own respective names—a measure of the stability of their rule. In that confusion Sadiya was occupied by the Khamti tribe which had recently migrated into that area from Upper Burma.61 The defeated royalist forces tried to regroup themselves in the territory south of the Ladoi-Gar Road under the personal leadership of their prime minister. But there remained no vestige of discipline in the remnants of the once-powerful militia. Tighting with these same archers and shieldsmen our kings had vanquished even the foreigners on numerous occasions, but the very same archers,’ lamented an Ahom noble, 'become demoralized and terrified at the mere sight of the Moamarias and take to their heels. ’“ When the local division of the militia of Bacha, largely composed of Kacharis, was summoned in April 1789 by the prime minister, they refused to take up arms against the Moamarias. Battle-razed Upper Assam was haunted by a famine— the severest in Assam's history. The prime minister initially succeeded in suppressing sporadic revolts at Bacha as well as the trans-Janji area and finally in blocking the south-westward thrust of the Moamarias. But he too had to retreat for a while from his stronghold at JorhaL63

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Many of the uprooted Ahom nobles had taken shelter in the districts of Darrang and Npwgong. These fugitive nobles forced the local inhabitants to work for them in their farms, plundered their grain stores and orchards and molested their women. This resulted in an outburst of popular discontent in both districts. Led by Sindhura Hajarika, the people of Nowgong besieged the fugitive King's quarters in 1791 when he was camping there, and forced him to change his local officers. The discontent spread also among the royal forces then stationed near Biswanath and Kaliabar. They sided with the local Moamarias. As the situation proved too hot for him, the King had to quit Nowgong for Guwahati finally on 11 June 1792.64 Nominally under a vassal Raja,Darrang was long an integral part of the Ahom territory and had the obligation of manning a 6000-strong militia post at Guwahati. In the chaos that had set in, two hundred and forty village heads of the principality of Darrang conferred together and took a vow of non-co-operation with the King. They recalled their men and their two princes from Guwahati. The summons were readily obeyed. This revolt of the Darrang people was led by Mainapowa, Kalia, Swarup, Bhotar Konwar and Phatik Hajarika.65 In Kamrup, the Moamaria influence was minimal. The uprising of a few hundred fishermen there led by a low-born' Ahom named Haidhan and one Boragi was perhaps the only action which might be cited as an instance of this influence. They marched on Guwahati and occupied it on 18 November 1792 after the king had deserted it the previous night.66 In Kamrup, and to some extent in Darrang, anti-government feelings were high partly for ethnic reasons. Once subjects of the Koch Kingdom, the local people looked upon the Ahoms as their conquerors. Under Ahom rule, there were precautionary restrictions on the entry of men of Kamrup and Darrang into the towns of Rangpur and Guwahati. Hence the revolts of Haradatta Chaudhuri, a powerful landlord of N ath Kamrup, and Krishnanarayan, Rajah of Darrang, had some degree of popular support in Kamrup. Yet they had to hire a large number of mercenary Bengal burkandazes to oust the Ahom king from Kamrup. The initiative in carrying forward the revolt thus passed from the hands of the common people to oppressive local feudal elements and brigands. Krishnanarayan came to terms with his sovereign by 1793, as the latter agreed through the mediation of Captain Welsh to commute the obligation to supply 6000 paiks for a tribute. Neither any local monastery nor the bulk of the peasantry were apparently involved in the Kamrup uprising. Haradatta's rebellion was suppressed in 1796.67 Phatik Hajarika took shelter in the Bhutan hills as an outlaw and continued to carry on brigandage from there.

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During the trying years of 1786-94, it became increasingly clear to the royal camp that the age-old militia, now reduced to a rabble, could no more function as an effective organ of coercion. A few hundred Bengal burkandazes were recruited to enhance its fighting power. Military help from the neighbouring Kingdoms of Manipur and Nora (in Upper Burma) was sought for and received. But despite those reinforcements the royal forces failed to improve their position. The attack of the Manipur contingent on Rangpur, for example, was easily repulsed in 1792 by Bharat's Moamaria forces led by his peasant commanders—Tuburi, Mekheli, Takachh, Khagun, Meghai and Kalidhan.68 It was not before the participation of the East India Company's troops in the civil war during the period from November 1792 to May 1794 that the situation turned in favour of the royalists. Captain Thomas Welsh entered Assam with an expeditionary force of 550 men only. Despite the superiority of its arms, this small force would have perhaps met with a disaster had the rebel forces been well organized. Obviously they were not. Like all inexperienced peasant revolts pre-dating the birth of a capitalist class, the Moamaria revolts too failed to consolidate their early gains. They had no alternative to offer to the feudal regime they destroyed in Upper Assam. Welsh's troops occupied Guwahati without facing any resistance on 24 November 1792 ; and after a few encounters with the Moamarias restored Rangpur to Gaurinath Singha on 18 March 1794. It was not because of effective resistance but apparently because of a deliberate policy of 'wait and see' that Welsh took such a long time to reach the capital. In early May the Moamarias, led by Bharat, tried to retake the capital; but after several defeats in its suburbs, they dispersed. On 25 May the interventionist force left the capital and returned to Bengal with their prize money in July 1794. But aid in the form of arms and ammunition to the Ahom King continued to flow in.69 However, within days of Welsh's exit from Rangpur, King Gaurinath and his entourage had left the capital for Jorhat where Gaurinath died. The respite gained by King Kamaleswar Singha (1795-1811) did not stretch beyond a decade. The Dafla-Bahatias and the Moamarias together kept up their resistance on the north bank until their leader Phophai died in action in 1796. No sooner were they suppressed than the Moamarias gave another battle at Chowkihat. The leader, Bharat, escaped and his religious adviser Pitambar was captured. The latter died in captivity. The remnants of Bharat's forces, unitedly with the Singphos (a border tribe), gave yet another battle, but could not stand before the royalist troops. By then a small standing army, trained and •

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organized on the British-Indian model and armed with flint guns, had been put into use by the royalists. Pursued into the forests, Bharat and his five associates died a gallant death in 1799. The dead body of Bharat was sent in a boat to the King, and it was later pinned aloft on a post in a resettled Moamaria village in Khutiapota to terrorize the people. The royalist forces then reoccupied Sadiya in 1800.70 However, Sarbananda still ruled over the liberated area of Matak from its capital, Bengmara. Those who had taken refuge in the adjacent Kachari and Jaintia kingdoms also regrouped themselves along the borders and persistently harassed the royalist villagers of Nowgong. Five companies of royalist sepoys equipped with British arms and ammuntiion were sent to Matak and Nowgong to suppress the rebels. These troops were lured into the jungles by stratagem and were completely destroyed in 1802. All their arms and ammunition fell into rebel hands.71 The situation around the capital, which lay at a distance of barely three days' march from the rebel headquarters at Bengmara, was also tense. In 1803 about five hundred people belonging to the secret sect of night-worshippers (ratikhowalaritiyalritiya) were plotting revolt. The leading conspirators, including one Panimuwa, were however apprehended in time and executed. A few neo-vaishnavite abbots were also suspected of involvement in the sect's unlawful nocturnal activities. Found guilty of complicity, the brahman abbot of the Katanipar Satra (of the Kala-Samhati) was banished from the kingdom. In the wake of the event, heads of all monasteries and their village representatives were warned against harbouring any night-worshipper. They were henceforth to pay a fine in case any night-worshipper was apprehended in villages under their influence.72 In the following year the allied forces of rebellious Matak refugees and Kachari peasants in Nowgong were defeated. There followed a massacre of the Moamarias and their collaborators in November. Some of the survivors were resettled in Ahom territory, while others escaped into the adjacent kingdoms. The civil war in Nowgong eventually came to an end in 1805.73 The standing army that was gradually built up with British help came to consist in due course, of eighteen companies of one hundred sepoys each—mostly immigrating Hindustanis to begin with.74 Their pay having once fallen into arrears, there was a levy on all monasteries, big and small.75 Thus reorganized, the royalist forces invaded Matak—the last stronghold of the Moamaria rebels—once more in the winter of 1806.76 Despite initial successes, they however failed to annex it in the face of a harassing mode of guerilla warfare.

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The struggle appears to have terminated somewhat indecisively. The Mataks reportedly agreed to pay an annual tribute in cash, which was never paid ; instead they resumed their traditional obligation to pay in ivory, elephants, etc.77 Matak, a territory of some 1,800 square miles with its new capital at Rangagara, continued to be ruled by Sarbananda to whom the tide of Barsenapati was conceded, and after him by his son. It was subjugated by the British in 1826, and its final annexation to British India took place in 1839. The principal Satra of the Moamarias was allowed by the Ahom king to be shifted to the interior of the Matak principality. Results o f the Civil war About one half of the population of the Ahom Kingdom perished and the economy was totally disrupted. Both parties in the civil war were ruined. No alternative to the feudel system emerged, since no new ruling class could germinate from the peasantry which was relatively undifferentiated, or from its undeveloped stratum of traders and artisans. The issues became blurred, since the rebels comprised diverse and nebulous class elements with varying degrees of dislike for the regime. Nevertheless, the ruling class could no more rule in the old manner. The Moamarias undermined the myth that only the blue-blooded Ahom had the right to rule. It was to become increasingly difficult for the post - Restoration State to appoint all high officers from the aristocratic Ahom families alone. When, after the first Moamaria revolt, King Lakshmi Singha appointed an able man of the Kalita caste in 1772 to the military rank of a Phukan, there was a commotion that led to the latter's fall; yet later such departures from custom were to become common. Two Ahom nobles holding office as Great Counsellors were even dismissed from their offices by Kamaleswar Singha, on the basis of complaints lodged by the paiks under their jurisdiction. Such action in favour of the paiks was unprecedented.78 The other significant reform—a by-product of the civil war—was the formation of a regularly paid standing army on the British-Indian model. This had wider implications: the State now needed an increased money-revenue to pay the army. What better source of revenue could there be than large-scale commutation of paik services for a money tax ? Indeed, things were already moving in that direction. At the instance of the British Government, the Ahom Government agreed to receive an annual payment of Rs. 50,000 from the principality of Darrang in lieu of the services of 6,000 paiks due to it. The obligations of the Raja of Beltola were also commuted. Later, during the period of the Burmese occupation (1817-24), paik services all over

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Assam were commuted for a money tax. Yet, even without this intervention, the process of monetization of the paik revenue and the liquidation of the unpaid militia would have been hastened by the very logic of the situation. For the interests of the State and the peasantry had by then a common meeting-point : the latter was capable of producing a surplus, however small, for the market, and the former had need of a money revenue. In 1794 Welsh observed that the 'commutation of services would be acceptable to the peasantry'.79 But there were transitional problems. The average peasant's incapacity to pay a money tax in a currency-short economy still remained the determining factor, however coveted the chamua status for him might be. A major section of the peasants, particularly tribal peasants, had apparently a craving for a return to the tribal ways of life that had once ensured them a greater measure of social equality and freedom. Though a semblance of the Ahom feudal hierarchy was maintained in liberated Matak, the government there was more loosely structured and the people lightly taxed. A section of the paiks were allowed to contribute their dues in kind or service as before while others, particularly migrant settlers, paid a light tax in cash. As a result, a large number of subjects left their homes in the Ahom State and settled permanently in Matak. They included not only Ahom and non-Ahom Moamarias but also disciples of monasteries belonging to the Brahma-Sam hati.80 To the Morans and other Moamarias autonomous Matak was a sanctuary where they could breathe more freely. To that extent tribalism reasserted itself, but only for a while.

S o m e T e n t a t iv e C o n c l u sio n s

This survey of the course of Assam's social history over three hundred years suggests that the emergence and popular acceptance of the neo-vaishnavite ideology coincided there with the period of the consolidation of early feudal formations—a process that was, to that extent, completed by the end of the seventeenth century. Like the developing feudalism, the neo-vaishnavite ideology too had a detribalizing role. Its emphasis on one humane deity in place of many, and on one common language as spoken by the majority in place of several tribal languages and Sanskrit, was helpful to the growth of an integrated valley-wise feudal hierarchy with a sovereign at its apex. Developing feudalism at this higher stage needed a universal faith that would uphold the concept of vassalage in the spiritual model and, at the same time, would have a popular appeal. Neo-vaishnavite faith and

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practice—the monasteries acquired feudal properties in due course— fulfilled this condition. That is why, despite occasional tensions in mutual relation, neo-vaishnavism emerged as the ideology of feudalism that permeated the arts, literature and religion of the period. At its height it was able to absorb folk forms and elemental human values of the peasant culture in order to rationalize the feudal class content with the wrappings of a popular and humane culture. Detribalization to a considerable extent having been achieved and sustained, feudalism headed towards a crisis in the late eighteenth century under two pressures : (/) the sharpening contradiction between the feudal class and the peasantry (the latter, a tribe-peasant continuum), and (ii) the sharpening contradiction between different sections of the ruling class over shares of the appropriated surplus. This situation was also reflected within the sphere of neo-vaishnavism. No longer could it harmonize the interests of the exploiters and the exploited, the class and folk elements of culture, within the same ideological mould. It split Trader and artisan elements within the society had not developed till the end of our period. They could hardly offer an alternative to the feudal system in the shape of a new progressive ideology. Hence there was a revival of some aspects of tribalism in the ideological sphere. In the eighteenth century the mainstream of neo-vaishnavism sided with the rulers. The Kala-Samhati school of vaishnavism with its emphasis on wider social equality and links with a tribal layer oi consciousness remained by and large with the people. But the neovaishnavite establishments including the Kala-Samhati had mean­ while lost much of their early idealism and acquired vested interests in the feudal mode of production.81 On the eve of the outbreak of open hostilities, the head of the powerful Dihing Satra which had, like the Moamara Satra, a large following amongst the untouchable castes was won over to the royal side. Heads of other Kala-Samhati Satras like Bareghar and Budhbari also appeared to have followed suit. Only the Guru of the Moamara Satra refused to fall in line. In the phase of the people's armed struggle against the regime, the Moamaria Guru faltered and he pleaded for a compromise with the traditional rulers. But he was by-passed by his extremist followers. In this period the legacy of neo-vaishnavism increasingly appeared as a fetter rather than a useful weapon in the hands of the people in revolt.82 During the phase of armed struggle, the peasant society—a tribepeasant continuum—therefore solicited its spiritual inspiration and nourishment no longer from the classic form of neo-vaishnavism but from the age-old magico-religious cult of night-worshippers, an

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admixture of tribal fertility rites and debased Tantricism long driven underground. It had meanwhile been modified and humanized under the impact of the rising neo-vaishnavism. Thus there was vigorous revival of the cult during the eighteenth century. The chronicles are full of references to the performance of magico-religious rites by the rebels. Understandably, the rebels used the secret nocturnal sessions also for fomenting discontent and hatching conspiracies, as the case of Panimuwa referred to above suggests. The cult still survives in Upper Assam among the same masses as were once intensely involved in the Moamaria revolts. But so secret is itspracticcthat scholars have heretofore failed to collect adequate data for a full investigation. The bare elements of the cult that have come - to light clearly indicate its form to be congregational and its content egalitarian. It gave expression to the urge for an escape from the rigours of the caste society into the millennium of primitive communism vaguely cherished in the subconscious mind. An outiine of the cult, divested of local variations and as practised about a hundred and fifty years ago, is given below with a view to examining its relevance to the revolts under review.13 Sect members concealed their cult identity and usually followed one of the neo-vasishnavite Satras, mostly of the Kala-Samhati Order, in their daily life. From time to time they assembled secjetly at night. The cult was a queer combination of the principles of bhakti and mother-goddess worship. The sect members, both men and women congregated to worship Vishnu through 'left-handed', bacchanalian practices (vamachara).Thc entire ceremony had its focus on a woman symbolizing ecstasy (rasa-vishishta), known as bhakti-matr (Mother Devotion). She sat naked without any make-up in a vacant room. Milk was poured on her breasts and, after it had touched her genital region, was drunk by those present at the congregation. Yet another woman in the role of the hostess called thal-pahari (dish-vendor) served cooked food and liquor as prasada (offerings). After dinner everybody used the skirt of the bhakti-matr for a towel to cleanse the mouth. No caste taboo, nor any kind of taboo against prohibited food like pork and beef, was observed. Nor was any respect shown to brahmans in particular. The earthen cooking pots used in the ceremony and the plantain-leaves on which food was served were not discarded but were preserved for repeated use on future occasions in the same place or elsewhere. This nocturnal ceremony was referred to as bhakat-seva (worship of the fraternity of devotees), to emphasize its congregational aspect. Chanting of mystic devotional songs and dances were part of the

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ceremony. A nocturnal session of rebels organized by Panimuwa in 1803 is described by Dutiram Hajarika in the following words: Panimuwa and his asociates ale every kind of permitted and prohibited meaL Naked, they drank wine and sang devotional songs to the accompaniment of the tokari [a stringed musical instrument].

