The Ahom language or Tai-Ahom language is a
dead language
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers, especially if the language has no living Genetic relationship (linguistics), descendants. In contrast, a dead language is one that is no longer the native language of any commun ...
, that was spoken by the
Ahom people
The Ahom (Pron: ), or Tai-Ahom is an ethnic group from the Indian states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. The members of this group are admixed descendants of the Tai people who reached the Brahmaputra valley of Assam in 1228 and the local indi ...
, that is undergoing a revival. Ahom is an important language in Tai studies. It was relatively free of both
Mon-Khmer
The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...
and
Indo-Aryan influences and has a written tradition dating back to the 13th century.
The Ahom people established the
Ahom kingdom and ruled parts of the
Brahmaputra
The Brahmaputra is a trans-boundary river which flows through Tibet, northeast India, and Bangladesh. It is also known as the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibetan, the Siang/Dihang River in Arunachali, Luit in Assamese, and Jamuna River in Bangla. It ...
river valley in the present day
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n state of
Assam
Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...
between the 13th and the 18th centuries. The language was the court language of the kingdom, until it began to be replaced by the
Assamese language
Assamese (), also Asamiya ( ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the north-east Indian state of Assam, where it is an official language, and it serves as a ''lingua franca'' of the wider region. The easternmost Indo-Iranian language, ...
in the 17th century. Since the early 18th century, there have been no native speakers of the language, though extensive manuscripts in the language still exist today. The tonal system of the language is entirely lost. The language was only partially known by a small group of traditional priests of the
Ahom religion
The Ahom religion is the ethnic religion of the Ahom people. The Ahom people came into Assam in 1228, led by a Tai prince Sukaphaa, and admixed with the local people. The people who came into Assam included two clans of priests, joined later by ...
, and it was being used only for ceremonial or ritualistic purposes.
Classification
Tai-Ahom is classified in a Northwestern subgrouping of
Southwestern Tai owing to close affinities with
Shan,
Khamti and, more distantly,
Thai
Thai or THAI may refer to:
* Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia
** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand
** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand
*** Thai script
*** Thai (Unicode block ...
. The immediate parent language from which Ahom is descended has been reconstructed as
Proto-Tai
Proto-Tai is the reconstructed proto-language (common ancestor) of all the Tai languages, including modern Lao, Shan, Tai Lü, Tai Dam, Ahom, Northern Thai, Standard Thai, Bouyei, and Zhuang. The Proto-Tai language is not directly atteste ...
, a language from 2000 years ago,
[French, M. A. (1994). Tai Languages. In ''The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics'' (Vol. 4, pp. 4520-4521). New York, NY: Pergamon Press Press.] in the
Kra–Dai family (unrelated to Chinese, but possibly related to the
Austronesian languages),
within the (proposed but debated) subgroup of
Kam–Tai,
although some say that Tai languages are a discrete family, and are not part of Kra–Dai.
Ahom is distinct from but closely related to
Aiton, which is still spoken in
Assam
Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...
to this day.
Description
Ahom has characteristics typical of Tai languages, such as:
* Subject Verb Object (SVO) word order
* Tonality
* Monosyllabic roots
[Hongladarom, K. (2005). Thai and Tai Languages. In ''Encyclopedia of linguistics'' (Vol. 2, pp. 1098-1101). New York, NY: Fitzroy Dearborn.]
* Each syllable is tonal, and begins with a consonant or consonant cluster. A vowel or diphthong follows. A final consonant may be added, but is not necessary.
* Lack of inflection
* Analytic syntax
[Blake, B. J. (1994). Language Classification. In ''The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics'' (Vol. 4, pp. 1952-1957). New York, NY: Pergamon Press Press.]
When speaking and writing Ahom, much is dependent upon context and the audience interpretation. Multiple parts of the sentence can be left out; verb and adjectives will remain, but other parts of speech, especially pronouns, can be dropped. Verbs do not have tenses, and nouns do not have plurals. Time periods can be identified by adverbs, strings of verbs, or auxiliaries placed before the verb.
