Sukaphaa

Journey into Assam

The following route and dates belong to the conventional Buranji-based reconstruction. In this account, Sukaphaa left Mong Mao in 1215. He was accompanied by three queens, two sons and a daughter; chiefs from five other dependent Mongs; members of the priestly class and soldiers—a total contingent of 9,000. Some commoners are recorded as having joined this core group on the way. The migrating group also expanded by capturing people along the route; according to Saikia, these captives included Chutia, Morans and Barahis. Sukaphaa had with him 300 horses fitted with saddles and bridles and two elephants. Heavy arms were transported along a different route. Sukaphaa followed an older known route from Yunnan to Assam that passed through Myitkyina, Mogaung and the upper Irrawaddy River valley. On his way, he stopped at various places and crossed the Khamjang River to reach the Nangyang lake in 1227. Here he subjugated the Nagas very ferociously and established a Mong. According to the Buranjis, Sukaphaa's passage through the Patkai involved repeated attacks on Naga villages. Several villages were forced to surrender or were abandoned after his forces attacked them, while resistant Nagas were subjected to severe exemplary punishments, including being forced to eat the flesh of their own relatives. He left one Kan-Khrang-Mong there to guard the passage back, and proceeded to cross the Patkai hills at the Pangsau Pass and reached Namrup (in the Brahmaputra Valley) in December 1228. In this reconstruction, the journey from Mong Mao to Namrup took about thirteen years, and 1228 is treated as the year in which the Ahom kingdom was established.

Disputed chronology of Migration

The conventional chronology places Sukaphaa's departure from Möng Mao in 1215 and his arrival at Khamjang in 1228. The chronological basis of these dates, however, is disputed. Daniels (2012) notes that, although the Ahoms are reputed to have migrated to Assam during the thirteenth century, “we have no contemporary source that can elucidate their early history.” The textual basis of the early migration narrative is also uncertain. Although Buranji tradition attributes the beginning of official chronicle writing to Sukaphaa, research on the Tai Ahom script suggests that the written chronicle tradition took shape much later. The oldest surviving Ahom text, the Snake Pillar inscription, dates to the reign of Suhungmung (1497–1539), while modern-day linguistics studies show that the Ahom script developed between the late 14th and 16th centuries.

Saikia (1997) describes an “utter confusion” in the chronology of the presumed Tai-Ahom migration and settlement in the Lauhitya valley. The first two chronicles of the Satsari Assam Buranji give incompatible sequences: the first places the westward migration in 1215 and the initial settlement in 1228, while the second dates the departure to Śaka 1170 (1248 CE), the establishment of the first village fourteen years later in 1262, and Sukaphaa's death to Śaka 1190 (1268 CE). The first also assigns him a reign of thirty-three years after the occupation of Dikhoumukh, whereas the second makes him leader of the group for forty-two years from its departure from the Nara kingdom. Three other Buranjis date Sukaphaa’s accession to 1362 CE, while other accounts preserve still different chronologies.

Saikia attributes part of the problem to the Tai-Ahom dating system, which used a recurring sixty-year tao singa cycle composed of named lakni years. Since the Buranjis generally do not identify the particular cycle to which a lakni belonged, she regards their conversion into fixed Common Era dates as uncertain. She further argues that the lakni dates inserted into the first Satsari chronicle—the version supporting 1228—were sometimes incorrectly placed or apparently invented without reference to the Tai-Ahom calendar and therefore cannot be relied upon for reconstructing the early chronology.

Saikia (2004) links the chronological problem to the late compilation and transmission of the Sukaphaa traditions. She states that the Ahom royal genealogy beginning with Sukaphaa was fixed during the reign of Rajeswar Singha (1751–1769), while Gaurinath Singha (1780–1795) later sent pandits to Upper Burma to collate accounts of earlier rulers from Buddhist temple records, particularly those concerning Sukaphaa. This may explain the common origin narrative repeated in later Buranjis, although it is no longer possible to determine whether they drew upon one source or several. Sukaphaa, or related figures, also appears in the ancestral traditions of several Shan groups in Upper Burma with differing dates, genealogies and political roles, but neither the origin of these traditions nor the direction of their transmission can now be established. John F. Hartmann similarly considered the chronology beginning with the first Tai-Ahom ruler “probably too early by as much as 200 years” and noted that the official accounts of the early period were later “refreshed” with Tai-Mau and Khamti chronicles obtained through continued contact with those groups.