It was this cult which is frequently referred to in Assamese chronicles as a-riitiya-m at (unorthodox rites) or as asurii-m el (diabolical assembly) in the context of the Moamarias. The nocturnal revelries not only involved indulgence in feasts, drinking, music and dance but also in sex orgies.®4 Through ceremonial participation in this bacchanalia, which was supposed to cast a protective spell around and rejuvenate the participants, the Moamaria rebels were believed to have acquired their fighting acumen. Sticks allegedly consecrated with magical charms were also used by them. Beliefs were current that their charismatic leaders, Radha and Rukmini, in 1769-70 wielded occult power that made the enemy's cannon balls ineffective. Naharkhora too was believed to possess a copper plate with magical formula inscribed on it which was the source of his strength. In the 1780s, Harihar Tanti reportedly cast a spell on the enemy in the battlefield by throwing charmed cloth on them.85 These myths were sustained bya reluctance of the rank and file of the royalist troops to fight fellow peasants and this resulted in their total demoralization or desertion to the other camp. The Moamaria Guru whose every advice was not necessarily heeded was looked upon by the rebels as the symbol of persecuted popular aspirations. It was in his name that they took the vow : Protected we are by Astabhuj, Saptabhuj and Chaturbhuj, By his own sword The enemy's cut up. It's his own musket that hits the same side. And Chaturbhuj protects us. We will kill or get killed. Repaid be the debt to our Guru.86 There were devotional songs that struck a deep note of pain and despair and ended with an urge for defiance of the bodily limitations. Such songs were generally chanted in chorus in mixed gatherings of men and women. A palace guard, for example, arranged for the following song to be sung as a signal to his conspiring comrades who had planned for launching a surprise attack on the royal premises in 1769:

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The camp is well-barricaded, And formidable are the guardsmen. Renounce your love for your body, Or you will be caught in the meshes of your Ego. Let your conduct be regulated in recollection of your Guru's injunctions. The double meaning and symbolism of this song could hardly be missed.87 Literary evidences and subsequent events suggest that Aniruddhadev the founder of the Moamaria cult, was unmistakably influenced by the Sahaj-jan Tantricism of his day. He blended magic and miracles with the egalitarian content of neo-vaishnavism and was said to have conceded to tribal ways of life in the matter of food habits, caste and man-woman relations (annayoni-vichara). Many of Aniruddha's one hundred and eighty extant songs had a mystic content with a focus on the human body (dehavichara) and the futility of worldly wealth. The symbols in use to convey this idea (for example, the futility of the body was often symbolized by ’kings') were real things of life. They were often capable of suggesting a second meaning that could serve the cause of social protest. S. K. Bhuyan wishfully suggests that the Moamaria discontent was possibly promoted by a literature which was 'revolutionary in tone' and 'characterized by a political and martial odour1. No such literature is however extant.8* The course of development from neo-vaishnavism to mass insurgency, as this study reveals, was a complicated one. It absorbed many cross-currents of ideas, class interests and layers of social consciousness. Nevertheless, even while recognizing the mass character and the complex causation of the revolts, historians have heretofore tended to label it essentially as a religious war. Such a categorization does not, however, follow from the available empirical accounts as restored. Religion was at the most just one of the several relevant and even important factors. The Ahom Court itself did not view the civil war as one between two rival religious camps. To them, it was a war between the forcess of all religions, including vaishnavism, on one side and banditti on the other. All such 'bandits' were generally assumed by them to be Moamaria by faith. Moamarias, nightworshippers and rebels were interchangeable terms in the usage of the panic-stricken nobility and their scribes who wrote the chronicles. The insurgency would not have been so widespread had the adherents of the Moamaria faith alone been the participants. The Moran tribe—incidentally they were also Moamaria by faith-started the revolts. But they were soon joined by large sections of the depressed

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MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

and discontented people of other ethnic origins. The Morans remained of course the most determined section in the rebel camp. The vigorous revival of the secret nocturnal sects in the eighteenth century suggests that large chunks of the rebels increasingly looked forward to these sects rather than to the established Moamara Satra for their spiritual sustenance and inspiration. There were practitioners of the nocturnal cult not only amongst the Moamarias proper, but also amongst the followers of other Kala-Samhati Satras. Contrary to the advice of their abbots who had defected one after another to the royal camp, the bulk of their disciples—particularly tribal neophytes and untouchables— joined the rebel ranks. In fact, a majority of Ahoms today appear to follow several Kala-Samhati Satras which still shelter what remains of the nocturnal culL89 Chroniclers, for obvious reasons, lumped together peasant rebels of all categories, and even social bandits who mushroomed in the chaos, under one and the same category of ’Moamaria', irrespective of caste, creed, race and motivation. Ethnicity, creed and caste factors should not therefore be overemphasized while explaining the nature of the revolts. In the given social milieu there was no longer any Moran-Ahom conflict as such in racial terms during the period under review. Ahoms, Morans, Barahis and Chutiyas had all been undergoing a process of merging into a larger community through free intermarriage and the ongoing acculturation for many centuries. In that process all the four tribes had lost much of their separate identities even before their coming into the fold of Hinduism.90 Popular hatred was directed not against the Ahom community as such, but against the nobility in general. In fact, like the others, Ahom commoners too were involved in the revolts. Similarly, it would be falsifying history to suggest that the uprisings were basically against the brahman caste. The State had long been trying to drive a wedge between brahmans and Moamarias, particularly by enforcing a ban on spiritual ordination of the former by sudra abbots since 1702. The image of the Moamarias as 'killers of brahmans and cows' was mischievously projected by court scribes like Dharmadev Sharma, Maniram Dewan and even by King Gaurinath Singha.91 In fact, the anti-brahman edge of the Moamaria violence in Majuli and other places was directed only against enfeoffed priests and abbots who were on the royal side. The Moamarias had no quarrel with ordinary brahmans, some of whom were even followers of several Kala-Samhati Satras including theirs. Even as late as 1803, Sunanda the brahman abbot of Katanipar Satra (Kala-Samhati) was banished for complicity in a plot hatched by the rebels.

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What appeared to Maniram Dewan as 'Matak troubles' was there fore essentially 'a now hidden, now open fight' between classes arrayed broadly in two camps. On one side were, by and large, the temporal and spiritual lords, and on the other, the peasantry and the unconsolidated trader and artisan elements that were still linked with it.92 However,the latter were incapable of visualizing a revolutionary transformaion of the feudal society. The issue involved was the restoration of social, political and economic justice either within the feudal mould itself or through a retreat to a semblance of primitivity. Popular aspirations often found vicarious expression through a tangled cobweb of magico-religious faith. But beneath the trappings of the complex causation there lay hidden the hard economic core—deeper economic causes than were immediately apparent. One such economic cause relevant to one stratum of the peasantry was the need and demand for the commutation of feudal labour-rent for a light money-tax. The generality of the paiks would have found even such a money-tax system oppressive. There was perhaps a vague longing on their part to go back to the 'golden age' of their tribal past, but that was no more feasible. Nor was it possible for the peasants to go forward on their own to a higher stage of social development. Hence the outburst of primitive savagery that matched the royalist terror. They wrecked, burnt and looted the properties of the nobility and then fumed and fumbled. Conscious class war or not, the revolts undoubtedly ruined the economic base of the nobility. The ruination was completed by the atrocities of the Burmese occuption forces during the years 1817-24, which event immediately preceded the British take­ over. Jenkins observed in 1838 : 'Most of the upper nobility had small hereditary estates called Khats, which were originally grants of wastes and cultivated by slaves or their service pykes, and were free from revenue assessment. These Khats have greatly run to waste.. .'93 The role of the small slave population in the revolts was not very significant Economically, slaves were not worse off than the kanripaik peasants. Having no militia duties and being held as valuable private property, they ran fewer risks. The burden on them was lighter than that on the peasants. Hence there was no special ground for their being more militant. At the most they too joined the ranks of the rebel peasants. As to the role of peasant women, tradition has it that they actively participated in the insurgency in all its phases in large numbers. Our present knowledge of the subject could be further enriched through sustained fieldwork in local folklore and oral history, a contents analysis of the rites and literature of the secret sects, an

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analysis of the place-names associated with the revolts and their detailed mapping. Little has been done in this direction by our scholars. The comparative method of history—there were many apparently similar revolts in India and in other countries—might also give us new insights. It is a pity that so little is known about the leaders of these revolts, particularly about their specific familial, social and economic circumstances. The chroniclers either did not know, or they deliberately suppressed the details. Some like Maniram Dewan even mischievously blackened their roles. Folk memory might help in resurrecting them. Taking one’s cue from it, one could even tentatively suggest that the Assamese saying raijei raja (’the sovereign,' tis the people) had its genesis in these eighteenth-century peasant revolts.

N otes 1.

The main primary source for this account is Tungkhungia Buranji [15J. This work was compiled during the years 1804-6 by Shrinath Duwara, a high state official of the civil war period who later became the Barbarua. For citation we have used the Englih version, Tungkhungia Buranji or the History o f Assam 1681-1806AD., tr. Bhuyan [26], unless otherwise slated.

2.

Captain Thomas Welsh, commander the the expeditionary force and J.P. Wade, its medical officer, were both in Assam during the period from November 1792 to May 1794. Both left firsthand accounts of the civil war.

3.

Dewan, Buranji Vivekaralna [8], Goswami, Aniruddhadevar Charitra aru Mayamara Satrar Vamshavali [16]; Goswami, Maloupatharar Buranji. [17].

4.

Bhuyan, Anglo-Assamese Relations.. .[128], 237-57. For quotes, ibid., 250-1.

5.

Introduction dated 15 Sept 1932 to the Assamese edn., Tungkhungia Buranji [15], 39 ; Ehuyan [128], 256-7.

6.

'The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure...political,legal, philosophical theories, religious ideas and their further development into systems of dogma-also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggle and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is interaction of all these elements, in which, amid all the endless host of accidents...the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary’. —F. Engels to J. Bloch, London, 21/22 Sept. 1890, in Marx and Engels, Selected Works in Three Volumes. VoL 3 [176], 487.

PEASANT UPRISINGS AND THE FEUDAL CRISIS 7.

131

Amalendu Guha, 'The Moamaria revolution : was it a class war T t The Assam Tribune [157]; The medieval economy of Assam, Cambridge Economic History of India [160] and the 'Ahom political system : an enquiry into the state formation process in medieval Assam 1228-1714', Social Scientist, Vol 11, [159].

8. In the Brahmaputra Valley, the arena of the civil war, 64 per cent of the Hindu population followed Vaishnavism, 15 per cent Shaktism and less than 2 per cent Shaivism in 1901. —Census of India, 1901, Assam Report [104], 42. 9.

Bhuyan [128], 191-3 ; for details, Neog, Sankaradeva and His Times... [180], 34751 and Sarma,77i* Neo-Vaishnavile Movement and the Satra Institution o f Assam [184], 120-121.

10.

On the ruins of the Kamarupa empire of North Bengal and Assam there emerged dozens of hereditary petty chiefs designated as bhuyans. They ruled over groups of villages and owned enserfed landed estates, with their claims based either on past royal sanctions or on encroachment on peasant rights. Mostly of high caste and north Indian origins, educated and well-armed, they formed confederacies from time to time to fill up local power vacuums. For further details. Gait, A History o f Assam [149], 39-46 and Neog [180], 48-58.

11.

The non-Muslim, non-Christian population of the Brahmaputra Valley in 1881 was classified into three groups :—(i) tribes uninfluenced by Hinduism, (ii) tribes in the process of conversion to Hinduism and (iii) Hindu castes. —Census of India, 1881, Assam Report, [104], 23, 34 and 63-102. The last group constituted only a little over one-third of the relevant population. The process was noted by E. P. Suck, ibid.. Ch. IV, 66-74. Also see Table 1.3 above and for an earlier context, Neog [180], 370.

12.

Transplanted wet rice cultivation, though more labour-intensive than that of dry rice, had a higher per-acre productivity as well as a much lower reproductive seed consumption rate.

13.

See The Tai Migration : Its Impact on the Rice Economy' above

14.

For the Tai religion, see Dang Nghiem Van, 'An outline of the Thai in Vietnam' [140], 188-93 ; Ahom-Buranji, tr. Bania [23], 1-23 ; P. Gogoi, Tai-Ahom Religion and Customs [152].

15.

Neog [180], 366-78; Sarma [184], 63-64.

16.

Later biographies of Shankardev state that despite requests from King Naranarayan he was not inclined to oblige the latter, Neog [180], 120.

17.

Ibid., 76-79,132,136-7 and 144.

132 18.

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM In 1847-48, for example, the 175-acre Satra campus of the densely populated Barpeta village housed 7,368 monks. In two villages, one of weavers and another of oil-pressers, each inhabited by two to three thousand people, all were found to be disciples of the Baipeta Satra. Among the members of the Mahapurushia (i.e. Punisha and Nika) sects in western Assam, a sizeable section were trader-cumcultivalors. Their boats laden with agricultural produce, pottery etc. were to be found 'in every creek of Assam and as far down as Sirajgajj'. The literacy rate amongst them was also higher than average. —Dalton, 'Mahapurashiyas' a sect of vaishnavas in Assam’. JASB. Vol. 20 [901, 455-69.

19. Neog [180], 374-5 and Sarma [184], 181. The date is controversial. 20.

Satsari Asmm Buranji [14], 89-99.

21.

ibid., 117-8 ; Gait [149], 173-4; Tungkhungia Buranji, tr. Bhuyan [26], 28-30.

22.

Ibid., 33-34.

23.

Gail [149], 290.

24.

For the conditions of various land grants,, see Prachya-SasanavaJi.. .[3].

25.

The mililia system as it functioned in later times has been described in several secondary sources. For instance, W- Robinson, A Descriptive Account o f Assam [183], 248-51 and Bhuyan [128], 10-11, 339 and 529-30. But how the system gradually took shape in response to social forces remains in these sources largely unexplained. In this volume we have tried to unfold this dynamics.

26.

For the basis of our quantification see 'Land Rights and Social Gasses' above. It appears that each officer in general used to be allowed a perquisite of 5 per cent of all men under his immediate or overall command ; and sometimes even upto 10 per cent.

27.

'Should the direct producers not be confronted by a private landowner, but rather, as in Asia, under dire a subordination to a stale which stands over them as their landlord and simultaneously as sovereign, the rent and taxes coincide, or rather there exists no tax which differs from this form of ground rent Under such circumstances, there need exist no stronger political or economic pressure than that common to all subjection to that state. The state is then the supreme lord. Sovereignty here consists in the ownership of land concentrated on a national scale. But, on the other hand, no private ownership of land exists, although there is both private and common possession and use o f land'. —Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique o f Political Economy, V d. 3 [174], 170—1. Emphasis ours. \

28.

Bhuyan [128], 399 and Gail [149], 249.

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29.

One aspect of feudalism, i.e. political decentralisation was more prominent in this relationship than decentralisation.

30.

Satsari Asam Buranji [14], 76-77 ; Gait [149], 175 and 190. Attempts at standardised land measurements appear to have started since about 1609, but a regular survey was not undertaken before the 1680s.

31. LakshmiSimhar buranji (mss)[9\ dted by Bhuyan [ 128], 269-70. 32.

That the paiks having joined the monasteries in large numbers, claimed exemption from obligatory service and thus annoyed the State is noted by Gait [149], 173. The rest of the argument follows from an analysis of the circumstances.

33.

Information collated from Sadar-Amin, Asam Buranji /19], 40; Neog [180], 78-7£; Barua, Studies in Early Assamese Literature [122], 97; Talish, Fathiya-i-ibriya, tr. Sarkar,/B0/?S, Vol.l [99], 179-94 ; Welsh, Report on Assam : 1794, reproduced in Mackenzie, History o f the Relations o f the Government with Hill Tribes o f the North-East Frontier o f Bengal [170], 374-99. Both Talish and Welsh noted the absence of a grain market in Assam—a measure of the limited commercialisation.

34. Gait [149], 276. 35.

Such alienation of land assumed a threatening proportion in course of the eighteenth century. Out of the 294, 027 acres of cultivable lands on record in Kamrup, about half were found alienated for religious and other purposes by 1824. Of the 16,512 registered paiks there, only one-fourth were then in the direct service of the State, the rest being employed in the service of temples, other land-grantees and the state officials. Bhuyan [128], 531. According to a provisional land survey of 1825-26, out of 706, 313 acres of cultivable lands in Lower Assam (i.e. the then district of Kamrup and parts of then Darrang and Nowgong), 150, 477 acres or 21 per cent were held under rent-free grants or were otherwise exempted from land revenue payments. —Barooah, David Scott in North-East India.. .[120], 97-98.

36.

Gait [149], 191 ; Bhuyan [128], 37-38 ; Butler. Sketch o f Assam... [132], 214-17.

3T. Sadar-Amin [19], 12-13. 38. According to Hannay, the Mataks are divided into two distinct portions : 'the Muttucks of the Upper Debroo being Morans, a people who by the traditions of the country are the remains of an independent tribe called "Bar’ai Morans"... They are designated Morans or upper nine families of Muttucks. Their lands are high...Their villages ar scattered.... The other portion of the Mataks was principally found on the banks of the Sessa, a tributary of the Burhi-Dihing, and were chiefly composed of Ahoms and other Assamese people who had embraced the Moamaria faith. They were designated as the lower nine families of Mataks. The upper Mataks (i.e. Morans proper) were twice as numerous as the lower Mataks.

134

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM Yet t third group of people-all non-Mataks and mostly disciples of BrahmaSamhati Satrai-were largely composed of royal serfs and paiks, assigned to nobles, spread over a number of landed estates (khat), situated between the Dibru and the Burhi-Dihing (Rajakhat, Tengakhat, Madarkhat etc). Lower Matak, inhabited by the last two groups and new migrants, consisted of a much larger land area than upper Matak. —Hannay, ’A short account of the Moa Marah sect...', JASB, Vol. 7 [94], 671-9 ; Hannay to Jenkins, 4 April 1839, Foreign Pol Proc [35], 14 August 1839, No. 105 ; Mills, Report on the Province o f Assam [66], appendix P, Lakhimpur.

39.

Quotes from White to Jenkins, 26 January 1839, Foreign Pol Proc. [35], 14 August 1839, No. 105.

40.

Dhekial-Phukkan, Asam Buranji [22], 96 ; Sarma [184], 86-90, also B uranji Vivekaratna [8].

41.

The head of a Kala-Samhati Satra, i.e. the Guru, is required by tradition to salute with his knees bending even a devotee of the so-called depressed classes, in return for the latter^ salutation. But in the three other Samhatis, particularly in the BrahmaSamhati, the caste privileges have been retained'. —Sarma [184], 202-3.

42.

The Morans were contemptuously referred to as 'insectivorous Morans’ (gandhikhova). — Tungkhungia Buranji, tr. Bhuyan [26], 65. The Nadials (fishermen) and the Haris (scavengers) were two of a few untouchable castes. Under the Ahom rule, they were forced to tatoo their foreheads, respectively with fish and broom marks. — Gait [149], 265 and Dhekial-Phukkan [22], 89.

43. Ibid., 192 and 249. According to reliable sources, there were only 80,000 paiks available for state service immediately before the civil war. Buchanan-Hamilton. An Account o f Assam..[3%]t 36. 44.

See Buranji Vivekaratna [8], The voluntary contribution to monasteries took the form of a regular tithe (guru-kar) which was a customary obligation, institutionalised in course of the 18th century. The popular saying, 'tithes to the Guru and taxes to the King’ (gurur kar, Rajar khajana) reminds one of the early Christian precept Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God’s’. —Sarma [184], 114 and Neog [180], 332.

45.

Sadar-Amin [19], 76-77, Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 66.

46. Tungkhungia Buranji [26] 60-69 ; Bhuyan [ 128], 206-11. 47. As quoted in Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 67. 48. As quoted in Bhuyan [128], 210. 49. Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 66 and 68.

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50.

Ibid., 70-71.

51.

Ibid.

52.

See Buranji Vivekaratna [8], Also, cited by Bhuyan [128], 207-8.

53.

Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 71-72. The surviving lines in Assamese are "praja oi jarou rouva, chekani oi chapai dhara".

54.

Dharmadev Sharma, Dharmodaya-natakam [7]. I had access to a transcript temporarily in the possession of late Dandinath Kalita of Tezpur, many years back, before it was irretrievably lost.

55.

Tungkhungia Buranji [25], 75-78.

56.

Buranji Vivekaratna [8],

57.

Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 95-100 ; Satsari Asam Buranji [ 14], 155.

58.

Bhuyan [128], 224.

59.

Satsari Asam Buranji [ 14], 157.

60.

Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 95-102.

61.

Bhuyan [128], 226; Gait [149], 204-5.

62.

Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 109.

63.

Bhuyan [128], 230-1 and 234-5. *

64.

Ibid., 233-4, 270 and 351. The first attempt to arrest Sindhura at Nowgong byWelsh's men was foiled in November 1793 by an armed crowd of some two thousand people. This village Hampden was apprehended and executed later in 1795.

65.