Ahom, like other Tai languages, uses classifiers to identify categories, and repetitions of words to express idiomatic expressions. However, the expressions, classifiers, pronouns, and other sentence particles vary between the Tai languages descended from Proto-Tai, making Tai languages mutually unintelligible.
It has its own script, the
Ahom script
The Ahom script or Tai Ahom Script, is an abugida that is used to write the Ahom language, a dormant Tai language undergoing revival spoken by the Ahom people till the late 18th-century, who established the Ahom kingdom and ruled the eastern pa ...
.
History
The
Ahom people
The Ahom (Pron: ), or Tai-Ahom is an ethnic group from the Indian states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. The members of this group are admixed descendants of the Tai people who reached the Brahmaputra valley of Assam in 1228 and the local indi ...
and their language originated in
Yunnan
Yunnan , () is a landlocked Provinces of China, province in Southwest China, the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is ...
in south-west
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
. They migrated from the border between northern Vietnam and the Guangxi province of China,
to the
Hukawng Valley
The Hukawng Valley ( my, ဟူးကောင်းချိုင့်ဝှမ်း; also spelt Hukaung Valley) is an isolated valley in Myanmar, roughly in area. It is located in Tanaing Township in the Myitkyina District of Kachin State ...
, along the upper reaches of the
Chindwin river, northern
Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
. In the 13th century, they crossed the
Patkai Range
The Pat-kai (Pron:pʌtˌkaɪ) or Patkai Bum ( Burmese: ''Kumon Taungdan'') are a series of mountains in the Indo-Myanmar border falling in the north-eastern Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Upper Burma region of Myanmar. They ...
.
and settled in the
Brahmaputra river
The Brahmaputra is a trans-boundary river which flows through Tibet, northeast India, and Bangladesh. It is also known as the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibetan, the Siang/Dihang River in Arunachali, Luit in Assamese, and Jamuna River in Bangla. It ...
valley, in Northeast India.
[Diller, A. (1993). Tai Languages. In ''International Encyclopedia of Linguistics'' (Vol. 4, pp. 128-131). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.] After increasing their power in Upper Assam, the Ahom people extended their power to the south of the river Brahmaputra and east of the river Dikho, which corresponds to the modern day districts of Dibrugarh and Sibsagar, Assam, where the Ahom still reside today.
Tai-Ahom was the exclusive court language of the
Ahom kingdom, where it was used to write state-histories or '
Buranjis'.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the small Ahom community expanded their rule dramatically toward the west and they successfully saw off challenges from the
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...
and other invaders.
The rapid expansion resulted in the Ahom people becoming a small minority in their own kingdom, of which they kept control. During the 17th century, the
Assamese language
Assamese (), also Asamiya ( ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the north-east Indian state of Assam, where it is an official language, and it serves as a ''lingua franca'' of the wider region. The easternmost Indo-Iranian language, ...
entered the Ahom court and co-existed with the Tai-Ahom for some time before finally replacing it. Eventually the Ahom peasants too adopted the
Assamese language
Assamese (), also Asamiya ( ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the north-east Indian state of Assam, where it is an official language, and it serves as a ''lingua franca'' of the wider region. The easternmost Indo-Iranian language, ...
over the Ahom language for secular purposes, while Ahom was restricted to religious use by Ahom priests.
The everyday usage of Ahom language ceased completely by the early 19th century.
Although the language is no longer spoken, the exhaustive 1795 Ahom-Assamese lexicon known as the ''Bar Amra'' preserves the lexical forms of the language towards the end of the
Ahom Kingdom.
The language today is used chiefly for liturgical purposes, and is no longer used in daily life. While the written language (and ritualistic chants) survive in a vast number of written manuscripts, Ahom is therefore usually regarded as a dead language. It retains cultural significance and is used for religious chants and to read literature.
This is complicated however by the fact that the phonology with its tone system has been completely lost, because the
Ahom script
The Ahom script or Tai Ahom Script, is an abugida that is used to write the Ahom language, a dormant Tai language undergoing revival spoken by the Ahom people till the late 18th-century, who established the Ahom kingdom and ruled the eastern pa ...
does not mark tone and under-specifies vowel contrasts,
which obscures the meaning of words as tones are important to distinguish the meaning of words in tonal languages.
