Uneasy lies the Ahom Crown

Charaideo is a sleepy village, about 40 km east of the historical town of Sivasagar, which was the capital of the Ahoms for about 170 years....

Charaideo is a sleepy village, about 40 km east of the historical town of Sivasagar, which was the capital of the Ahoms for about 170 years. But this sleepy village woke up to loud protests after the Archaeological Survey of India carried out an excavation in one of the 50-odd maidams at Charaideo. Various socio-cultural groups and students’ organizations are protesting the excavation saying it had desecrated the ‘‘holy place.’’

Charaideo has more than 50 maidams or earthen structures that closely resemble the pyramids of ancient Egypt. In each of these maidams lie kings and their families.

‘‘The maidam is a unique earthen structure that is similar only to pyramids of ancient Egypt. The Ahoms, who ruled Assam from 1228 to 1826 till the British arrived, followed a unique mortuary practice to bury their kings and nobles in maidams that are hemispherical in shape and resemble the Egyptian pyramids,’’ says Syed Jamal Hassan, superintending archaeologist, ASI, Guwahati Circle.

But for the Ahoms these maidams are too sacred to be touched. ‘‘Charaideo is a holy place for us. This exercise of the ASI has hurt the socio-religious sentiments of the community,’’ said Deva Gohain, president of the Tai-Ahom Sanskriti aru Siksha Bikash Samiti. The Samiti has shot off a letter to the President and Prime Minister urging them to stop the ASI excavation.

Charaideo has a long illustrious history. It was the capital of the Ahoms till 1397 but remained important even after that because the founder of India’s longest running dynasty was buried here.

It soon became a holy spot for the Ahoms, who decided that all kings and members of the royal families would rest here. And today, more than 775 years later, it continues to be the mecca of the Ahoms. The Ahoms go to Charaideo every March to observe me-dam-me-phi, a day dedicated to paying respect to their ancestors.

‘‘To many people Charaideo might appear as an ordinary graveyard of the Ahom monarchs. But to an Ahom, it is Jerusalem, it is his Mecca,’’ says Prof Ramesh Buragohain whose book The Lost Trails is an authoritative document on the history and heritage of the Ahoms who are an off-shoot of the Tai race that’s spread all over southeast Asia.

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But the ASI excavation doesn’t appear to be the first in Charaideo. In fact, the excavation has shown that the British too had dug a few of these maidams. ‘‘We had dug up the biggest of the maidams on an experimental basis only to discover that it had been already dug in the past, causing much damage to archaeology and objects inside,’’ says Hassan.

Only a few artifacts including broken pieces of ivory plates, a few gold and silver ornaments and a few ivory-plated wooden pedestals and bones and skulls were found during the excavation. ‘‘There is no immediate reference of any such object removed from the maidams finding their way to any museum in England, proving the popular allegation that the British rulers and planters took them for their private collection,’’ he adds.

According to Hassan, while the Ahom buranjis (historical records) contain details of the maidams including lists of valuables put with the body of the kings, none of them were found when the ASI team reached the underground vault. More than discovering objects, the exercise has revealed what’s gone missing.