Wade, An Account o f Assam... [24], 242-5. Wade compiled his account mainly from two old Assamese chronicles.

66.

Bhuyan [128], 306-9.

67.

Ibid., 271-80and 431-2.

68.

Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 121-5 ; Bhuyan [128], 229. For commanders' names, Hajarika and Vaidyadhip, Asamar Padya Buranji [18], 101.

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MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

69.

Tungkhungia Buranji [261,129-32; Bhuyan [128]. 385-8 and 436-7.

70.

Tungkhungia Buranji [26]. 142-8 ; Satsari Asam Buranji [14], 176-7.

71.

Letters from the Raja and the Bargohain of Assam, both dated 8 Asharh 1724 Shaka to Govt of India in Prachin Bangla Patra Samkalan, ed. Sen [81]. 90-94.

72.

Satsari Asam buranji [14], 178 ^Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 165-6 and 194-5. The cult of night worship (ratikhowa) was a legacy of suppressed Tantrik rituals and tribal fertility rites, associated with mother cults, which persisted in rural protests within the authoritarian feudal society.

73.

Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 152-3,157-8 and 195 ; Satsari Asam Buranji [14], 17983.

74.

Bhuyan [128], 437.

75.

Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 140.

76.

Ibid., 191-2.

77.

White to Jenkins, 26 Januaiy 1839, Foreign Pol. Proc. [35], 14 August 1839, No. 105 ; Lahiri, The Annexation o f Assam [167], 206.

78.

Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 85 and 190-1.

79.

Bhuyan [128], 328-9 and 506 ; the quote is from Welsh's Report on Assam in Mackenzie [170], 374-99. Transitional difficulties however lingered on for decades, first due to the lack of commercialisation to a sufficient degree and second, due to the subsequent decrease and chronic shortage in the supply of coins under the given unsettled political conditions. Nevertheless, even the people of Upper Assam reportedly preferred money-taxation to the former system provided the rates were low,—Foreign Pol. Proc. [35], 10 June 1831, No. 58.

80.

Hannay to Jenkins, 4 April 1839 and White to Jenkins, 26 January 1839, Foreign Pol. Proc. [35], 14 August 1839, No. 105. The rates of taxation were much lower in Matak than in the Ahom kingdom or, even under British administration that followed. Consequently, emigrants to Matak were 'better-off than most classes of ryots in Assam' (ibid). Contemporary estimates of Matak's population by British officers during 1825-39 ranged between 50,000 and 100,000 of which followers of the Brahma-Samhati monasteries, mostly immigrants, were said to constitute a third or so.

81.

From the mid-18th century the heads of important neovaishnavite monasteries had to attend the royal court on all special occasions. Royal visits too were paid occasionally to these monasteries. As a result, some of them soon began to ape the

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royal court in their display of pomp and splendour. Their own paiks were organized into groups headed by Boras and Saikias, as in the State militia, to facilitate the extraction of labour rent Sarma [184], 186-8. 82. See Bhuyan [128], 205-8. Towards the end of the 18th century, the Moamarias were no more united under a single Guru. Their original Satra was split into several independent Satias. Dinjay (1816), Puranimati (Putanipam), Tiphuk, Garpara (1807) and Madarkhat (1880) were its offshoots. Endle writes that in earlier times Dinjay was headed by a Kachari (Gaon-) burha, Garpara by an Ahom (Gaon-) buiha and Puranimati by a Khatwal (Gaon-) burha. S. Endle, The Kacharis [142], 88. The schism appears to have taken place on considerations of both ethnicity and private gain. 83. As described by Dhekial-Phukkan [22], 96-97; Asamar Padya Buranji [18], 101. 84. "In A nkila-bhakti no restriction in respect of food and eatables is observed...Sambala-bhakti consists of sexual enjoyment. Lampatabhakti is the combination of the above two'. —Sarma [184], 138. His source is an 18th-century Sanskrit treatise. 85.

Bhuyan [128], 198-9 and 223 ; Tungkhungia Buranji [26], 61, 66, 97 and 113 ; Asamar Padya Buranji [ 18] 101.

86.

For the first five lines of the quote, Tungkhungia Buranji [25], 66 and for the last two lines, Bhuyan [128], 255.

87.

Lakshmi Simhar Buranji [2] cited ibid., 256. Our translation slightly differs from that by Bhuyan. The other suggestive lines of the song, or rather an extant variant of it, are as follows in a free translation. Oh brothers ! don't while away your life, For the forces of Prachanda-bega (Great Speed, i.e., Time) are rushing towards you ! Don't your senses make you aware That soldiers have pulled down the stone-walls ? They’re breaking down the brick-walls, too 7 Footmen of the Yavana have blocked the gates; Exit is impossible now. Sounds of horses' trampling on the sea ; The boat's sure to get capsize 1 Oh Bhogananda! Practise not devotion at the cost of your body, Or you'll be caught Once more in the cobweb of maya.

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MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

With variations, some of these and similar lines appear in several songs of Animddhadev. Neog points out that the allegory of Prachanda-bega, as found in the Bhagavata-purana, Book IV, is alluded to in the song. He suggests that though Aniniddha's songs were used by the Moamaria rebels as signals for action, these did not have any revolutionary content as such. For his basically different assessment of the character of the uprisings, see Neog, SocioPolitical Events in Assam Leading to the Militancy of the Mayamaria. Vaisnavas [181]. 88.

Bhuyan [128], 256. See also Sarma [184], 138-9. The following fragment of a folk song is indicative of the 'martial odour' : ’Here is the bow, here's the arrow. Raise your bow, oh Dekadev ! Let us march to kill the Mulungs Hold fast the steering oar Oh Dekadev of Matak ! The boat is full of our clansmen.

89.

'The paka section of the Ahoms, forming probably the majority, follows undoubtedly a tantric line of worship... It would require further investigation ta ­ bling to light a fuller picture of their religion...The Ahoms of the paka line are disciples of such Satras as Ceca, Chaliha, Budbari, Katani, Kardoiguria, Baregharia and others, all of which are of Kalasamhati'. —Gogoi [152], 22. Paka bhakats are those who offer cooked food at their worship in congregations.

90.

Morans, Chutiyas and Borahis often identified themselves with such categories as Moran-Ahom, Moran-Chutiya and Chutiya-Ahom, etc., before the Census authorities in the 19th century. In other words, they did not know where to put themselves.

91.

Dharmodaya-natakam [7], See also Buranji Viveakaratna [8], for fabrications in this respect The Moamarias were charged with the slaying of Brahmans and cows in a couple of letters addressed by King Gaurinath to the Govt, of India

92.

Quoted from Marx and Engels, Manifesto o f the Communist Party [175], 41-45.

93.

Jenkins to the Secy, to the Govt, 9 December 1838, Foreign Pol. Proc, [35], 26 December 1838, No. 94.

7 Colonialization: Years of Transitional Crisis Assam Proper, that is, the five districts of Kamrup, Darrang, Nowgong, Sibsagar and Lakhimpur came under British occupation in 1825. By 1840, direct British administration was uniformly introduced and stabilized over this entire territory. An attempt is made here to examine the economic conditions prevailing there immediately before the successful establishment of the tea industry. The contemporary accounts of Welsh, Buchanan-Hamilton, Dhekial-Phukkan and Robinson yield much relevant information which is collated and summarized below.1 C rops , T echonology , T rade

Crops : At the close of the eighteenth century the country was in a precariously depopulated state. Even so it was exporting to Bengal in trouble-free years raw cotton, lac, mustard-seeds, muga silk, ivory and gold in considerable quantities ; manjit (a kind of vegetable dye—a forest product), ginger, wax, long-pepper, bell metal vessels and timber in some quantities ; and rhinoceros and buffalo horns in trifling quantities. Betel-nuts, although raised on a wide scale had already ceased to be an export to Bengal. Rice was produced in 'very great abundance’ and Welsh asserted that 'a scarcity had never been known to happen from natural causes'. Next to rice the most considerable crop was mustard. The most common pulse was mah (phascolus max). Arhar (citisus cajan) was formerly cultivated only for rearing the lac insect. But later—says Buchanan-Hamilton—it was preserved for its pulse. Mug and khesari were also cultivated, but on a small scale. Masur (fine pulse) was generally imported. Of all warm seasonings which were locally produced the most common were black-pepper, long-pepper, turmeric, chillies (capsicum), onions and garlic. Black-pepper was cultivated mostly in lower Assam and the southern part of Upper Assam. In the early nineteenth century it had almost ceased to be an export to Bengal, and its production for

140

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

local consumption also very much decreased. The decline may be attributed to availability of cheaper pepper in Bengal from Kerala Betel-nuts, betel-vine and sugarcane were widely cultivated all over Assam for home consumption. According to both Buchanan- Hamilton and Dhekial-Phukkan no refined sugar other than gur was produced in Assam except, of course, for the royal house in its days. Some quantities of gur from the Dibrugarh area (Matak) were imported into other districts. The cultivation of tobacco was more conspicuous in western than in eastern Assam in Welsh's time. But by 1840 its cultivation, though still marginal, had a wider spread. Occasionally rotated with sugarcane, tobacco was raised on rich spots near homesteads. Cotton was mostly grown by the tribal people in the submontane and hilly tracts. With handlooms and spinning wheels in every household—Brahmins’ and the nobility's not excluded—the demand for raw cotton was decentralized and diffused all over the country. Imports from neighbouring hills and the local production of the plains together yielded a surplus of cotton for the market of Bengal. Similarly, some quantity of cotton cloth found its way to the hills. The cotton.of Matak commanded a higher price—four rupees per maund around 1840—because of its superiority, and was much demanded in Kamrup.2 The indigeneous rheea (Boehmeria nivea) plant, cultivated mainly by the fishermen, yielded material for making ropes and threads for their fishing nets. Other fibres of marginal importance were jute and mesta. Jute, unlike today, was grown on small patches on high grounds near homesteads. Mustard was almost the sole oilseed and its oil the only edible and lighting oil. The other oilseed, sesamum, was grown in a small quantity. No or little oil was extracted from castor-seeds, although castor plants were cultivated for rearing E ndi silk. As local consumption of oil was extremely limited because of dietary habits and an inefficient technique of oil pressing, much of the mustard-seeds were available for marketing outside Assam. Sericulture with its several varieties of silk had a broad social base. The production of mulberry silk (pat) was extremely limited. The muga silk, fed on the sum trees, had a good and rising demand, presumably from the embroidery industries of Murshidabad and Dacca in Bengal. By 1840 traders used to pay advance for its guaranteed supply. The endi silk, fed on castor plants, had a large market in Bhutan, Tibet and the neighbouring hills. For sericulture as well as for the lac industry, there were plantations of suitable trees, generally on homestead sites. But muga and lac culture were carried on also in

COLOREALIZATION : YEARS OF TRANSITIONAL CRISIS

141

temporarily cleared patches of natural forests-in eastern Assam particularly. Long-pepper, manjit, gaihian (a kind of fragTant root), wax, honey, aloe-wood and incense were generally forest products collected for the market. Wild rubber trees were not known to have been tapped before the eighteen-forties. Poppy, unknown before 1770, was already a luxuriant crop in most parts of western Assam by Welsh's times. By the eighteen-thirties it was so all over Assam, and eighty per cent of the Assamese population were believed to be opium addicts.3 Opium was sold in the form of a piece of cloth, saturated in the juice of poppy and lightly rolled up. Poppy was the only crop which was regularly watered on the fields. Indigo and maize cultivations were extremely limited. Barley, wheat and millets were rare. The potato, introduced during 1825-29, was firmly established as a new garden crop by 1840. Technology : The numerous brine wells of eastern Assam were regularly worked till 1839 with crude implements. But in the last few years hardly an estimated 3,000 maunds could annually be procured in this way.4 Some quantity of rock-salt was imported from Bhutan, but the bulk of the consumption was met from Bengal trade. The traditional iron-smelting industry of eastern Assam had almost died out by 1840. So had the craft of washing river sands for gold dust. Potters were fairly widespread, but a section of them representing a particular caste did not use the wheel at all. Stone-cutters made plates, cups and grinding stones. Brick-makers, brick-layers and carpenters were few. Except in Kamrup, ghee or butter was not produced anywhere. Wheeled bullock carts, newly introduced in Assam under British rule, were yet a rare sight. Peasants carried their surplus to markets with loads on their bodies and in canoes where possible. Cotton was generally marketed unginned, thus shifting the burden of processing to the final consumer. Except in Kamrup, there were generally no professional oil-pressers or oilmen's caste. Oil was mostly pressed in individual households through a crude manual process. Rice was marketed, more often than not, in husk. In fact, all processing techniques, implements associated therewith and available services in Assam were very primitive indeed in contrast with the average Indian standard of the day. With only a little exaggeration David Scott described Assam in 1831 as a country where boats continue to be made from the trunks of trees, where the use of a saw, a wheel or carriage is unknown, where the native cannot make marketable butter, sugar or oil and where half the surface of a rich soil...lies waste and is considered

142

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

absolutely worthless from the ignorance of the means of making use of it.s However, it should be remembered that Assam's population was already reduced by 1826 to an estimated third of what it had been sixty years ago. A large number of artisans had also been carried away as slaves by the Burmese. Trade : No quantitative data of agricultural production can be expected for this period. However we are fortunate to have some statistics of the approximate volume and value of Assam's trade with Bengal for the years 1808-09 and again for the years 1833-34 and 183435. These figures have been reproduced in Tables 7.1 and 7.2. The Bengal trade probably represented less than half of Assam's total external trade during the period 1800-35. We are told that the annual trade between Assam and Bhutan alone was estimated at rupees two lakhs in Buchanan-Hamilton's days. Assam bartered lac, dried fish, muga and endi silk for Bhutan's woollens, gold dust, salt, musk, ponies, yak tails and Chinese silk. Similarly trade was carried on with Tibet and, to some extent also with Upper Burma. Assam received a part of her supply of bullion from these sources, which was partly used to pay for her trade deficit with Bengal. The Bengal trade was mostly limited to bartering a single import, salt, for assorted products of Assam. The trading capital and initiative were mostly in the hands of merchants from outside Assam, except in the trade in mustard-seeds. The former customs check-post with its oppressive tariff rates continued to be in existence at the border until it was abolished in April 1835. The available customs returns show not only the relative importance of certain export products and their average values, but also the trend in terms of trade. P angs of T ransition : T he M oney D rain .

The early years of British administration were years of painful and difficult transition. The old khel7 system of revenue settlement based on periodic service and/or in-kind payment was gradually replaced during these years by a new proprietory system involving payment of ryots' dues to the Government in cash. This itself, other things remaining the same, would have put Assam's barter-oriented, moneyshort economy under severe strains. In fact, the situation was made far worse. The mint of the Assam Rajah—the immediate source of local currency—was put out of operation. But British-Indian currency did not flow into the area in sufficient quantities. Even an increase of exports

COLON1AUZATION : YEARS OF TRANSmONAL CRISIS

143

in the thirties could hardly help in such a situation. For export goods were generally bartered for salt. Ultimate gains from trade accrued mostly to the salt traders of non-indigenous origin in the form of a surplus held outside Assam. In all probability the trade surplus, as it appears from the tabulated trade statistics was not a regular feature even during the thirties. A part of the export value in 1834-35 represented the value of goods received by the Government in lieu of land revenue dues. It was a part of remittance to Calcutta, the headquarters of the Presidency. Hence we argue that the actual trade surplus was less than what it appeared to be during 1833-52. In any case, it was too meagre. The Government’s revenue collection in local currency was annually remitted to Calcutta for recoinage. But there was practically no flow-back as the remittance represented a surplus of revenue over local disbursements. This part of traffic which went on for at least a decade involved the withdrawal of a considerable quantity of circulating media (Table 7.3). Thus the economy was caught into a situation of acute money shortage. The situation improved in Lower Assam after 1835, but continued to be as bad or even worse till the end of the thirties in Upper Assam. An annual tribute of Rs. 50,000 was exacted from the latter, which had the status of a native state during the period 1833-39. The surplus realised from revenue was itself questionable. In former times, the existing network of road-cum-dams, so essential for Assam's wet-rice cultivation, used to be constructed and maintained at public cost In other words, a considerable proportion of the state revenue, collected in the form of so many units of unpaid labour service was spent on the public works. But during 1825-40 no such public works or even repairs thereof were undertaken, presumably much to the detriment of agricultural production. Even a modest public works policy would have otherwise helped disbursement of new Calcuttaminted coins, which were declared sole legal tender in 1835. Another difficulty was rooted in the very composition of the government personnel. 'Of the public money that has gone to defray the establishments—civil and military (all foreigners with scarce an exception)' admitted Francis Jenkins in his report on Assam (1833), 'at least one half has been remitted out of the province, whilst all surplus revenue, above these expenses has been withdrawn to the treasuries of the Government'.* The resultant money-crisis made it difficult for the peasant to pay off his dues to the Government. Spurious coins and multiplicity of currency in circulation—rajmohari, narayani, sicca and Feraccabad coins with their fluctuating and conflicting balta—further aggravated

144

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

the crisis. It was in this situation that a part of the fortunes of the nonindigenous trading community was invested in usury. The rate of interest charged could be as high as ten per cent per mensem.9 Prices appear to have been abnormally low in 1830. In that year it was recorded that a revenue defaulter's stock of paddy, on sale at a public auction, fetched only twelve rupees per one hundred maunds i.e. twelve paise per maund.10 Our Table 7.1 shows that the value of paddy at the border customs-point was uniformly calculated at approximately six annas per maund for three successive years till 1834-35. It sold at five annas in Darrang in 1835 (Table 7.4). The normall price of paddy during the thirties may, therefore, be taken as five to six annas per maund. In the interior it was cheaper, but fluctuated widely from place to place. For example, paddy sold at four maunds a rupee and salt, at four seers a rupee in the interiormost district of Lakhimpur in 1838. Cleaned rice was valued at twelve to fourteen annas at the export point during 1832-35. It sold at twelve annas per maund in Darrang in 1835. But in distant Matak it was sold atOnerupceaimaundto the soldiers in 1835.11 However, the average price of cleaned rice during the thirties may be taken to be about twelve annas. It is to be noted that the export of rice in some years was rather exceptional and also that there was little market demand for home consumption. Compared to 1808-09, the prices of lac and muga silk in the thirties had increased no doubt, but those of mustard-secds and cotton recorded a slight fall. The export earnings did not help to meet the requirements of a monetized revenue system under the peculiar local circumstances explained above. Consumption of imported salt, which was slightly cheaper than in 1808-09 in terms of muga and lac but not mustard, did actually fall by the thirties. This indicates that either the consumers were worse off than in 1808-09, or their number had further decreased meanwhile. The average prices of export goods as derived from our trade statistics however do not reflect the prices received by the actual producers. Non-indigenous middlemen were in complete control of the internal and external trade, except that of mustard seeds, during the thirties. A farmer in Darrang used to receive in 1833 only some thirty-eight to fifty-six per cent of the export value of lac, mustard-seed and muga silk, as would be evident from Table 7.4. The general shortage of cash forced the administration to receive in kind the revenue dues of such articles as command a certain market and are not of a perishable nature as gold, ivory, mooga, silk, munjit and cotton cloth... at many places. 'Cloths of certain fixed dimensions, salt, iron-hoes and other articles in general use' circulated as money and were accepted in setdement of land revenue demand. These were later

