Kamrup | ||
Kamarupa | ||
Region | ||
|
||
Country | India | |
---|---|---|
Cities | Barpeta, Bongaigaon, Guwahati, Nalbari | |
Capital | Pragjyotishpura and Durjaya (Ancient) | |
Timezone | UTC+05:30 (IST) (UTC+5.30) | |
Kamrup or Kamarupa is the modern region situated between two rivers Manas and Barnadi in Western Assam, congruent to ancient "Kamapitha", "Kamarupa Mandala" of Pragjyotisha Bhukti, medieval "Sarkar Kamrup" and modern "Undivided Kamrup district", though historian Dinesh Chandra Sircar suspects Kamapitha division as fabrications from late medieval times.
Pre-colonial Kamrup was a large territory consisting of Western Assam and North Bengal, which keep reducing in size in subsequent periods. In the nineteenth century eastern Kamrup became part of Colonial Assam while parts of western Kamrup merged with Bengal. Ancient cities Pragjyotishpura and Durjaya were located in modern Kamrup. Kamrup is considered as a politically, socially and culturally separate unit, and cultural artefacts from this region are called Kamrupi.
The first historical mention of Kamarupa comes from Samudragupta's 4th-century Allahabad prasasti, where it is mentioned along with Davaka and Samatata as frontier kingdoms of the Gupta empire. Davaka, currently in Nagaon district (central Assam), is not mentioned in historical texts again, which indicates that the kings of Kamarupa must have absorbed it. Though the kingdom came to be known as Kamarupa, the kings called themselves the rulers of Pragjyotisha (Pragjyotishadhipati), and not Kamarupa; nevertheless Kamarupa continued to be mentioned in inscriptions, such as Nidhanpur inscription of Bhaskar Varman. Vaidydeva, an 11th-century ruler, named Kamarupa as a mandala within the Pragjyotisha bhukti. According to Sircar, the Kamarupa mandala is congruent to undivided Kamrup of the modern times.