Translation efforts
![Tai Script of Ahom Kingdom](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Tai_Script_of_Ahom_Kingdom.jpg)
Unfortunately, fabricated samples of the Ahom script delayed translation of legitimate Ahom texts. Several publications were created based on the fabricated samples, leading to incorrect grammatical analysis and dictionary resources that acted as a barrier to future researchers. A later translation of ''Ahom Buranji'', a major Ahom script was provided by Golap Chandra Barua, the same man responsible for fabricating samples of translated Ahom script. It was discovered years later, by Professor
Prasert na Nagara
Prasert na Nagara ( th, ประเสริฐ ณ นคร, , ; 21 March 1919 – 7 May 2019) was a Thai scholar. Best known for his studies of ancient Thai inscriptions, he was formally trained in engineering and statistics, subjects which he ...
, that the translation was unreliable. Despite these difficulties, along with the lack of native speakers and specific text, studies in Ahom have prevailed, and certain available scripts have been translated and transliterated, using known words, characters and context.
Revitalization efforts
In 1954, at a meeting of
Ahom people
The Ahom (Pron: ), or Tai-Ahom is an ethnic group from the Indian states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. The members of this group are admixed descendants of the Tai people who reached the Brahmaputra valley of Assam in 1228 and the local indi ...
at Patsaku, Sibsagar District, the Tai Historical and Cultural Society of Assam was founded. Since the late 1960s, Ahom culture and traditions have witnessed a revival. In 1981 the Eastern Tai Literary Organization has been founded in Dhemaji, which produced language text books and publications in the Ahom script. Schools in Dibrugarh and Sibsagar districts started offering Tai language classes, teaching a mix of Tai Ahom, Phakey, Khamti and Central Thai. The scholar Terwiel notes that the view of the Ahom language being a dead language is hotly contested by Ahom priests and spokesmen of the revival movement. According to them, the language did not die out because Ahom priests still use the language for religious purposes. Some even claim that the priestly class speaks Ahom as their mother tongue. Upon further investigation, it was determined that the priests could decipher the Ahom script and read the words aloud. However, because they did not know any tones, they did not have any idea of the meaning of the words except for the simplest expressions.
According to Terwiel, there are great differences between the old Ahom language of the manuscripts, which is easily recognizable as a Tai language, and what the revivalists call Ahom, which does not follow the rules of Tai grammar. It has also changed greatly regarding semantics, literally translating Assamese into Tai words, which leads to sentences which do not make sense to any Tai speaker. Terwiel therefore calls this revived language 'pseudo-Ahom'. Nevertheless, this revived language has been used passionately by revitalists and many neologisms have been created. The demand for translation into Tai-Ahom led to the creation of the first adequate modern dictionary by Nomal Chandra Gogoi in 1987, titled ''The Assamese-English-Tai Dictionary''. This dictionary allowed a reader to find the translation of 9,000 Assamese words into English and Tai. This dictionary filled in missing gaps of the Ahom vocabulary with Aiton and Khamti words and if those were not available, Lanna and Thai words were used. The result was a hodgepodge of multiple Tai languages, that was only linked to the Ahom language by the Ahom script in which the dictionary entries were written. The scholar Terwiel recommended in 1992 to base neo-Ahom on the grammar and tones of the very closely related Aiton language, which is still spoken in Assam. Summarizing, the revivalists use a language consisting of a mixture of Tai words from multiple Tai languages, overlaid on an Assamese grammatical base.
In 1999, the scholar Morey reported that Ahom priests have resorted to compounding words to differentiate between words that are homophones in the revived language, since Ahom lost its tone system. For example in old Ahom, the word ''su'' for tiger and ''su'' for shirt would have sounded differently by pronouncing them with a different tone. In revived Ahom, they are now differentiated by compounding them with another word: ''tu'' for animal and ''pha'' for cloth respectively. Subsequently, ''tu su'' and ''pha su'' can be differentiated.