COLONIALEATION : YEARS OF TRANSI'nONAL CRISIS

145

put on sale to traders.12 This arrangement, however, could not be a general and regular one. The defaulting farmers therefore fled their homesteads in hundreds in order to squat on wastelands in remote areas and evade taxation. In many cases they sold themselves and their children into slavery for a trifle. The early administrative reports of British officers are full of such stories of migration causing depopulation in the erstwhile populous villages. Slavery—finally abolished by Act V, 1843—was 'daily obtaining a greater hold in Assam', wrote Rutherford in 1833.13 Such a plight was but natural under the disturbed circumstances and a groping administration. Whilst commerce is almost dormant ; whilst the Government assessments have in their realisation proved to be excessive imposts and every surplus rupee thus raised besides a large proportion of the salaries of the whole of the establishments is drained out of the province', wrote Jenkins, 'it would be preposterous to expect that its prosperity should not be on the decline'.14 These circumstances of the transitional phase, the outbreak of cholera epidemics in 1827-28 and again in 1835-36 and an alarming increase in opium addiction—all these lead us to believe that the population crudely censused at seven to eight lakhs around 1826, remained almost stationery till 1840 (Table 7.5). R o a d s To G r o w t h

: A R e s o u r c e -B a s e d

S chem e

Both David Scott, the Agent to the Governor-General (1825-31) on the northeast frontier of Bengal and Francis Jenkins (1834-66) who had first come to Assam in 1831 on a special survey duty and later headed the Assam administration, were men of enlightenment, ability and wide outlook. Both had a deep understanding of the problems on the spot. According to both, the ultimate solution to the problems lay in developing as fast as possible the export potential of the region. Only then, they argued, would it be possible to get out of the situation, of which the money crisis was but one aspect. However, the practical policies as recommended by these stalwarts represented altogether different approaches. Their recommendations which came for consideration of the Company's Government one after another are examined below. While pointing out in 1830 the disastrous impact of the annual drain of the province’s surplus revenue to the Presidency in the form of withdrawn coins, Scott suggested that at least a part thereof be invested in the purchase of the local opium for export on Government account and in establishing sericultural demonstration farms.15 Indigenous

146

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

opium was not yet available in a standard form. But he asserted that the poppy cultivators could be induced through a scheme of Government advances to produce opium in the standard form and to sell it at a price of about four and a half rupees (sicca) per seer to the Government Although this price was slightly higher than that of Bihar opium, he urged upon the Government to treat Assam as a special case in allowing her a share of the opium monopoly. He also hinted that through such first steps alone the output of this injurious drug could at least be partially siphoned off from local consumption. Sericulture was the other lever in Scott's scheme of uplifting the economy. He suggested that both mulberry and muga silk might be prepared in large quantities and of a superior quality. This would be possible only if the Government came forward with 'that preliminary interference which can alone prove effectual in the existing state of society in Assam.' Export of bulky commodities like rice had no future on a commercial scale because of difficult river transport. The only policy left to the Government therefore was, he said, to encourage the production of more costly articles such as opium, muga and mulberry silk. There was already a market for muga silk in Bengal, while markets for the other two were yet to be created. Presumably Scott had the then profitable raw silk and opium markets of Europe and China respectively in view. In Scott's scheme of things improvements were to be tried on the basis of available local resources and skills. Such improvements would have then benefited not a handful of specialized groups but the bulk of the population. Thereby they would have generated diffused cash incomes, thus helping the farmers to pay off their tax dues. The soil and climate of Assam were noted to be well-adapted to the production of sugar, indigo and cotton. But Scott excluded them from consideration because their development would have involved 'continued European Superintendence'. He pointed out that opium, muga and mulburry silk, which were already being cultivated by individual households all over Assam, could be further developed without involving a European-managed plantation system. Although the cultivation of mulberry silk had shrunk to an insignificant level by 1830, Scott was optimistic about its revival. For in his times the mulberry silk of Bengal already enjoyed a good market in Europe.16But also convincing for him was the fact that sericulture had a widely diffused base in Assam. Because 'the inhabitants of Assam are already so universally acquainted with the analogous operation of winding the silk called Moogah', he observed, 'there is every reason to think that they would soon become competent to prepare the ordinary raw silk in

COLONIALEATION: YEARS OF TRANSITIONAL CRISIS

147

a manner superior to what can be expected from the cotton-clothed native of Bengal'. In contrast to the people of Bengal, the Assamese common people clothed themselves not in cotton alone but also in varieties of homespun silk. Naturally therefore, sericulture like weaving was in general a household occupation for them. Of the different varieties, the endi silk did not involve any reeling but was spun off by hand. Reeling of muga which was done with crude indigenous implements would not fit into the standard filatures of the day. So immediate modernization was possible only in the case of mulberry silk.17 In country-wound form, this silk had no more any foreign market prospects. A new technique of filature-winding imported from Europe had already been slowly but successfully diffused in Bengal during 1770-1823. By 1823, the Company's raw silk exports to Europe consisted entirely of filaturewound silk.18 So the future of Assam silk lay in its modernization in this respect Scott was convinced that modem reelers—he overlooked the cost aspect—suited the genius of the Assamese farmers. For any person acquainted with the indigenous mode of winding 'is competent with a little practice', he agreed 'to perform the same operation on the other'. Accordingly he put forward a well-thought-out project for the Government's consideration. This was as follows: (i) A number of Government-sponsored mulberry plantations were to be established at favourable sites to demonstrate a better mode of cultivating the plant and to furnish cuttings for the use of native cultivators, (ii) Reels 'of a proper description' were to be distributed amongst the natives and a 'sufficient number of skilful Bengal spinners entertained to instruct' the villagers in the operation of winding, (iii) A Commercial Residency on a small scale was to be established at Guwahati in order to create a steady demand for Assam silk, to look after the continuous perfection of its processing and for 'keeping up the knowledge of this art amongst the inhabitants'. The whole cost of initially planting a tract of some 330 acres and of free distribution of 500 modem reels was estimated at sicca rupees 12,000 to 15,000—not a big sum in the context of the recurring annual revenue drain. In his eagerness to have the project sanctioned, Scott assured that the proposed demonstration farms were expected ultimately to be sold or let 'at a rate sufficient to indemnify Government for all expenses incurred'. The outlay was expected to produce 'a much more than proportionate return in the increase of the revenue resources and general prosperity of the country'. Even so, if the Government did not feel encouraged, he was prepared to finance the

148

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

experiment by an extra cess levied upon the inhabitants. Scott's emphasis on raw silk can be traced as far back as 1826 in his letter to Swinton dated 18 September. In yet another letter to the Government Scott recommended a policy of encouraging technical training in preference to the literary education which was then being imparted through a network of Government-aided traditional schools. He represented to the Government that an amount be spent from the provincial revenue for imparting lessons in arts and crafts such as carpentry and husbandry. The development of industry and technical skills could be left~to evolutionary forces, he said, only 'in the ordinary state of political societies'. But when a Government is placed so very far in advance of its subjects in point of information as in our case in Assam', it should not, said he, wait for the introduction of improvements *by chance' or 'in the ordinary progress of events' but should expedite such improvements 'with certainty and at once'.19 We have quoted Scott at length to show that even as far back as 1825-31 he had a coherent set of ideas for making the transition of an underdeveloped region less painful. His idea of erecting western techniques on the basis of existing manual processes, his selection of a single broadbased commodity like silk as the lever to diffuse skill and additional incomes, his advocacy of the Government's entrepreneurial or pioneering role under the given circumstances—all these have a halo of sense and modernity even in today's context. However, the authorities turned down his proposal as a doubtful experiment. Undaunted, he commenced a twelve-acre mulberry plantation in Darrang in 1831 through the utilisation of convict labour. He brought expert reelers from Rangpur (in Bengal) to teach the people of Darrang and Nowgong the improved methods of winding silk. After his premature death towards the end of the same year his successor Robertson (1831-34) had to bring the experiment to a close in December 1832 for lack of funds.20 R oads T o G row th

: A S chem e

O f C o l o n iz a t io n

That 'preliminary interference' invoked so urgently by Scott in favour of a policy of resource-based development but refused by the Government was, however, not lacking in support of the alternative line recommended by Jenkins three years later.21 His scheme of colonization received the prompt consideration of the Government even before the feasibility of tea culture in Assam was firmly established. By then the Charter of 1833, which marked the final ascendancy of British industrial interests over the mercantile interests, had become the

COLONIALEATION : YEARS OF TRANSITIONAL CRISIS

149

unmistakable water-shed between his approach and that of Jenkins. The Charter for the first time allowed Europeans on a large scale to hold land in India, either on long-term lease or with freehold rights and thus paved the path of colonial capitalism in that region. In his report of 1833 Jenkins pointed out the necesity of undertaking some public works as an immediate measure to generate a flow of cash into the money-short economy. At the same time he sugested: the settlement of Englishmen of capital on the wastes of these frontiers seems to me to offer a better prospect for the speedy realisation of improvements than any measures that could be adopted in the present ignorant and demoralised state of native inhabitants.

Jenkins discouraged any halt in the process of monetization of the revenue system and in the move towards the creation of absolute propery rights in land. 'To obtain the full advantages that could accrue from European settlers' said he, 'it appears to me that the grants must be altogether free-hold,subject to no other condition than the payment of a fixed and unalterable rate of rent and absolutely unincumbcrcd with any stipulations in regard to ryots or subtenants'. The whole idea was to attract a class of European planters along with their capital to Assam's wastelands which were deemed suitable for the production of sugarcane, indigo and such other commercial crops. Jenkins would not mind even the displacement of local ryots from their lands by favoured colonists through the operation of a discriminatory land revenue policy, in the so-believed long-run interests of the former. He was afraid that 'if the government assessments upon the natives where generalised and not heavy', they would not be available as tenant-cultivators under European planters. In that case introduction of cash crop farming would be inhibited. On the other hand, if ordinarjtcultivation were heavily taxed, the ryots would be forced to leave their farms and work for cash crop-oriented capitalist farmers. In that case, the difference between what used to be paid by the ryots towards land revenue and the lower average to be paid by the colonists would first appear to be a loss to the stale no doubt. But the large quantities of wastelands brought under tillage and other improvements, said Jenkins, would soon cover this loss. The two premises of this colonization thesis were : (i) that a large number of local people had no means to provide for themselves ploughs, secdgrain and catttle, and (ii) that the colonists would be able to make necessary advances to the former for growing export-oriented cash crops. Jenkins was of the opinion that the ryots in the new set-up would be sufficiently protected by the general interest of the colonists

TABLE 7.1

Assam's Trade Statistics, 1808-09 (Estimated at Goalpara, opposite Hadira Chowki)

Exports

Quantity in nuis.

Value in Rs. (sicca)

Average price (per md.) Rs.

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

50 15,000 50

500 20,000 300 500 6,500

10.0 13* 6.0

Paper Mustard-seed Long-pepper Manjit Elephant-tusk

------------

------

---

•

Muga thread Muga cloth Cotton (with seed)

65 75 7,000

.. 11,350 17,500 35,000

75.0 233.3 50

Imports

Salt Fine Pulse Ghee Sugar Stone-beads, corals, # m m m jewel and pearls Cutlery and Glassware (European) Muslin Taffeta, Kinkhap, Satin and other luxury cloth

Quantity (in mds.)

Value in Rs. (sicca)

(6)

(7)

35,000 —

1,000 —

192,500 800 1,600 1,000

— — —

—

500 10,000 4,500

Table Contd. to next page

(1)

Lac Bell-metal vessels Iron-hoes Thaikal fruit (medicinal) Slaves

(2)

(3)

10,000 35,000 — 1,500 — 600 50 150 100 (Mo.) 2,000

NOTE

(5)

«9

0

3.5 Woollens (European) Copper Red lead Paints Spices Shells

#

TOTAL

(4)

—

—

----------------

130,900

2,000 4,800 1,000 500 gppjPliiyu.IBB 100 228,300

: The tabulated quantities and their total values were estimated by Buchanan-Hamilton on the basis of customs returns. The average price has been deduced by us. The adverse trade balance of Rs. 97,400 was settled for in gold and silver. The average price of imported salt comes to Rs. 5 50 per md. * As against this high export price of mustard-seeds the actual price paid to the peasant was low—around 8 as.—according to the same source p. 36.

[ SOURCE IBuchanan-Hamilton, An Account, 1807-14 [36], 45-46. One md. = 40 seers of 84 Trsicca weight for a. seer. ]

TABLE 7.2

Assam's Trade Statistics 1832 to 1835 (Recorded at Hadira Chowki) 26 December 1832 to 30 April 1833 (four months)

1st May 1833 to 30 Aprii 1834

1st May 1835 to April 1835

Commodities Quantity (in md.)

Value (Rs.)

Average price

Quantity (in md.)

Value (Rs.)

Average Price

Quantity (inmd.)

Value (inmd.)

Average (Rs-)

(permd.)

Rs.

Rs.

(7)

(8)

(permd.) Rs. (10)

Price (permd.) w

(2)

Export: 1. Pepper 2. Mustard-seed 37,384 3. Rice 405 4. Paddy 40,537 5. Wax 8 6. Long-pepper 227 268 7. Manjit 8. Elephant-tusk 60 3,064 9. Lac 10. Muga thread 70 11. Cotton (with seed) 3,727 12. Elephants (No.) sundries Grand Total

0) 51,403 329 15,201 152 1,135 1,340 7,141 36,768 13,973

(4) 137 081 037 1900 50C 5'OC 120 02 1200 19961

(5)

2 Srs. 83,457 1,482 17,586 47 270 1,957 134 3563 ‘ 291

Rs. (6) 2 50 62,593 1303 6,595 865 1,488 13,885 13,520 44,381 58,220

833 075 0 88 0 38 1840 551 710 10090e 1246 200 07

162,705 5,898 8,996 29 504 2,246* 147 3293b 225

456

6,967

162,705 4,423 3373 598 2,847 13,636b 14,154 36,105b 53,890

100 075 0 37 20 00 565 --------------

9628e 1096 23951

•

16,769

4*50

8,543

38,957

3383 (?)

2,561

7,557

9,071

146,772

249367

304,186

—

Table contd. to next pa

(1)

Import: 1. Pepper 2. Salt 3. Sundries Total Imports

(2)

81 10,646

(3)

143 43,914 14,950 59,007

(4)

4*48 4 12

(5)

78 31,008

(6)

885 155,037 88,133 244,055

( 7)

(8)

11*40 5 00

91 31,223

(9)

1.361 140,502 105,530 247,393

( 10)

14 92 4 50

Two kinds of manjit, shown together. (b) 37 mds. of lac valued Rs. 367 in 1833-34 and 638 mds. of lac valued Rs. 6529 in 1834-35 were known to have been smuggled out. Figures in the Table do not include these amounts. There was no attempt to smuggle out muga, raw cotton, mustard-seed and paddy, as there were no duties on these. (c) Average price of elephant-tusk varied from Rs. 30 per md. for inferior ones to Rs. 120 per md. of superior ivory. So the average in the Table is not meaningful. C?) The figure obviusly involves a printing mistake. Capt. Davidson, Principal Assistant to Governor-General’s Agent in Assam. Reproduced with slight adaptation from SOURCE Pemberton, The Report on the Eastern Frontier, 1835 [70] Tables 12-14.

NOTE : (a)

154

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

in keeping their lands cultivated and, as such, would not require any Govenment interference in this sphere. This idea of introducing foreign enterprise, capital and skill in agriculture caught the imagination of the Board of Revenue and the Governor of Bengal.22 Meanwhile the growing prospects of tea culture in Assam—the formation of the Tea Committee in early 1834, the starting of the Government Experimental Tea Garden in 1836 and the first successful manufacture of Assam tea in December 1837—all these made Jenkins' scheme of colonization all the more acceptable. To make the wastelands available for cultivation of special crops a set of rules were framed. These in their final shape were known as the Wastelands Rules of 1838 until their revision in 1854 (Table-7.6). These rules, providing for long-term leases of land to applicants, did not discriminate against indigenous inhabitants as such, but were apparently framed in such a manner as to exclude them from all concessional grants in practice. No grant for agricultural purpose could be made of an extent less than one hundred acres and to any applicant who was not in possession of capital or stock worth at least three rupees per acre. Under these conditions, only Europeans could avail themselves of the concessions.23 Under the provisions of the Charter of 1833, the East India Company ceased to function as a commercial interest, while still constituting the local government. Its mission was henceforth to facilitate the importation of British private capital into India and promote an Indian market for British manufactures. With the increasing prospect of tea-growing there, the opening up of Assam naturally came up on its agenda. At the initiative of the famous Agency House of Carr, Tagore and Co. a joint enterprise of European and Indian capitalists of Calcutta known as the Bengal Tea Association was formed in 1838. Almost simultaneous attempts were made by leading capitalists of London to take advantage of the situation. Ultimately, as a result of the successful negotiations between Calcutta and London, the two parallel moves underwent a merger, leading to the formation of the Assam Company in 1839.24 The transitional period of 1825-40 was a period of all-round stagnation. Yet it saw the sowing of seeds that were sure to germinate one day. Western education had its slovenly beginnings with the establishment of the first English school in 1835. But more important for the economy, a start was made with the tea industry. In 1840 twothirds of the Government Experimental Tea Gardens were transferred to the Assam Company free of rent for at least the first ten years. The first year's crop of 10,202 lbs. from 264 acres under mature plants was

COLONIAUZATION : YEARS OF TRANSITIONAL CRISIS

155

sold at an average price of three shillings (Re. 1 & 8 as.) per lb. in London.25 All developments in subsequent years centred round tea and the Assam Company. But the idea of British farmers permanently settling down in Assam did not materialize because of the fear of a hostile climate.

TABLE 7.3

Revenue Receipts and Disbursement: Assam Proper Assam

Receipts

Disbursements •

RsJSicca) Lower Assam 1824-25 1825-26 1826-27 1832-33 Upper Assam 1825-26 1826-27 1827-28* 1828-29 1829-30 1830-31 1831-32 1832-33

1833-34+ 1834-35 1835-36* 1836-37 1837-38

Rs{Sicca)

Revenue Surplus1 Deficit RsjfSicca)

%

118,723 202,061 178,686 183,196

28,058 46,073 38,835 78,452 90,060 89,465 72,136 99,928 Revenue Receipts under Rajah Purandar's Management 69,450 70,150 64,254 54,449 42,216

29.538 92^13 125,015 n.a.

27,834 40,731 61,695 36,166 53,921 54,883 n.a. n.a. Tribute Trans­ ferred to British NoithEastem Agency

89,185 109,548 53,671 n.a.