Saikia notes that scholars such as N. N. Acharyya fixed 1228 as the beginning of Tai-Ahom rule partly through astronomical reconstruction based on an eclipse recorded during Susenpha's reign. Acharyya identified it with the partial solar eclipse of 6 March 1486 and, by working backwards through the royal succession using an assumed average reign of 21 years for each preceding ruler, concluded that the conventional early-thirteenth-century chronology was broadly plausible. R. C. Kapoor subsequently argued that the 1486 eclipse was not visible from Assam and that the chronicle description better fits the total solar eclipse of 9 July 1488, which was visible there.

Possible synchronisms between rulers named in the Buranjis and rulers independently recorded in Chinese sources may also be relevant to the chronological problem. The Buranjis mentions a ruler named Sukhanpha or Sukhranpha in the traditions surrounding Sukaphaa. This name closely resembles the Tai/Shan name of Si Kefa, rendered Hsö Hkan Hpa, Sa Khaan Pha or Soe Khan Fa (သိူဝ်ၶၢၼ်ႇၾႃႉ), the ruler recorded in Chinese sources as Si Ke-fa (思可法). Modern reconstructions place Si Ke-fa in the mid-fourteenth century; Fernquest gives his reign as 1340–1371. conventionally dated to 1340–1371. Chinese sources similarly record Si Ke-fa's accession to Luchuan in 1340 and his subsequent expansion.

A second possible synchronism occurs in the reign conventionally assigned to Sudangphaa (traditionally r.1397-1407). The Ahom Buranji records a Surunpha as the Nara king to whom Tao Sulai fled and whose forces subsequently invaded the Ahom kingdom. Nara in Ahom sources has been identified with the Möng Kwang/Mogaung region. Surunpha may therefore be compared, again tentatively, with Si Ren-fa (r. 1413–1445), the Luchuan/Möng Mao ruler recorded in Chinese sources who later established a power base in the Mogaung region after his conflict with the Ming.

Daniels’s alternative chronology

Drawing on Dehong Tai chronicles and 13th- and 14th-century Chinese sources, historian Christian Daniels (2023) has proposed a different reconstruction. He argues that the Möng Mao polity associated with Sukaphaa's departure emerged only in the 14th century, specifically in the 1330s, and that Chinese sources mention its ruler Sa' Khaan Faa by name only during the 1340s. Daniels also points to Dehong traditions which variously date a major westward expedition from Great Möng Mao towards the Indian frontier under Saam Long to 1319 or 1348, observing that this evidence could suggest that Tai migration into the Brahmaputra Valley occurred during the 14th century. Daniels therefore proposes two possibilities: either the traditional 1215 migration began from another Tai polity in southwest Yunnan or the upper Ayeyarwady rather than from Möng Mao, or the conversion of the Buranji's cyclical dates requires revision. Under the latter interpretation, he identifies 1312/13, 1324/25, 1336/37 and 1348/49 as possible equivalents for the relevant “boar year”, and considers 1336/37 and 1348/49 the most likely dates for the foundation of the Ahom polity in Assam. Daniels further notes that a foundation in 1228/29 would be unusually early in the wider history of Tai state formation, preceding the establishment of Sukhothai by about a decade despite Assam's considerable distance from the principal centres of Tai settlement in mainland Southeast Asia. By contrast, a 14th-century chronology would place the emergence of the Ahom polity within the contemporary rise of Möng Mao and, according to Daniels, would support the Buranji traditions which represent the Ahom rulers as descendants of its Sa' ruling lineage. Related Buranji traditions place Sukaphaa's westward movement in the aftermath of an earlier Nara–Möng Mao invasion of the region, although these accounts do not provide a securely convertible date.