An effort has been made to revive the language by following the phonology of existing sister languages, especially
Tai-Aiton and
Tai-Phake.
The
Institute of Tai Studies and Research (ITSAR), is a Tai-Ahom language teaching institute in
Moran,
Sivasagar
Sivasagar (Pron: or ) ("the sea of Shiva"), is a city in and headquarters of the Sivasagar district, Assam. Sivasagar is situated about 360 kilometers (224 mi) northeast of Guwahati. It is well known for its Ahom palaces and monuments. S ...
,
Assam
Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...
, India, established in 2001 and affiliated to
Dibrugarh University
Dibrugarh University is a collegiate public state university in the Indian state of Assam. It is located at Dibrugarh, Assam, India. It was set up in 1965 under the provisions of the Dibrugarh University Act, 1965 enacted by the Assam Legislat ...
. It offers a one-year Tai-Ahom language diploma course and a three-month certificate course in spoken Tai-Ahom. Other initiatives have been taken, such as workshops and language classes. In 2019, the 'Tai Ahom Yuva Chatra Sanmilan, Assam' (TAYCSA), demanded that the Tai-Ahom language be included in the school curriculum of the state of Assam. They also demanded the creation of a two-year diploma course in Mahdavdeva University.
An online dictionary containing nearly 5,000 entries (see External links) has been created by analyzing old manuscripts, especially the Bar Amra. A descriptive grammar of Ahom, based on the grammar found in old manuscripts, is being worked on. A sketch has been released, titled “A Sketch of Tai Ahom” by Stephen Morey.
Phonology
Consonants
The Tai Ahom consonants have been reconstructed as the following, by analyzing old texts:
The semi-vowel /w/ is missing from the system, however it is an allophone of /b/ that occurs only in the word final position. Consonants found in the word final position are: /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, j, b
.
Vowels
Vowels can occur in syllable medial and final positions only. The following vowel inventory has been reconstructed:
Tones
The language had a tone system, but because the Ahom script did not spell out any tones, the tones are now unknown.
Grammar
Pronouns
The Ahom language has the following pronouns:
Demonstratives
Ahom uses the proximal demonstrative ''nai'' meaning 'this' and the distal demonstrative ''nan'' meaning 'that'.
Syntax
Tai-Ahom mainly used an SVO word order, but an SOV word order has also been attested.
Nouns
Classifiers are used when forming plurals, counting entities and when specifically referring to one single entity. Some classifiers are: 'kun' (used for persons), 'tu' (used for animals) and 'an' (general). For example 'khai song tu' means two buffalo, where 'khai' means buffalo, 'song' means two and 'tu' is the classifier for animals.
Interrogatives
The following interrogatives are found:
Vocabulary
Numerals
Ahom has the following basic numerals:[
0 in Ahom script is "𑜰".
]
Comparative table
Below is a comparative table of Ahom and other Tai languages.
See also
*Ahom alphabet
The Ahom script or Tai Ahom Script, is an abugida that is used to write the Ahom language, a dormant Tai language undergoing revival spoken by the Ahom people till the late 18th-century, who established the Ahom kingdom and ruled the eastern pa ...
*Ahom people
The Ahom (Pron: ), or Tai-Ahom is an ethnic group from the Indian states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. The members of this group are admixed descendants of the Tai people who reached the Brahmaputra valley of Assam in 1228 and the local indi ...
* Ahom Kingdom
* All Tai Ahom Students Union
Notes
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
External links
tadcassam.org
Tai Ahom Development Council (TADC) Official website.
* PARADISEC
The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is a cross-institutional project that supports work on endangered languages and cultures of the Pacific and the region around Australia. They digitise reel-to ...
br>open access recording
of a speaker of Ahom reading the book Khon Mu'ng Lum Phai and then explaining the text.
Tai Ahom Online Dictionary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ahom Language
Extinct languages of Asia
Medieval languages
Tai languages
Languages of Assam
Language revival