224 5,342 -22,860 42,286 36,138 34,582

50,000 50,000 34,000 28,000 --------

* Cholera epidemic year explains (he deficit + Naduar, yielding Rs. 10,000, had been transferred in this year to Lower Assam. This accounts for the fall in revenue in Upper Assam under the Rajah, partially.

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

156

[SOURCBFor 1831-32 and 1833-34, Jenkins to the Secy., 30 Chail 1759 Salea, Foreign PolProc [35], 10 June 1835 ; also Mills, Report on the Province..., 1854 [66], Appendix A. For the rest Barpujari [124], 37 and 110].

TABLE 7.4

Prices in Darang District: 1833 and 1835 1835b

1833a Export value

Rs. As. 3—0 to

Rs. As. 4—6 to 7—0

Rs. As

00 1

Price received by hawkers

Mustard-seed (per md.)

Muga Silk per seer

0— 8 to 1 -0 2 — 12 to

---

00 1 CO

3 — 10 to 4—9

Commodity

Local Price (per md.)

> 00 1 o

♦Lac (per md.)

Price received by farmers

Paddy

to 10 — 0

Rice

1— 6 to 1 — 14 5—0 to

ON 1 oo

Commodity

Rs. As. 0— 5 0 — 12

Mustard-seed

0— 8

Tobacco

3— 8

Mustard oil

5—0

Black pepper 20 — 0

*

At the close of the thirties, the estimated annual export of lac was about 20,000 mds., and its value varied from Rs. 5 to Rs. 9 per md. according to Robinson [183], 239. SOURCE;(a) For 1833, T. Hugon in Bengal Political Consultations [32], 30 May 1833, No. 82. b) Mathie to Jenkins, 15 February* 1835, [28]. TABLE 7.5

Population of Assafh Proper Kamrup Darrang Nowgong Sibsagar Lakhimpur Total NOTE:

1826a 300,000 89,519 90,000 about 250,000 7 to 8 lacs

1853b 387,775 * 185,569 241,300 159,573 85,296 1059,513

1872 561,681 235,720 260,238 317,799 121,267 1496,705

Territorial adjustments made between districts from time to time affected their respective populations only marginally, except in the case of Nowgong between 1826 and 1853. A portion of the erstwhile kingdom of Jaintia,

COLONIA LIZ ATION : YEARS OF TRANSITIONAL CRISIS

157

Dantipur, with an estimated population of 15,000 was added to Nowgong in 1835. By 1853 a portion of the Naga Hills aljo came under its jurisdiction. SOURCES : (a) Dhekial-Phukkan [200], 74-75 ; M’Cosh, [173], 128-9. (b) Mills, Report. 1854 [66] App. Al. TABLE 7.6

Wastelands Settlements Rules : Revenu Rates Rules, March, 1838 Three categories of wastelands

Rules, 23 October, 1854 Irrespective of categories of wastelands Under Land Revenue Under Reeds Under Land Revenue Grass & High Grass Forests per acre per acre First 5 yrs. First 10 yrs. First 20 yrs. Nil First 15 yrs. Nil 6-8thyrs. ll-13thyrs. 21-23rd yrs. 9 as. 16-25thyrs. 3 as. 26-99th yrs. 6 as. 9-30thyrs. 14-35thyrs. 24-45th yrs. Re. 1-2 as. One-fourth of grant revenue-free in perpetuity One-fourth of grant revenue. free in perpetuity SOURCE • Tabulated from information in Baden-Powel, The Land Systems, Vol. 3 [75] 410-15.

N otes 1.

Welsh, 'Assam-an interesting account of the ancient system of government in Assam', Foreign Pol. Proc. [35], 24 Feb. 1794, No. 13A. The same is also reproduced by Mackenzie, History o f the Relations.. .[170]; Buchanan-IIamilton, An Account o f Assam.. .[38], 58-63 ; Dhekial-Phukkan, Assam Buranji [22], 104-11 ; Robinson, A Descriptive Account of Assam [183], 65-91.

2.

Hannay, JASB, Vol. 7, August 1838 [94], 677 ; Robinson [183], 67 and 330.

3.

G. Lamb to J. Hutchinson, Secy. Medical Board, Dacca, 30 March 1831, Foreign Pol, Proc. [35], 15 April 1831, No. 93A.

4.

F. Jenkins to Secy, to Govt., 30 Chait 1759 shaka, Foreign Pol. Proc. [35] 16 May 1838, No. 53. He gives actual production figures for some of the wells.

5.

Quote from Scott to Swinton, 18 May 1831, Foreign Pol. Proc. [35], 10 June 1838, No. 50, para 48. A great number of Assamese artisans had already been carried off by the Burmese invaders during 1817-25. Also See M’Cosh, Topography of Assam [ 173], 28 and 63.

6.

Buchanan-Hamilton [38], 74.

7.

For an account of this system refer back to "Land Rights and Social Classes" in this volume.

8.

Jenkins to Secy, to Govt, of Fort William, 22 July 1833, Foreign Pol. Proc. [35], 11 Feb, 1835, No. 90.

9.

Scott to Swinton, Chief Secy to Govt, 17 April 1830, Foreign Pol, Proc. [35], 7 May 1830, No. 51.

10.

Ibid.

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM For 1838 prices, Jenkins to Secy, to Govt, 30 Chait 1759 shaka, as mentioned in Note 4 above. For Darrang prices, see Table 7.4 above. According to Bengal Commercial Reports, common rice in Bengal sold at Rs. 1.75 per maund in 1832. -See Tripathi, Trade and Finance in Bengal Presidency 1793-1833 [192], 264-5. Quotations, respectively, from Neufville to Scott on Upper Assam, 29 April 1830, Foreign Pol. Proc. [35J, 10 June 1831, No. 58 ; and from Scott to Swinton, 17 April 1830, as mentioned in Note 9 above. Quotation from Rutherford to Jenkins, 28 March 1833, Bengal Pol. Cons. [32], 6 June 1833. For an account of the effects of the transition see Lahiri, The Annexation o f Assam [167], 225-38. Also see Jenkins to Secy., 30 Chait 1759 shaka, cited in Note 4 above, for comment on rural depopulation. Jenkins to Secy., 22 July 1833, as cited in Note 8 above. This section is based on Scott’s letter to Swinton, 17 April 1830, as cited in Note 9 above. Quantity of raw silk exports from Bengal to England exceeded twelve lakh lbs in 1826, the highest-ever till then. Despite falling prices the Company’s total export of raw silk from Bengal increased from 6,141 bales in 1826 to 7,014 bales in 1828. See Tripathi [192], 226 and 254. For Bengal raw silk exports of the years 1813-26, also see Ghosal, The Economic Transition o f Bengal Presidency...[151], 288. In fact Scou suggested trial of modem reelers by the Muga producers as well. 'As regards the muga cocoon, no method of reeling it has yet been introduced which will enable it to be sold at remunerative prices'. —An Account o f the Province o f Assam and Its Administration (1901-02) [40], 31. Bhattacharya, Cultural and social constraints...', IESHR, Vol. 3 [126], 242-6. This paragraph is based on Scott to Swinton, 18 May 1831, as cited in Note 5 above, para 49. Mathie to Jenkins, 15 Feb. 1835 [28] ; Hugon, 'Remarks on the silk worms...', JASB, Vol. 6, January 1837 [96], 23 ; Barpujari, Assam in the Days o f the Company...1124], 59 and 233-4. This alternative strategy is contained in Jenkins to Secy., 22 July 1833, as cited in Note, 8 above. All quotations and references to follow relate to this source, unless indicated otherwise. Revenue and Judicial letters from India and Bengal, 14 March 1837, cited by Barpujari [124], 212. Ibid, 213-4. On the role of the Carr, Tagore and Co. and its founder, see Kling, Journal o f Asian Studies, Vol. 26 [164], 37-48. For information on early tea cultivation, Antrobus, A History cfthe Assam Company...[118].

8 Colonialization: The Second Phase 1840-59 Until 1832 the East India Company’s Government was undecided about its Assam policy, and this indecision led to further ruination of the moribund local economy. With the Charter of 1833 which abolished the Company's commercial interests, there opened up the prospects of colonialization with import of private enterprise and capital from Britain. From this year onwards, Englishmen were encouraged by the administration to invest their capital in the wastelands of Assam to produce cash crops like indigo, sugarcane and tea. The policy of Francis Jenkins (in charge of the North-East Frontier during 1834-66) of attracting British colonists to Assam for developing freehold farms for growing indigo and sugarcane did not, however, materialize. But British private capital did certainly respond to the beckoning prospects of tea. The Assam Company was formed as a rupee Company in 1839 and began its operations immediately thereafter. During the next two decades, as many as ninetyfive Europeans had been to Assam for short or long stays as staff members of the Company. It had meanwhile been transformed into a Sterling Company. The impact of tea in Assam during this period is discussed below. Here, by Assam we mean Assam proper, i.e. the whole of the Brahmaputra Valley to the exclusion of the then District of Goalpara. G r o w t h O f T ea I n d u s t r y A n d I t s L in k a g e E ffe c t s

All developments in Assam during the years 1840-59 centred round tea and the Assam Company. The total acreage under tea plants, mature and immature, increased from 2,311 acres in 1841 to about 8,000 acres by 1859 ; and the output from 29,267 lbs. to more than 1.2 million lbs. (Tables 8.1 and 8.2). Until 1850 the Assam Company was the only tea company in the field ; by 1859 the number of estates under distinct proprietors increased to 51.1 But the former still continued to account for some 60 per cent of the acreage as well as of the output.

160

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COI£>MAL ASSAM

The process of expansion of tea acreagc involved considerable expenditure by the planters. It was about one-fourth to one-fifth of what the Government spent in Assam and roughly averaged one-and-a quarter lakh of rupees or so per year during the years 1841-53. Thereafter it slowly rose to nearly Rs. 4 lakhs in Assam proper by 1859. In 1857 planters' expenditure in the district of Lakhimpur alone was estimated by the Collector at Rs. 50,000 to 60,000 per annum, on the basis of a tea crop of 130,000 lbs.2 In the early years the Company used to bring boatloads of coins from Calcutta, as treasury and banking facilities had not yet developed. Thus the planters’ activities lubricated the mechanism of transition from a predominantly natural economy to a cash economy during this period.3 There were also a number of other effects. The Assam Company’s main problem was that of maintaining contacts with Calcutta over a distance of some 800 miles. During the first 18 months or so of its existence, the Company had to spend on water carriage by boats alone a sum of about Rs. 20,000. A steamer purchased at the cost o f £13,000 and unsuccessfully tried on the Brahmaputra in 1842, had to be laid off for several years until its disposal in 1847. In its early years the Company therefore continued to depend on its own fleet of country boats. From 1847 onwards the Government agreed to operate a rather irregular steamer service between Calcutta and Guwahati, a distance of some 600 miles. It was extended up to Dibrugarh after 1856. The Government's expenditures on the service were however fully covered by the earnings mainly because of the increasing traffic of the tea industry. As early as 1845, the Assam Company claimed, with some exaggeration no doubt, that it had opened or repaired some 800 miles of public roads, had erected two hundred and sixty-six bridges and established several ferries across the rivers.4 By 1859 the Government came forward to take up road construction work here and there, although the Public Works Department was yet to be born. The industry marie use of wheeled carts drawn by bullocks and sometimes by elephants to carry loads over short distances. Such carts were an innovation in Assam. Gradually the remote gardens bccame connected with local markets through a number of newly established weekly marts and visiting pedlars. A class of Marwari traders, some of whom had come to Assam already before the discovery of tea, gradually became an agency of cashing planters' hundis on Calcutta and of certain types of supplies to the gardens. Thus the growth of tea acreage, transport and commerce was an interrelated process. Several European investors tried, though on a small scale, to develop other resources as

COLONIALIZATION : THE SECOND PHASE

161

well, as exemplified in the early forties by Mr. Becher's shcllac factory, Dr. Scott's 600-acre farm with patches of sugarcane, coffee and tea cultivation, both at Guwahati, and a sugar factory. In the early fifties export of rubber was gaining ground. A European-owned rubber press was set up at Tezpur to process the juice collected from wild rubber trees (ficus elastica). We first hear of coal-mining when a thousand maunds were once raised in 1828. Again in 1841, we hear of a boatload of locally raised coal being sent to the first visiting steamer on the Brahmaputra. Steady demand for coal from the Govern, nont steamers and the Assam Company's tea factory led to a more regular exploitation of the coal mines from 1847 onwards. The Assam Coal and Timber Company, an unsuccessful attempt in this field, sold away its properties to the Assam Company in 1850.5 Coal exports from Sibsagar in 1852 amounted to 2500 maunds (Table 8.3). Impressive though it was in appearance, this growth did not lead to an equivalent generation of incomes and diffusion of gains amongst the indigenous population. In 1839, the local cost of production of tea was experimentally calculated at a little over five annas per pound. Due to top-heavy administration, later the unit cost mounted up and was around 10 annas per lb. in 1844. By 1853 it again came down close to 5 annas and remained thereabout in subsequent years. It appears from columns (6) and (7) of Table 8.1 that the Company's expenditures in Assam towards the production costs constituted only one-third of its gross earnings in those years for which estimates are available. The proportion might have been less, because the published London prices were customarily expressed, in most cases, as net of Calcutta-London freight and sales and insurance charges. On the other hand, the Assam expenditure was inclusive of transportation cost from Assam to Calcutta. Even this one-third or so of the industry’s gross earnings which were spent on Assam account, did not wholly accrue to the indigenous people. There were substantial leakages through (i) the fat salary-bill, (ii) recruitment and transportation costs incurred outside Assam and (iii) purchases of materials from Calcutta, gains of which accrued mostly to non-residents. This statement requires a little elaboration. Let us, for example, take the year 1844. The Company's production cost (f.o.b. Calcutta) in Assam amounted to Rs. 127,000. The list of some 25 European officers along with their scales of pay in the History o f the Assam Company (pp. 75, 422 and 425) suggests that the salary-bill was not less than Rs. 30,000, or about, a quarter of this production cost. Presumably, most of this huge amount was saved or spent outside, as spending avenues in Assam jungles were extremely

162

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

limited. The Chinese staff—70-member strong at one stage—also must have drawn Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 25,000 or so annually until their services were dispensed with in 1843. It may be noted that the Chinese were paid at 4 to 5 times the wage rate paid to the corresponding categories of Assamese labour.7 Another considerable leakage took place through wasteful and unsuccessful recruitment drives. For example, one Mr. Stewart's recruiting expedition outside Assam cost the Company Rs. 10,727 in 1840-41 with no coolies added to the Company's labour-force. In 1840, the recruitment of a big batch of Chinese workmen abroad and their transportation up to Calcutta cost the Company Rs. 22,000, but most of these workmen were not ultimately available. Examples cited here throw some light on the pattern of the Company’s spending on Assam account. We may, therefore, assume that quite a substantial part of this spending did not enter into the local income-flow. What then was the share of the local people in the stream of incomes created by the tea industry ? Obviously, (i) the wages earned by indigenous labour and (ii) whatever part of wages and salaries of the non-indigenous staff were spent on locally-produced goods. But in the early years, the Company had to import the entire supplies of rice to its labour from Bengal districts. Later, rice purchases were made also in Darrang and Nowgong districts, but occasional imports from outside did not stop. Similarly, other goods such as mustard oil, sugar, cutlery etc. also were imported from outside into the districts (Table 8.4). Any spending other than on payment of wages by the planters more often than not, benefited the outsiders. The transportation charges paid by the Company to the Bengal-based Government Marine Department caused a spill-over process outside Assam. The growing demand for lead lines, brushes and paints, bill-hooks, iron pans, hoes and such other things as required by the plantations was met with imports from Calcutta and London. The moribund indigenous iron industry—some forty iron-smelting units and a few smithies still staggering on7—was not given a trial for the supply of the new iron goods in demand. Packing boxes were generally brought from Calcutta and Chittagong, and even from the U.K. till 1847. For example, 1,500 such boxes were imported in 1843 from U.K. Later, locally-made packing boxes came into use. But the practice was again interrupted by the emergence of imported plywood boxes in a subsequent period. About the limitations of the spill-over process, nothing can be more revealing than the following comment of the official historian of the Assam Company, though made with reference to a more recent period:

COLONIAUZATION : THE SECOND PHASE

163

It was the Company*s normal policy to purchase the bulk of the gardens* requirement of stores in the United Kingdom and ship them to India. This heading of stores covered not only cultivation tools,-factory maintenance materials such as belting, paint, oil, grease etc. but tea chests, steel works for buildings, machinery spares and replacements, and tea-making machinery itself (p. 240).