Sukaphaa in Assam

Scholars characterise Sukaphaa as the leader of an agricultural community seeking land for permanent settlement rather than as a raiding conqueror. It appears he did not encroach upon the lands of the local peasants; rather, he opened up new areas of settlement, procuring with shrewd diplomacy what he direly needed for the purpose—the service of the local inhabitants. The establishment of these settlements, however, involved both negotiation and coercion. Guha describes the migrating group as a “self-governed body of armed peasants” which, while moving through the region, left small colonies at strategic places such as Khamjang and Tipam before settling in the Dikhou valley.

According to Baruah, Sukaphaa used conciliation to win over sections of the Moran and Barahi populations, but those who resisted were “ruthlessly killed”. Buranji-based reconstructions also portray his movement as strategically selective: after learning of a large population concentration on the Namdang, Sukaphaa's party became apprehensive and moved away from the area. His early polity thus developed through settlement, alliance, incorporation of local groups and selective military force, rather than through either purely peaceful migration or indiscriminate conquest.

Establishment of Ahom Kingdom

The conventional chronology assigns Sukaphaa's successive moves and the establishment of his principal settlement in Upper Assam to the period between 1236 and 1253. According to this reconstruction, Sukaphaa moved from place to place in search of a capital, leaving representatives at earlier settlements. He went up the Burhidihing River and established a province at Lakhen Telsa. Then he came back down the river and established his rule at Tipam. In 1236 he moved to Mungklang (Abhoipur), and in 1240 down the Brahmaputra to Habung. In 1244 he went further down to Ligirigaon (Song-Tak), a few miles from present-day Nazira, and in 1246 to Simaluguri (Tun Nyeu), a place downstream from the present-day Simaluguri. Finally in 1253 he built himself his capital city at Charaideo near present-day Sibsagar town. The capital of the Ahom kingdom changed many times after this, but Charaideo remained the symbolic center of Ahom rule.

With the help of local recruits, he established three large farms for sali rice cultivation, called Barakhowakhat, Engerakhat and Gachikalakhat. The conventional chronology dates Sukaphaa's death to 1268. At the time of his death, his kingdom was bounded by the Brahmaputra River in the west, the Disang River in the north, the Dikhow River (26°58′15″N 94°38′12″E / 26.970732°N 94.636745°E) in the south and the Naga Hills in the east.

Even though Sukaphaa treated the people of the Patkai hills very severely on his way to the Brahmaputra valley, his approach to the population in Assam was conciliatory and non-confrontational. He married the daughters of Badaucha, the Moran Chief and Thakumatha, the Barahi chief and established cordial relations with them. As he began establishing his domain, he avoided regions that were heavily populated. He encouraged his soldiers as well as members of the Ahom elite to marry locally. A process of Ahomisation (whereby locals who adopted Ahom methods of wet rice cultivation and statecraft were accepted into the Ahom fold) bolstered the process of integration. The local Borahi and the Moran people, speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages, addressed Sukaphaa's people as "Ha-Cham", that later on developed into "Assam" or "Ahom" (see Etymology of Assam), the name of the kingdom; and "Ahom", the name of the people.

Memorial

• On 2 December, Assam celebrates the Sukapha Divas, or Asom Divas (Assam Day). An award is given by State Government that day to a prominent personality.
• Sukapha Samanway Kshetra (26°42′58″N 94°04′42″E / 26.7161399°N 94.0782113°E) : Inaugurated on 2 December 2015, at Mohbondha, Jorhat.
• A 100-feet long statue of Chaolung Siu Ka Pha was unveiled in Nazira, Assam on 26 February 2021 by Assam Health, Finance and Education Minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma. It stirred controversy because of its "weird looking" face.
• Sukaphaa Bhawan at Khanapara, Guwahati (26°07′32″N 91°48′13″E / 26.1254446°N 91.8036044°E)
• Sukaphaa Bhawan at Borbaruah, Dibrugarh. (27°20′49″N 94°51′57″E / 27.346944°N 94.865833°E)
• A cruise in the name of RV Sukafa plying on the Brahmaputra.