Kamarupa

Kamarupa, also remembered as Pragjyotisha, was the first historical kingdom of Assam, lasting from the fourth to the twelfth century. The name first surfaces in a Gupta emperor's victory inscription, and for eight hundred years three successive dynasties ruled the Brahmaputra valley from capitals clustered around present-day Guwahati. At its height the realm covered the whole valley and reached into Bengal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, a frontier Sanskrit kingdom where Brahmin priests served kings who also honoured tribal gods, and where the temple hill of Kamakhya drew pilgrims from across India. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang visited King Bhaskaravarman's court in the seventh century and described its customs. Kamarupa absorbed its Davaka neighbours in the fifth century and fended off later invaders, but after the twelfth century it dissolved into quarrelling chiefdoms. The name refused to die: chroniclers kept calling the land Kamrup for centuries, and in the sixteenth the rising Ahom kingdom claimed Kamarupa's legacy as it pushed toward the Karatoya river.