It is difficult to estimate how much was earned by the local people in the form of wages. This is because we have no reliable employment figures for the period. Nor do we know \yhat proportion of the labour force was composed of indigenous labour. It is, however, definite that the tea gardens suffered from chronic shortage of labour because of difficult and expensive recruitment from inside or outside the province and the reluctance of local people to work on low wages. The ideal proportion of 1.5 workmen per planted acre was never reached before the sixties ; in fact, the number was far short of this figure in the early years. So the labour force may be crudely estimated at one labourer per planted acre in any year. In 1859 then, the number of labourers was some 8,000 or so. It appears that only a small part of this labour force was recruited outside the province. The most important source of recruitment was the Kachari (a tribe) population of Darrang district. Besides, peasants from adjacent villages were also employed in their off-seasons through contractors. The wage rate varied between three and three and a half rupees per month in the forties, and, later rose to four rupees by 1857. But, even these apparently high wage rates did not appear to be sufficiently attractive. In 1859, there was a strike amongst the Kachari labour of the Assam Company for a wage increase. Earlier in 1848, the same labour had to go on a strike to realize arrear wages. In their letter to the Court of Directors dated 14 January 1845, already referred to above, the Assam Company claimed to have 6,550 workers on its rolls. This appears to be a gross exaggeration. In 1844, as we have seen, the Company’s spending in Assam was Rs. 1,27,000 only, of which a sum of Rs. 30,000 or so was spent towards the salary-bills on the European officers. Even assuming that the remaining amount was entirely available for paying wages (which was not the case) at the rate of three and a half rupees per month and that wages were fully earned, we get a labour force of 2,310 only for the year 1844. The Company’s figures, therefore, only suggest a rapid change of personnel on the rolls, who together received full time wages of not more than 2,310 workmen. By 1859, this number rose to 8,000 or so. But, in practice, the work of 8,000 must have been done by many more persons who accepted short-term employment from time to time. Because of the low man-land ratio, the pcr-acre physical

164

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

productivity, despite an increase since 1853, remained low as per later standards. The wastelands settlements policy tempted liic planners to take possession of more lands than what they could manage. This inhibited intensive cultivation on the one hand and gave rise to unhealthy speculation on the other. Of about 55,000 acres taken up by 1859, only some 14 per cent was planted, and that too with a thin spread of the scant labour force thereupon. ‘I think I shall not exaggerate when I say’, commented Jenkins, ‘that we have now fully one-third more land than can be properly farmed.’8 I m pa c t o n A g r ic u l t u r e

It is difficult to assess the impact of the tea industry as such as distinct from that of improved administration on the agriculture of the period. In terms of acreage tea was still marginal till the 'fifties—not even half per cent of the total cultivated acreage, as shown in Table 8.5. It was still limited to Sibsagar and Lakhimpur although plantations had lately started in the other districts as well (Table 8.2). Already by 1852, tea accounted for more than half of the total export earnings (Table 8.3) of Sibsagar, although hardly 1 6 per cent of the district’s cultivated acreage was under tea. The cultivation and processing of tea until the sixties was purely manual, with little use of mechanical appliances. Yet it was basically different from traditional agriculture because of its capitalistic organization and scientific outlook. The crop was new ; the skills involved were new ; even the scale of productionwasunprccedented in the region. But the tea gardens were like so many isolated islands of alien ways of life in the midst of a traditional society. Tea had direct impact on the peasant economy in two ways : as a source of seasonal and casual employment for the needy peasants and as a source of market demand for rice and other locally-produced wagegoods. Both the impacts were extremely limited. An initially small labour force rising slowly to an estimated 8,000 by 1859 could at best generate an annual consumer demand for not more than one to two lakhs of maunds of rice. This could be easily met from even the existing rice acreage provided diffused procurement was possible without involving heavy transportation costs. This not being the case, the procurement of rice by the planters created certain problems. Almost the entire labour force was engaged in the two districts of Sibsagar and Lakhimpur. But the bulk of the demand of labour for rice had always to be met from outside these districts. Total acreage under rice does not appear to have had appreciatively increased, either in these

COLONIALIZAHON : THE SECOND PHASE

165

districts or elsewhere in Assam in response to this demand. It was so because of the general shortage of manpower. The population, under conditions of political security, increased from about seven to eight lacs in the ‘thirties to slightly more than one million in 1853. The over-all growth of cultivated acreage probably failed to keep pace with this increasing population, as it appears from Table 8.5. Between 1849-50 and 1852-53, the total cultivated acreage apparently increased by 1,777 acres only, i.e., by less than 0.2 per cent. Part of this increase again was accounted for by tea. Epidemics took an unusually heavy toll of lives both amongst human and cattle populations in the years 1853 and 1854.9 So any increase in the rice acreage of Assam for several years immediately after 1853 was most unlikely. Figures of revenue demand on Assam, available annualy till 1856-57, show a steady fall. This fact was rather suggestive of a fall in cultivated acreage.10 Year Revenue Demand

1852-3 (Rs. 1154,552

1853-4 (Rs.)

1854-5 (Rs.)

1855-6 (Rs.)

1115,508

1049,251

1035,712

1856-7 (Rs.) 1015,746

Cultivation was on the decline in the districts of Darrang and Nowgong, while it was almost stationary in the other districts. The impact of employment opportunities was felt not so much in the two tea districts of Sibsagar and Lakhimpur as in Darrang. The latter was not producing any tea till 1859. It is from there that a large number of Kachari peasants were recruited every year for work in gardens situated at a distance of some fourteen days’ journey from their homes. They entered service with the intention of earing sufficient cash to pay off their land revenue dues or the customary bride price in most cases. With money so earned, they often settled down even as independent farmers in the tea districts, instead of returning to their villages. Thus, the tea industry induccd a slight redistribution of population between districts. As mentioned earlier, the Assam Company used to purchase quantities of rice from Darrang. This should have been an incentive for expansion of cultivated acreage there. Yet Table 8.5 shows a decrease of about 10,000 acres, i.e. of more than four per cent, in the cultivated acreage there between the years 1849-50 and 1852-53. The annual drainage of manpower to the tea districts must have been one of the contributory causes of this fall. The only other district recording a fall in cultivated acreage during the same period was Nowgong. There, too,

166

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

the decrease was to the extent of about four per cent, but probably due to some other reasons. In 1858, Nowgong experienced a serious famine, when the price of rice shot up to as high as Rs. 10 per maund, as an extreme case. The normal price of paddy in Sibsagar was eight annas per maund in 1859,11 as against the prevailing price of four to six annas in the 'thirties. It was but natural that, with stagnation in agriculture, the price of wage-goods like rice would move up during the years 1840-59. However, there was no steady trend in the absence of an organized market. Even as early as 1840 rice was landed in Sibsagar plantations at a cost of nearly Rs. 2 per maund, while it would not sell there at that time even at eight annas per maund according to Bruce.12 In 1852 rice exported from Lakhimpur recorded an average price of Rs. 0.79 per maund, while fine rice imported into adjoining Sibsagar, recorded an average price of Rs. 1.75 per maund (see Tables-8.3 and 8.4). Thus, it is impossible to establish, with our scant heterogeneous data any definite trend in the price of rice over the period. The increasing importance of poppy as a cash crop during the period is particularly notable. Advances were regularly distributed by the traders amongst the cultivators for ensuring deliveries. The average after-harvest price of indigenous opium in the 'forties was five rupees per seer ; when cornered in times of scarcity, the retial price might go up to even eighty rupees in the lean months. Opium accounted for more than a fifth of the total value of exports from Lakhimpur district in 1852 (Table 8.3). Its value was calculated at an average price of Rs. 5.46 per seer. In the same year, Nowgong—the leading poppyproducing district—had more than 3,000 acres, i.e. about two per cent of its total cultivated acreage under poppy.13 With the introduction of sales of cheaper abkari opium by the Government since 1851-52, the rising price trend was probably checked, but not the cultivation of poppy. In fact, the growing monetization of the economy induced farmers to grow more opium for cash even at the cost of other crops, instead of inducing them to accept employment in the tea industry. This might have been one of the causes of the shrinkage of overall cultivated acreage in Darrang and Nowgong, for poppy was more labour-intensive and profitable as compared to ordinary crops. Increasing consumption of opium resulted in the ruin of the Assamese society by the end of the 'fifties, as was evident from a number of representations made to the Government at that time. It is reasonable to assume that, with various internal customs tolls abolished and better communications established, exports from and imports into Assam proper in terms of both quantity and value went

COLONIAUZATTON : THE SECOND PHASE

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on increasing. The partial data compiled in our Table 8.6 also suggest this. Assuming that the export statistics available for the thirties were at least near-exhaustive—all major items were neatly recorded by Pemberton—the total value of exports undoubtedly increased considerably by 1852 (see Table 8.6). Both quantity and value of muga and cotton exports increased. Most probably this was so also in the case of mustard-seed exports from Assam proper though we do not have sufficient data to say so (the estimated export of mustard-seeds from Goalpara district—outside Assam proper—was four lac maunds in 1852). The comparative cheapness of salt which still continued to be the major single item of import indicated that the terms of trade in general had moved in favour of Assam after the thirties. The price of mustard-seeds was calculated at Rs. 2.06 in Goalpara for 1852, as against a price ranging from Rs. 0.75 to Rs. 1.37 during the years 1832-35. Also some forest products, wax for example, recorded a price rise. But the prices of muga thread, lac and cotton actually came down. The cotton price in the district of Lakhimpur for example came down from four rupees around 1840 to three rupees in 1852. Yet cotton featured largely in the exports of Lakhimpur and Sibsagar districts in that year. It also appears that local handlooms had not yet switched over to imported yam, nor were clothing habits yet millcloth-oriented. However, millmade cloth—but not yam—had already appeared in the market. The Government spent a meagre sum of about Rs. 10,000 in 1850 on an experimental cotton farm for the purpose of diffusing improved cotton culture. But, as there were no quick results, it was soon abandoned.14 From 1853 onwards, raw cotton exports from Bengal ports to the U.K. recorded a sharp decline. So it was but natural that cotton consignments from Assam to Bengal should have also faced a depression during the years 1853-59.15 The Wastelands Rules of 6 March 1838 did not go far in attracting European capitalists. They were therefore revised on 23 September 1854, providing for ninetynine years’ lease on more liberal terms. But at the same time the minimum area for which one could apply was raised to five hundred acres. Later, however, the limit was reduced to two hundred acres and made relaxable to even one hundred acres in special cases, if native applicants could satisfy the Collectors of their ability to bring ryots from outside Assam. The new Rules stimulated a landrush not only in Assam proper but also in the adjoining districts of Cachar and Sylhet. But pressure for further liberalization of the Rules in creating free-hold and perpetual grants continued.

168

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

Jenkins had been harping on his pel theory of colonization of Assam by European capitalists for the cultivation of sugarcane, indigo, tea and other great staples ever since 1833. But the overall response from European capitalists was altogether poor. Expensive communications with the port of Calcutta and the acute scarcity of labour were inter alia the main inhibiting factors. Consequently, the proposition that ‘every acre brought under tea would force four more of waste into cultivation to meet the growers and lea makers’ remained yet unfulfilled even twenty years after the coming of tea.16 On the contrary, by 1859 for every acre planted with tea the planter kept in fallow six acres of wastelands in his possession for other purposes including speculation (See Table 8.2). Let us now come to the question of ‘drain’. So far as the drain of revenue surplus to the Presidency is concerned, it was a transitional phase, yet it continued at least up to 1852-53. With the gearing up of the normal administration the provincial finance later tended to have an excess of expenditure over revenue. Besides, as has already been pointed out, the planters pumped into circulation an ever-increasing amount of cash. The position regarding circulating media was therefore better by 1859 than in the thirties. Since the abolition of the Customs post in 1835 complete statistics of Assam’s trade were no more available. It is, therefore, impossible to discuss the balance of trade position between Assam and the rest of India. Both exports and imports went on increasing, but the > latter appear to have had an edge over the former. Increasing export earnings from tea, perhaps, progressively narrowed down this trade gap during the 'fifties, but failed to wipe it out completely even by 1859. We conclude so from whatever information is available for the two tea districts for 1852. As per Table 8.3 and 8.4, Lakhimpur which had not yet come to tea-producing stage appears to have had a trade deficit, while Sibsagar showed a big surplus of exports over imports. But a checking with information compiled in Table 8.1 reveals that the tea exports of Sibsagar in Table 8.3 were overvalued and, therefore, the data require correction. Calculated even at the London price (Is. 11^ d. or 98 paise per lb.) the total value would have been near about Rs. 268,000. Therefore, the on-the-spot value of tea (landed in Calcutta) could have been at best half of this, if not one-third. In that case, it should have been estimated at Rs. 134,000 at the most. It is to this maximal extent that the indigenous people of Assam could derive any direct or indirect benefits from tea sales in that year. If we accept this revised figure of the value of the exports and take out the item of bullion and old coins worth Rs. 10,000 from the export side, then the

COLONIALIZAnON : THE SECOND PHASE

169

trade surplus is reduced to a slender one. On the other hand, the relevant data for Lakhimpur do not include one import item—abkari opium (Rs. 15,420). If this item is included and gold dust worth Rs. 8,000 excluded from export side, the trade deficit of Lakhimpur further widens. We may assume that, in the absence of tea exports the remaining districts also had a trade deficit, though not to the same extent as Lakhimpur. By 1859 the overall trade position of Assam proper was then probably one of deficit, rather than of surplus. Table 8.4 also shows the limited impact of tea on the consumption pattern of the peasant economy. Total earnings from exported farm and forest produce did not suffice for the import of even the two items of almost universal consumption—salt and abkari opium. Therefore it was the cash generated on public and plantation accounts which went to meet the remaining part of the import bill. This part of the bill was largely oriented to the consumption of a new class of traders, officers, clerks and, to a small extent, labour of non-indigenous origin. Sugar, wheat, ghee, printed calico, fine rice, wax candies, cutlery, soap etc. were consumed more by this class of people than by others. They constituted the new alien sector, island-like within the. traditional economy. The rising demand therefrom for all sorts of consumption goods had therefore little impact on the traditional production pattern. For example, the demand for mustard oil in the tea districts was met from imports, while mustard-seed continued to be exported. Unlike Goalpara, the tea districts failed to have jute cultivation on the riverine tracts ; jute and jute goods were imported there from outside. Because of this situation, the traditional sector continued to suffer from stringency of cash. Peasants sometimes travelled two to three days’ march to convert their goods into cash through a series of exchanges in order to pay off their land revenue dues.17 Usury and usurious trade increased the miseries of the peasantry. What was the way out of this stagnation ? Rapid agricultural growth under a system of incentives to European capitalists was the colonialists’ answer. But how was it to come about in the face of acute labour shortage ? by 1859, the planters came out with a three-point prescription of their own : (i) introduce a regular steamer service— Government-owned or subsidized—to facilitate the recruitment of labour from outside, (ii) suppress poppy cultivation as well as the sale of opium ; and (iii) enhance the assessment of land revenue to compel villagers to work in the tea industry for wages.18 All these suggestions except that of stopping the sale of Government opium were accepted by the administration in due course. ‘Why should they (i.e. the peasants) thus be compelled to suffer’, questioned Jenkins, ‘merely to

170

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

provide labour for speculators in a very profitable commerical undertaking...?’ And yet it was he who in 1859 recommended the enchancement of revenue rates on the non-rupit lands (other than wet lands) in four districts. These rates were increased by fifteen to thirty per cent to bring them at par with the prevailing rates in Kamrup district. The planters continued to pay no rent at all for the major part of their holdings and only a lower rent (3 to 9 annas as against 12 annas to Re. 1-8 annas per acre paid by the peasants) for the remaining part Poppy cultivation was prohibited from 1 May 1860. But the sale of abkari opium which had almost doubled between the years 1851-52 and 1858-59 was allowed to continue on revenue grounds even thereafter.19 I n f l o w o f B r it is h C a p it a l : N a t u r e a n d M a g n it u d e

The paid-up capital of the Assam Company stood at two million rupees (£ two lakhs) in 1845, the year of its formal incorporation by an Act of Parliament The entire amount had been spent by that year, and the Company became indebted to individuals and banks to the extent of some £ 14.000.20 But in subsequent years, not only was the Company able to pay off its loans and to finance further extension of acreage from its own earnings but it was also able to return in the form of dividends an amount equal to 80 per cent of its paid-up capital over the period of two decades till 1859. Besides, it facilitated the formation of capital by its European employees on service, out of their regular and irregular incomes in India. During the fifties the Company’s fixed assets increased rapidly. In 1858 and 1859—both normal years—the value of each paid-up share of £ 20 approximated around £ 30 (Rs. 300). We may therefore estimate the value of the Company’s capital in 1859 at Rs. three million. This gives us an investment of nearly Rs. 647 per planted acre. This of course, included all assets of the company related to and necessary for all its tea operations. The other Companies and private proprietors, together accounting for only some forty per cent of the total planted acreage and output, would naturally require a lesser amount of investment per acre because of their advantages in starting late. So Rs. six hundred may be taken as the average value of investments per acre for 1859. Multiplying this figure by the acreage (8,000 acres) we get Rs. 4.8 million as the total value of capital invested in Assam plantations till that year. Another Rs. 0.2 million may be arbitrarily taken as the value of private British capital engaged in other fields. Rs. 5 million, then, was the total amount of British capital in Assam.21

COLONIALIZATION : THE SECOND PHASE

171

The magnitude may be better expressed as approximately Rs. 4 per head of population at that time. However, it should be borne in mind that not even half of this Rs. 5 million was received from out of the savings made in the U.K. Of the Assam Company’s paid-up capital of Rs. 2 million, an amount of Rs. 1.6 million only was subscribed in the U.K. ; the rest was subscribed in Calcutta by local British and Indian share-holders. Even of the small loans raised, only half was raised in London and the rest in C alcutta.22 The actual inflow of British capital into the Assam Company remained limited to what had already come before 1845. The proprietory gardens and other British assets, not belonging to the Assam Company, did not represent any net import of capital from U.K. For example, take the case of the Jorhat Tea Company founded in 1859. Its initial paid-up capital of Rs. 0.6 million represented not so much any actual inflow of capital as the capitalization of the existing private gardens built up by its major shareholders out of their fortunes made in Assam.23 We, therefore, conclude that not more than half of the estimated British capital assets in 1859 was of the nature of capital inflow. The other half represents formation of capital through a process of ploughing back and mobilization of locally available savings. Three Deputy Commissioners, four assistant commissioners and several police officers threw up their appointments to engage in tea planting.’ Civil surgeons and military officers also did not lag behind.24 We may assume that most of their investments came from their own and their friends' savings in India. Founders of many new tea companies like the Jorhat Tea Company got their initial capital by abusing tea seedlings and labour of the Assam Company while still on its pay-roll as employees. It is therefore pertinent to assume that much of the investments in plantations were of the nature of "primitive accumulation". Henry Burkinyoung who held around 1859 one-eighth stock of the Assam Company and one-fifth that of Jorhat Tea Company built up his fortunes in Calcutta as a resident director during the years 1841-63. Until the 'sixties the tea industry was hardly a carrier of the fruits of the industrial revolution. Planters required capital for a wide-spread organization, for hiring labour to clear and improve the jungle lands and for an inventory of simple tools and materials. In the early years the bare cost of clearing an acre of jungles was Rs. 67 only.25 Added to it was three years' labour cost for planting and bringing it to the stage of tea-yielding. This was a substantial part of the investment. Construction of houses for all purposes involved, in practice, only the

172

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

labour cost since bamboo and timber were available free or at nominal cost. The first pieces of machinery in Assam were a saw-mill costing £1009 and a steamer costing £13,000 imported in 1841 and 1842, respectively. But both had to be laid off immediately after unsuccessful trials and were sold away by 1847. The same old saw-mill was, however, re-purchased in 1850 from the Assam Coal and Timber Company on its liquidation, and was in use during the 'fifdes. The first fire-proof building with cast-iron columns and corrugated iron-roof for factory premises, was built in 1856. However, the most impressive mechanical appliances until the 'sixties did not belong to the tea industry. They were the three Government-owned steamers which plied up and down the Brahmaputra since 1847 and the first printing press brought in 1836, but put into operation in the 'forties by the American Baptist Mission. It became not only a forum of evangelism but also that of dissemination of scientific knowledge and western outlook. The years 1840-59 saw the gradual evolution of the new technology of tea culture. Scientific principles of agriculture were systematically experimented with and applied. Seedlings were carefully raised. Innovations in pruning and plucking were introduced in the 'fifties. Many of the manufacturing processes were already organized in such manner as to make their mechanization easy in the subsequent period. But the progressive agriculture of the plantation sector had hardly any demonstration effect on the surrounding traditional economy. One important conclusion may now be drawn. It is that British private enterprise in Assam was not the outcome of a laissez faire policy. The heavy cost of early experimentation in Assam tea was entirely borne by the Government. The expertise thus acquired and the experimental gardens were both handed over as free gifts to the Assam Company. Secondly, the revenue concessions granted to the planters must have amounted to several lakhs of rupees over the whole period till 1859 alone.26 Free wastelands grants on long lease provided them with much more than mere sites. They contained all necessary housing materials including in many cases even valuable timber. Being transferable under the 1854 Rules, such lands—even those undergoing no improvements—could be sold at profit in a later period. And above all, a part of the land could occasionally be used as a bait to allure landhungry peasants as labour to the plantations at otherwise unattractive wages. Lastly, there were other forms of concession such as free supply of seeds and the carriage of labour recruits at concessional rates by Government steamers. Thus the Government’s role in building up the plantation industry was substantial. The role played by a handful of Indian gentlemen in pioneering the tea industry is also worth noting. Recent research has established beyond doubt that it was the partnership firm of Dwarkanath Tagore, the Carr, Tagore and Co. (1834-48), which took the first steps in

COLOMAUZATION : THE SECOND PHASE

173

promoting the Assam Company. But "because they could not command the large amount of capital necessary to establish the tea industry in India", this enterprise came almost immediately under the control of London.27 Although one-fifth of the share-capital of the Assam Company was subscribed in Calcutta as against four-fifths in London, Indian participation as such was very small indeed. Nine of the Indian share-holders between them held 275 shares, i.e. about 3 per cent of the share-capital in the early years.28 Amongst the promoters of the Assam Company were five prominent business leaders of Calcutta—Dwarkanath Tagore, Prasanna Kumar Tagore, Rustomjee Cowasjii, Motilal Seal and Haji Ispahani. Of them, Seal and Prasanna Kumar Tagore served in 1839 and 183941, respectively, as directors on the Calcutta Board of the Company. Another notable Indian, little known elsewhere but still remembered in Assam as a martyr of the national rebellion of 1857, was closely associated with tea from its very inception. As the chief informant of the British officers, and probably of the Tea Committee on local matters and as the Dewan of the Assam Company since 1839, Maniram Datta played a crucial role. He was drawing as Dewan a higher salary—Rs. 200 per month—than a majority of the Company’s European staff. The Chairman of the Assam Company credited him in the Company’s Annual report of 1841-42, with the opening of new gardens and raising profits of the Company. In the course of his long career, Maniram Datta had raised coal as a contractor, supplied rations to the army and, in the forties established two small proprietory tea gardens of his own. In 1853, he submitted a Memorandum to the Government criticising the modus operandi of British rule in Assam. Suspected of anti-British conspiracy and charged with treason, he was hanged to death in 1858, and his tea gardens were confiscated.29 To complete our account of the Indian role in the promotion of tea, we may note that the 12-member Committee founded by Lord Bentinck in 1834 included two eminent Indians of the age—Radhakanta Dev and Ram Kamal Sen. Besides, the early planters learnt much of the tea culture from the local Singphos. C o n c l u s io n

While concluding, a question naturally comes up. Was there any other and better alternative within the colonial framework for breaking through the stagnation in Assam ? It is difficult to answer. Of several alternative crops which could be grown on wastelands, tea and sugarcane were undoubtedly the most productive. We estimate below the gross yields of alternative crops from an acre of land capable of several uses around 1852.30

174

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

Crop Rice (cleaned) Cotton (with seeds) Opium Muga Silk Sugarcane Tea

Approximate physical product peracre 12 Mds. 6 M ~1 seers 12 24

w Mds. of

gur 180 Lbs.

Approximate Price per unit Re 1.00 Rs. 3.50

Approximate value product peracre Rs. 12.00 Rs. 21.00

Rs.

5.00

Rs.

Rs. Rs.

4.50 8.00

Rs. 54.00 Rs. 192.00

Re. 1.00 (London Price)

37.50

Rs. 180.00

Under conditions of land-abundance and labour-scarcity the per-acre productivity should not, however, be treated as the guiding line. Valuation of the tea crop at London price is also least meaningful. We have seen that generally only some one-third of the final value of tea crop accrued to the local economy. Therefore, its on-the-spot value inclusive of freight up to Calcutta may be taken at sixty rupees per acre. Moreover, in assessing the respective advantages of alternative crops, a better method in the case of labour-short and land-abundant Assam will be to take into consideration not the land use, but the man­ power use. A family unit of man, wife and their two working children could have managed only three acres of tea in 1852, on the ba¿is of the then prevailing man-land ratio. Thus, they would have produced a crop worth Rs. 180 (Rs. 60 * 3) on the spot, out of which they would have earned Rs. 126 (Rs. 42 x 3) as their wages. On the other hand, the same family unit could have alternatively managed some five acres (one plough) of ordinary agriculture. Thus, they could normally earn nearly Rs. 72 by producing 79 mds. of paddy and a second crop of 16 mds. of mustard seed.31 Their gross earnings could go up to as high as Rs. 100, if half an acre of the holding were put under muga silk, or even to Rs. 160 if put under sugarcane. Undoubtedly, tea was the most productive crop. It was so particularly if its long-run potentialities were also taken into consideration. No other crop could have created an equal or comparable demand for betterment of communications and transport in Assam. Moreover, the physical productivity of tea per acre was continuously rising over the years. But if the accent on tea was justified, the Government’s policy in boosting it at the cost of ordinary agriculture was overdone. The tax burden on ordinary agricultural lands was intensified, while planters were allowed to cultivate and hpld as much tax-free land as they wanted to. This policy led to stagnation in the rice acreage. As a result, prices of rice and other wage-goods went on increasing. The existing wage

COLONIAUZATION : THE SECOND PHASE

175

rates therefore bccamc less and less attractive, and local labour could not be increasingly drawn towards the plantations. This situation could be, to some extent, avoided if food production were encourged along with tea. Such a policy could have been adopted, at least from the ’fifties, by equalizing the tax burden between tea and rice lands. After the tea industry had begun to make profits, there was no longer any justification in making the peasants pay at four to five times the average rate at which a planter was taxed for his holding. Special revenue concessions and other governmental help should have been extended to muga silk and sugarcane producers. Such measures would have checked, on the one hand the planters’ unhealthy land rush noted by Jenkins in 1858 and would have provided for a more balanced growth, on the other. Proportionate increases in rice and sugarcane acreage and output would have served the long-run interests of the tea industry better through an increased flow of basic wage-goods. The policy of raising ordinary land revenue rates to force the peasants out of their farms to seek jobs in plantations proved a failure. On the contrary, it led to agricultural stagnation and made the plantations dependent on expensive food imports. Potential growth of both rice and tea acreage, however, was limited by the rate of growth of population. The population increased from an estimated 0.8 million in 1840 to slightly above one million in 1853 and about 1.5 million in 1872. So, during our period the population was increasing at a simple rate of less than 2.5 per cent per annum. The density of population remained far below 100 per sq. mile. A more rapid growth of population could have been achieved (i) by assisting the emigration of landless peasants from neighbouring provinces to the wastelands of Assam under direct government supervision and (ii) by taking adequate public health measures to enhance the natural growth of population. The tea industry as well as the traditional economy would have benefited much more from such a policy than they did from discriminatory concessions in land revenue on a lavish scale. Under such a policy, the reduction of indentured plantation labour to the status of semi-slavery would have become unnecessary in the face of a growing supply of free labour. Thus agrarian prosperity would have ' been compatible with the growth of tea. In short such a long-run policy of balanced growth would have kept within restraints the isolative economic dualism which took roots by 1859 and has plagued Assam to the present. Whether such an economic policy could be expccted of the colonial regime is another matter.

TABLE 8.1

The Assam Company's Statistics, 1840-49 (a) Total paid-up capital (£ =200,000) Year Totalacreage under Tea (both bearing and non-bear­ ing) Acres

1840 1841 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852

Manufactured Tea lbs.

Cropper acre in bearing

Average* price per lb. Sh.d.

Estimated** Total value ofcrop £

Cost ofpro­ ductionper lb. in Assam

Total cost cfpro­ duction

Dm dmd

(4)

(5)

m

(7)

(S)

(1)

(2)

0)

1.356 2.311 2.768

10.212 29.267 87.705* 181.614 194.800 136.267 160.334 210.655 214.817 251.633 253,354 271.427

39 28

3-0 2-0 3-1 2-0 (app.Xb)

Market price per share (£20 each)

(9)

(10)

%

Rs. 129.840(c)

1,532 2,927 13,521 19,480

Profit

As. 10+ (approx)

Rs. 127,000

3

V

2s .6d. at London

1-7-1/16 1-8-3/4 1-10 1-6-1/8 i4 m i*

12,820 18,213 19,692 19,047 21,641 26,577

2?

3 5

Table contd. to next page.

Year Total acreage underTea (both bearing andnon-bearing) Acres (1)

Manufactured Tea Lbs.

(2)

Cropper acre in bearing

Average* priceper lbSh.d.

Estimated** Total value o f crop £

Cost o f pro­ ductionper lb.

Total cost cfpro­ duction

Divi­ dend %

Profit

ß)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

As 5-8 pies (=8d.)

366,867 478,258 583,094

180

1-11 1-11-3/8 1-10L

35,158 46,580 54,665

1856 1857

2,921 3,313 3,493 3,838 4,261

644,199 707,132

268

1-11-2/3 1-8-1/8

63,507 59,296

1858

4,466

766,998

1-11;

75,102

1859

4,638

810,680

1-8

67,557

1853 1854 1855

As. 4 to As. 6 (approx)

Rs. 129,690

iV

6 7 8

13,261 Rs 20,640 £ : 11,480

9 10

25,077 Rs 13,008 £ : in 29,790 £ : in 18311 £ : £: Lc

12 12

* Incomplete figure. ** Figures in Column (4) must be treated with caution. It is difficult to regard these prices as the crop for it was customary to quote them as net ^excluding cost of lead linings, freight, insurance and sales charge: The production cost of tea landed in Calcutta appears to have been less than 6 annas per lb. for most of the till 1861. Figures in Column (5) are our estimates, arrived at by multiplying the year’s crop by the average price t In 1845, the cost of production o f 90,000 lbs. of tea was calculated at 14 as. inclusive o f freight and insuri “The early history of the tea industry”, Bengal Economic Journal, II (1918), [172] 44-59. SOURCE : (a) Antrobus [48], Table in pp. 407-8 and additional information in pp. 56,59, 88,100 and 415. (b) Average price of 1845 from A runody, I, February 1846 [209]. (c) ibid.

178

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

TABLE 8.2

Total area under tea in Assam Proper, 1859 District

Acreage Cleared for Tea

Acreage Taken Up

Kamrup Darrang Nowgong *Sibsagar Lakhimpur

12,207 3,783 11,034 13,796 14,038

Total of Assam proper

54,858

297 375 negligible 5,227 1,700 1,700

* Previous year’s figures. SOURCE : Selections from the Records o f the Government o f Bengal Vol. 37 [79], 33-5. TABLE 8.3

Exports from select districts o f Assam to Bengal : 1852 Goalpara Commodity

Mustard-seed Cotton Lac (raw) Jute Ivory Silk Cloth Manjit Wax Pepper (long) Chapra Lac Muga Silk (raw) Scsamum-seed Rhino horns Total*

Quantity (Mels.)

Value (Rs.)

400,000 50,000 7,000 20,000 100 4,000 (pieces) 2,500 (Mds.) 300 400 — 600* 2,000 7

824,000 175,000 36,750 20,000 18,750 16,000 9,375 82,500 4,200 4,000 2,622 2,500 1,680 1197,327

Average price per md. (Rs.) 2.06 3.50 5.25 1.00 187.50 3.75 27.50 10.50 174.80 1.25 2.40

Table Contd. to next page.

COLONIALIZATEON : THE SECOND PHASE

Commodity

Muga Silk (raw) Indigenous Opium Manjit Gold (dust) Silk (Endi) Mustard seed Ivory Rice Wax Pulses (Kalai) Rhino horns Cotton Gur (Molasses) Silk Cloth

Quantity (Mds.) Lakhim pur 385 135 500 7 (seers) 3,000 (pieces) 7,000 (Mds.) 25 4,250 100 2,000 4.5 600 1,135 1,050 ft

M

•«

•9

••

•1

•1

M

Total+

Value (Rs.) 51,850 29,500 8,000 8,000 6,000 6,000 3,750 3,378 2,500 2,475 2,000 1,800 1,080 1,050

179

Average price per md. (Rs.) 134.68 218.68 16.00 ----------

—

0.86 150.00 0.79 25.00 1.47 444.44 3.00 8.00 —

127,383 Sibsagar

Tea Muga silk (raw) Cotton Mustard seed Silver (Old coin) Gold (dust) Ivory Silver Coal Rhino-horns Other horns Wax Total4" * ** + SOURCE :

3,337*: 315 12,609 17,000 7,000 250 17 1,500 2,500 1? 1,160 12

(tolas) ••

(Mds.) (tolas) (Mds.) if

M

••

200,250** 50,400 36,500 17,000 6,125 3,125 2,550 750 625 600 360 740

60.00 160.00 2.89 1.00 •

150.00 0.25 400.00 0.31 20.00

318,525 Seers were obviously misprinted as Mds. We have corrected the mistake. The figure represents an overestimated value. The actual value on the spot would have been anything around Rs. 134,000, as explained in the text The list and respective totals may not be exhaustive, since they represent estimates made by traders. Besides, the Goalpara figures for raw muga silk and wax involve gross printing errors. A.J.M. Mills, Report on the Province o f Assam [66], Sibsagar, Appendix B ; Lakhimpur, para 33 and Goalpara paras 10-11.

TABLE 8.4

Imports into selected districts of Assam from Bengal: 1852 GOALPARA Commodities

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Salt Pulses Ghee Sugar Printed Calico, Silk & Cotton Cloths Rice(ksna) Mustard Oil Tobacco Wheat Gut (Molasses) Opium Cutlery etc. Jute Miscellaneous Total +

Quantity in Mds.

Value (Rs.)

100,000 50,000 1,000 2,000

370,000 150,000 20,000 20,000

100,000 4,000 4,000 2,000 4,000 --2,000

200,000 100,000 32,000 16,000 2,500 10,000 — 80,000 Nil 1022,500

LAKHIMPUR Average Priceper Md (Rs.) 3 70 300 20 00 1000 100 8 00 400 250 2 50

Quantity in Mds. 7,910

SIBSAGAR

Value (Rs.) Quantity in Mds. 35,000 7,200 9,050 24,441 10,000 6,467

*

♦ 22,072 Nil 26,467 140,697

25,000 2,295 391 267 800 1,640 870 750 650 60 165

Average priceper hid. (Rs.)

Value (Rs.)

112,050 3,874 8,266 2,136

4*48 1*69 21*14 8 00

1,800 1,400 1*75 11,480 700 4,350 5 00 1,125 ‘ 150 1,300 2 00 24,500 400*00 10,000 412 2*50 35,773 •

218,466

* Abkari opium does not appear in the import list of Lakhimpur. It is known from other resources that 38jmds. of abkari opium worth Rs. 15,420 were sold in Lakhimpur in the year 1851-52. + The list and respective totals are not exhaustive and are based on estimates. SOURCE : The same as of Table 8*3.

COLONIAUZATION : THE SECOND PHASE

181

TABLE 8.5

Total cultivated acreage in Assam Proper Cultivated Acreage as of 1849-50

District

Kamrup Darrang Nowgong Sibsagar Lakhimpur Total of Assam Proper

Cultivated Acreage as of 1852-53

Population as of 1853

As of 185? Cultivated Acreage per head of population

472,624 233,615 181,917 168,164 21,234

478,699 223,699 174,777 180,673 21,483

387,775 185,569 241,300 159,573 85,296

1.23 1.21 0.72 1.13 0.25

1077,554

1079331

1059,513

1.02

SOURCE: Mills, Report on the Province o f Assam, [66], 5 and Appendix A. Area given in the source, in pura or bigha units, has been converted into acres. Cultivated acreage here stands for net cropped area plus the current fallow for which land revenue was paid. TABLE 8.6

Select exports and their prices : comparison over time A. Quantities Exported Quantity in mds exported from Assam proper

1808-09 Mustard-secd Muga thread Lac Cotton Total value of All Exports including above items.

15,000 65 10,000 7,000

Rs. 130,900

1833-34

Quantity in mds

exported from Sibsagar and Lakhimpur alone 1834-35 1852 163,705 225 3,931 6,967

13,209

Rs. 249,367 Rs. 304,186

Rs. 445,908

83,4571 291 3,600 8,543

2,400 700 ------

182

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

Quantity in mds exported from Assam proper 1808-09

1833-34

Quantity in mds exported from Sibsagar and Lakhimpur alone 1834-35 1852

B. Average Prices at Export Point Mustard-seed (Rs. per md.) Muga thread (Rs. per seer) Lac (Rs. per md.) Cotton (Rs. Per md.)

1.33

0.75

1.00

2.06

4.36 3.05 5.00

5.00 12.46 4.68

5.99 10.96

4.37 5.25 3.50

C. Average price of Imported Salt (Rs. per md.)*

5.50

5.00

4.50

------

3.70

NOTE :

Mustard-seed and lac were exported mainly from the three districts of Lower Assam, for which we have no data for 1852. * Average price, derived from the import via the border district of Goalpara only, has been given in this row for the sake of comparability. SOURCE : For 1808-09, Buchanan-Hamilton, An Account o f Assam [38], 45-6. For the thirties, Pemberton, The Report on the Eastern Frontier..., 1835, [70], Tables 12-14. The figures for lac exports have been adjusted. For 1852, our Tables 8.3 and 8.4. Average prices have been derived from the quantity and value of goods, given in the original tables.

N otes 1.

Memorandum of Campbell, Papers Relating to the Tea industry in Bengal [59], Appendix D, 121.

2.

The magnitude of annual spending has been estimated on the basis of the assumption that one-third of the final value of crops was spent m Assam. See Table 8.1 in the tex. As to the spending in Lakhimpur, Board of Revenue

COLONIAUZATION : THE SECOND PHASE

183

to Bengal Govt, 20 March 1857, Bengal Revenue Cons. [33], 22 April 1858, No. 8. 3.

For pages 159-64 our data are from Antrobus, A History of the Assam Company [118], unless indicated otherwise.

4.

The Secy, to the Assam Co. to the Court of Directors, 14 January 1845, cited by B.N. Chaudhury, An Economic History o f Assam 1845-58 [135], 30.

5.

For collated information on enterprises, Robinson, A Descriptive Account o f Assam [183], 239 ; Antrobus [118], 73,309 and 357 ; Arunoday, Vol. 9, January 1854 [209]; Macleod, Sketch o f Medical Topography ofBishnath [171], 21.

6.

Calculated from data in Antrobus [118], 51,322,383 and 475.

7.

For a short account of the moribund iron industry, Sharma, Maniram Dewan [203], Appendix, 6-10.

8.

Jenkins to Off. Secy, to Govt, of Bengal, 11 Nov. 1859 in Selections from the Records......., Vol. 37 [79], 25. Of all planter-held lands, only some 30 per cent were under lea even as late as 1947.

9.

Chaudhury [135], 11 and 14-15.

10.

Ibid., 34.

11.

Barpujari, Assam in the Days of the Company [ 124], 2 15n and 257n.

12.

Antrobus [118], 387. C.A. Bruce was the first Superintendent of the Assam C o/s Northern Division.

13.

Butler, Travels and Adventures in the Province.......[133], 244 and 258-9 ; Barpujari [124], 245-6.

14.

Ibid., 232-3.

15.

According to Statistical Tables for British India, 5th Issue [112], raw cotton exports from Bengal ports to the UK steadily went down from a total value of £ 83,328 in 1852-53 to £ 2,444 by 1859-60.

16.

Quote from Major Vetch, Off. Commissioner of Revenue, Assam to Mills, 22 June 1853 in Mills, Report on the Province o f Assam [66], Appendix C, xv.

17.

Observation by a missionary in Arunoday, Vol. 9, as cited in ft. n. 5.

18.

Antrobus [118], 99.

19.

Barpujari [124], 205-7 ; Arunoday, Vol. 15, June 1860 [209]. The quote is from Selections from Records.......Vol. 37, (79], op. cit., 4.

20.

Antrobus [118], 80, 70,405 and 478. Of the amount, only half was raised in the UK, and that, too, was repaid within years. The rest was raised in India.

184 21.

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM For an estimate of investment per acre of tea plantations, also see Report o f the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the State and Prospects o f Tea Cultivation in Assam, Cachar and Sylhet 1868 [58], 4-6. According to this source the cost of making a tea garden, i.e. the cost of bringing up of land to crop-yielding stage was of the order of Rs. 500 per acre. To this of course should be added the overhead costs of other assets. It was claimed in the early 1870s that the investment was nearly £ 70 per each planted acre. - D.H. Buchanan, The Development o f Capitalist Enterprise in India [131], 57.

22.

See Note 20.

23.

Directors and Officers of the Company had been planting tea estates on their own account for years. Henry Burkinyoung’s Numaligaih was started in 1852-53. George Williamson, Junior, owned Kaliabor which he first planted in 1856 ; he, with George Williamson, Senior, and the latter’s brother Captain J.H. Williamson, shared in the ownership of Cinnamara, which was opened out in 1854, and of Oating in 1857—all of which were incorporated subsequently into the Jorhat Company.—Antrobus [118], 110.

24.

Quote from Gait, A History o f Assam [149], 408 ; also see Antrobus [118], 31415 and 395.

25.

Ibid., 328.

26.

B.R. Medhi, Finance Minister, Govt, of Assam in his Budget Speech of 1950-51 said : 'For the development and encouragement of this Tea Industry, Assam had to sacrifice not less than 25 crores of rupees in the shape of revenue and other concessions in respcct of fee-simple and other grants offered at nominal revenue.

27.

Kling, 'The origin of managing agency system in India', Journal o f Asian Studies, Vol. 26 [164], 44. The original partners of the firm, Carr, Tagore and Co., included William Carr, William Prinsep and the two Tagores. When Carr and Prinsep left for the UK, Other Europeans were taken in as partners, but Dwarkanath Tagore remained a constant partner and the chief financier. After serving as a director on the Calcutta Board of the Assam Co. for two years (1839-41) Prinsep became an important member of the London Board (1842-73) and died in hames?

28.

Antrobus [118], 413. Using the same source as Antrobus, Kling puts the number of Indian-owned shares much higher. Obviously, the number might vary from day to day because shares frequently changed hands. It is also to be noted that, because of circumstances of free trade and exchange, shares registered in Calcutta could be easily transferred to London and vice versa. So it is difficult to ascertain how much of the relevant investment was Britain's home savings. Apparently, both William Prinsep and Henry Burkinyoung, who held substantial blocs of London-registered shares, had made their fortunes in India.

COLONIALIZATION : THE SECOND PHASE

185

For infoimation on Maniram, Baipujari [124], 156-7 and Shanna [203], cited in Note 7 above. The yield, estimated by me, at 12 mds of rice (i.e. 18 mds of unhusked paddy grain) per acre is a conservative one. The average yield of rice was likely to be far higher in the early 19th century than what prevailed during, say, the four-year period 1952-3 to 1955-6, when the average per-acie yield of rice for Assam, as a whole, was 878 lbs or nearly 10 mds. See also Note 31 below. Sources for other crop yields :—for cotton, Appendix to Agricultural Statistics of British India, 1891-92 [109]; for opium, Butler, Travels and Adventures.......[133), 244 ; for muga silk, Hugon, JASB, Vol. 6 [96], 31 ; for sugarcane, the average yield for the four-year period 1952-3 to 1955-6 for Assam, as a whole, was 2270 lbs. Physical productivity of one plough measure of land, as given by BuchananHamilton, An Account o f Assam........ [38], 36. To find out the value-product, we have used 1852 prices-As 8 per md. for paddy and Rs. 2 per md. for mustardseeds. In 1835, a 16-acre single-crop wet rice farm, with 3 pairs of bullocks and five hired ploughmen for 8 months was expected to produce annually 400 mds of rice. This suggested a productivity of 25 mds of the sali variety of rice per acre. It should be noted that the productivity of the ahu variety (dry rice) was less. Mathie of Jenkins, 15 Feb., 1835 [28].

9 A Big Push Without A Take-off With Calcutta at its centre and with tea and jute as the main levers of change and population movements, Eastern India presents an integrated pauem of historical development since the middle of the last century. An attempt is made here to bring out the basic character of this process and its impact on the agrarian society of the Brahmaputra valley. The main focus is on the five contiguous districts—we shall be here referring to the former districts and their then subdivisions—and known as Assam Proper in the early British administrative reports. In 1961 its area was 17,719 sq. miles. This area today is the most developed core of Assam’s economy. A t T he T hreshold O f T he S eventies

The early period of British rule in Assam Proper, 1826 to 1870, was one of administrative and economic consolidation. The population increased from an estimated seven or eight lakhs in 1826 to eleven lakhs in 1853 and then to nearly fifteen lakhs by 1872. Slavery and serfdom involving an estimated five to nine per cent of the population and the widespread poppy cultivation were suppressed in 1843 and 1860, respectively. But the unrestricted sale of abkari opium introduced in 1851-52 contiuned to be a menace to the Assamese society. Opium sales accounted for almost half the total revenue collection in Assam Proper until the seventies. In 1864-65, for example, the opium revenue amounted to Rs. 1083,642 while the land revenue yielded Rs. 1001,773 only. By 1872-73, the current land revenue demand was revamped to Rs. 2155,157. Opium revenue remained above rupees eleven lakh in 1873-4, even after an upward change in its price. By the end of the century it crossed the figure of rupees eighteen lakh. With the ascendency of industrial capital over mercantile interests in Great Britain by 1833, the British policy in Assam received a clear direction towards colonialization. By 1871 more than three lakh acres of wastelands had been settled with planters in Assam Proper alone. These settlements were fee-simple or charged at nominal rates, while, at the same time the burden of land revenue on ordinary farmers was

A BIG PUSH WITHOUT A TAKE-OFF

187

progressively and systematically enhanced in order to encourage their transfer from subsistence farming to plantation jobs. Although not high enough to serve the purpose, the average land revenue burden of Rs. 1.47 per head of population in Assam Proper in 1872-73 was much heavier than what prevailed in permanently settled areas.1 The actual burden was more than what was apparent For, the inclusion of the negligible amount of land revenue paid by the planters for their tea lands and of the population thereupon had the effect of largely deflating the average figure in the former case. Introduced by 1839, tea was firmly established as a new crop by the seventies. Assuming an investment of Rs. 600 per planted acre (with a gestation period of four years), the total investment for 31,000 acres by 1871 may be estimated at Rs. 18.6 million or Rs. 12 per head of the total population at that time.2 Steamer services began to ply up and down the Brahmaputra from 1847, but more regularly from 1861 under a British private company. The outgoing merchandise handled were mainly tea, rubber, gum and silk. Mustard-seeds were mostly transported in boats. The principal imports handled were rice, salt, various planters’ stores, piece-goods and indentured labour. The Public Works Department started its road construction programme from the sixties. But the building of railways did not start before 1881 ; their importance in communications of Assam was felt not before 1901. In 1874 Assam was separated from the Bengal Presidency and was organized as a Chief Commissioner's Province, much to the satisfaction of the local public. The first English school had been established at Guwahati in 1835. In 1872 there were six such English Schools which sent up candidates for the Entrance Examination of the Calcutta University. Of the University's 938 successful matriculates of that year, only four were from Assam Proper. Nevertheless an enlightened West-oriented Assamese intelligentsia had already emerged by the seventies. Anandaram Dhekial Phukan (1829-59), a product of the Hindu College, Calcutta, championed the cause of Assamese as a language distinct from Bengali. After long thirtysix years of suppression since 1836 it was once more recognised in 1872 for use in the schools and law-courts of Assam. In 1898 and 1899, thirty two and fiftyone students from the Brahmaputra Valley schools respectively, passed the entrance examination. During the twelve years ending 1900, twentynine natives of the same; area obtained their B.A. degree. The first printing press (1836) and the first Assamese periodical, Arunoday (1846-1883), introduced by the American Baptist Mission helped the dissemination of scientific outlook. By 1872, Assam Proper had

188

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

altogether three local newspapers—two published from Sibsagar and one from Guwahati-the same number as Orissa had at the time. What Assam meanwhile lacked, however, was a fair share in commerce. Despite new openings, the Assamese were found indifferent to trading as an occupation. Maniram Dewan, the first Indian tea planter whose two tea gardens were confiscated on his martyrdom for alleged conspiracy during the 1857 revolts, was rather an exception. About a decade thereafter Rosheswar Barua pioneered a few small gardens, but was ruined by the crisis of 1866-67.3 Of the several hundred planters hardly two to three dozens were native of the Brahmaputra valley at the close of the century. Invariably they were owners of very small tea gardens. Hence, the seventies opened with an unrivalled British monopoly over the plantation sector which continued to expand till the end of the British rule. Outside this sector, almost the entire internal trade—export of lac, rubber, cotton, long-pepper, silk etc. and import of various manufactured consumer goods—was meanwhile in the hands of the Marwari trading community. The only exception to this was the trade in oil-seeds. The indigenous farmer traders of Kamrup were traditionally associated therewith from medieval times, but they were destined to lose their ground soon to Marwari traders. T h e M e ch an ism O f E co n o m ic C h a n g e : 1871-1901

The Big Push The period was one of hectic investment activities on the part of British enterprise in its drive for exploitation of colonial resources. A set of wastelands settlement rules were accordingly formulated—and then repeatedly revised—to facilitate British capital exports to north­ east India. The total area of wastelands settled with planters in Assam Proper increased from slightly over three lakh acres in 1871 to 6.4 lakh acres by 1901. The total value of revenue concessions enjoyed by the planters over these lands till 1901, would have amounted to several crores of rupees if calculated at the ordinary rate paid by rice farmers.4 Tea-processing machinery were increasingly used from the early seventies onwards. The average investment per planted acre calculated at Rs. 600 for an earlier period may therefore be fairly revised at Rs. 1,000 for the period 1872-1901.5 In the decade ending 1881, the total acreage under tea in Assam Proper leaped up by 63.8 thousand acres. In other words, a sum of Rs. 63.8 million was newly invested in that decade, as against an investment of Rs. 13.2 million in the preceding

A BIG PUSH WITHOUT A TAKE-OFF

189

twelve years. This tempo was maintained for the next two decades as well. Acreage under tea increased from 93,802 acres in 1881 to 204,682 acres in 1901-02. This increase by about 111 thousand acres— 118 per cent over the acreage in 1881—represents an investment of Rs. 110.9 million. Railway investments amounted to Rs. 62.4 million—(total construction outlay on all Indian Railways as of 1900 amounted to Rs. 3,295 million)—calculated on the basis of construction outlay on the 400 miles of tracks in Assam Proper.6 However, even as late as 1901 the railways still failed by a few miles to link up Assam Proper with the rest of India. British investments in coal (Rs. 5.4 million approximately), petroleum (Rs. 4.6 million approximately) and saw­ mills (Rs. 1 million approximately) were also newly made in these two decades. Some one hundred or so new telegraph signalling offices and several hundred miles of tele-communications and pebbled roads were built by the Government. So total investments in the organized economic sector of Assam Proper during the period, 1881-1901, appears to have been around Rs. 200 million, even at a conservative estimate.7 This gives us an approximate average investment of Rs. 10 million or so annually, for a population rising from 1.8 million in 1881 to 2.2 million in 1901. This big push, although presumably equal in size to some 15 to 20 per cent of the region's existing national income, did not however lead to any commensurate growth in the indigenous sector of the economy either simultaneously or in the following dccades. Some Sources o f Capital Surplus : The huge investment was made possible no doubt by migrated British business leadership and capital. But the sccond factor should not be exaggerated. Only a small part of the total investments in tea appears to have originated from Britain's home savings—the major part represents undistributed surplus and ploughed back dividends of the older companies already operating In Assam. Published histories of both the Assam Company for 1839-1953, and the Jorehaut Tea Company for 1859-1946 amply conoborate this view. Between 1854 and 1901 the Assam Company did hardly rai?e any additional capital or long-term loans to augment its initial capital of Rs. two million. Yet the acreage under tea had more than trebled from 3,313 acres in 1854 to 10,762 acres in 1901. Of this, an increase of 5,562 acres took place during the period 1872-1901, thus representing an estimated new investment of Rs. 5.6 million. Even after providing for such a huge expansion out of the current earnings, the 'Vmpany

190

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

made a total dividend profit of rupees nine million or twenty per cent of the gross earnings of these years. Founders of many companies, the second joint-stock concern in the field, the Jorehaut Tea Company (18S9) for example, built up their initial capital by fraudulent use of the Assam Company's seeds, tools and man-power while planting their tea gardens. In this respect, the official history of the Assam Company may be quoted.* ...from the highest Administrative Officer in Calcutta and Assam to the newest joined Assistant, were, speaking generally, all in this racket of using the circumstances of their employment to open out land under tea in competition with their own employers.... They were blatant enough to have taken up their lands near the boundary or actually adjoining the Company's grants, and it would not be difficult to guess from whence they obtained their tea-seed and labour.... To put it plainly, their employment by the Assam Company as Assistants gave them the necessary subsistence on which to live in the province while they pursued the objects of their own enterprise.

Thus, what appeared as cost items in the accounts of the Assam Company became the initial capital of some new companies. This did not certainly represent fresh import of Sterling capital although the new company was floated in London apparently with Sterling capital. Opening of new tea gardens by British district magistrates, police officers, civil surgeons, military officers etc., after only a few years' service in India also does not represent home savings of Britain.9 These facts induce us to believe that from 1854 onwards the surplus extracted from the plantations as well as savings from the personal earnings of British officers on Indian service, which were available for investment, were large enough for financing the rapid expansion of the tea acreage. Particularly so since the industry had to pay practically nothing to the Government either as price or in the form of rent or taxes for the land in their occupation. Labour Squeeze : To maximize the surplus, labour was paid a wage below the free market rate. Free market wages recorded between 1875 and 1899 a fiftysix per cent increase in the Brahmaputra valley.10 This was because of labour scarcity and also because the price of rice was rising. With 1873 as the base year, the price of rice in the normal years showed, on the whole, an average upward trend during the period 18711901, as is indicated below. Index No. o f Rice Prices (187-100): Select years 1864 1871 111.2 104.1

1875 125.6

1881 106.8

1885 1891 137.2 136.9

1895 1901 138.0 184.7

A BIG PUSH WITHOUT A TAKE-OI I-

191

In 1864 while free labour was able to earn a wage of Rs. 7 per month from the P.W.D., the going wage in the Assam Company's plantations was Rs. 4 to Rs. 5. But the average rate earned in many gardens was Rs. 3.50 only.11 In the face of rising prices, the Government attempted to set the norm of minimum wage for contract labour in plantations at Rs. 5, Rs. 4 and Rs. 3 for men, women and children, respectively. At the same time, there was the proviso that the planter would make rice available to them at the rate of one rupee per maund. This was provided by the second Labour Act of 1865. But for decades to come, the planters managed to pay a lower cash wage by manipulating the piece-rate task. They also brought down the real wages by raising the price of rice to Rs. 2, then to Rs. 2.50 and finally to Rs. 3 by 1900.12 Thus, throughout the period under review, the contract labourers under the Emigration Act were receiving almost half the wage earned by the free agricultural labourers. The wage rate of able bodied agricultural labourers in Lakhimpur, e.g., was Rs. 9.37 per month in 1873. Thereafter, it never decreased below Rs. 6, except in 1875 and 1876. In most of the subsequent years till 1901, their monthly wage-rate ranged between Rs. 8 and Rs. 11. As against this, only in rare cases could a tea labour earn a wage as high as Rs. 6.50 (Table 9.3). In 1888-89 an Emigration Act labourer was receiving only about half the going wage. In the period of falling tea prices in the international market since 1881, the planters maximized their total profit by expanding the acreage, by increasing value yield per acre through the deepening of capital and by freezing wages. Burden on Peasants The planters had already enclosed by 1901 some one-fourth of the total seuled area (or five per cent of total area) of Assam Proper, under their exclusive proprietory rights.12 Thereby they limited to that extent the facilities of fluctuating or shifting cultivation as well as of grazing and collecting activities of the local population—particularly the tribals. Acreage under tea formed only eight to ten per cent of the occupied tea area in the early seventies and some twentynine per cent even as late as 1947. Why did the tea gardens enclose excess lands or why did the Government allow them to do so ? Such a policy, like one of enhancing land revenue demand on peasant holdings and that of increasing the monopoly price of opium, obviously aimed at forcing the local farmers into acceptance of plantation employment. This had only partial results. For, in 1868-69, there were as many as 18,783 local labourers on a monthly average as against 21,667 imported labourers on the plantations.14 But thereafter, when thousands of

192

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY COLONIAL ASSAM

additional hands were required every year, local labour supply did hardly respond to the low wages. This happened despite a hundred per cent increase in the total land revenue demand oil Assam Proper between 1867-68 and 1872-73 and an increase in the opium price from Rs. 14 per seet in 1860 to Rs. 20 in 1862 and to Rs. 23 by 1873. In 1893, the land revenue rates on peasant holdings were once more revamped even in the face of a mass upsurge of protesting peasants in Kamrup and Darrang which was suppressed by pdlice firings. The initial increase in the land revenue demand in Assam Proper was fiftythree per cent, but it had to be reduced to thirtyseven per cent.15 The price of opium per seer was also gradually increased to Rs. 37 by 1890—a 60 per cent increase during the period. But all these measures failed to attract Assamese labour to wage employment. Of the 307 thousand workers on the plantations of Assam Proper in 1901, only some 20,000 were reported to be local labourer^ of whom 14,000 were Kachari tribals.16 The planters therefore had to depend almost entirely on the faminestricken tribal areas of the rest of India for a steady labour supply. Between 1871 and 1901 more than 11 lakh recruits, men, women and children, entered Assam; mostly Assam Proper.17 A considerable number were repatriated every year on expiry of their contract period, but many settled down permanently in the t