Buranji

Buranji
A folio from a Buranji manuscript
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Buranjis (Ahom language: ancient writings)[1] are a class of historical chronicles and manuscripts associated with the Ahom kingdom.[2] There were written initially in the Ahom Language[3] and later in the Assamese language as well.[4] The Buranjis are an example of historical literature which is rare in India[5]—they bear resemblance to Southeast Asian traditions of historical literature instead.[6] The Buranjis are generally found in manuscript form (locally called puthi), a number of these manuscripts have been compiled and published especially in the Assamese language.[7]

They are some of the primary sources of historical information of Assam's medieval past, especially from the 13th century to the colonial times in 1828;[8] and they have emerged as the core sources for historiography of the region for the pre-colonial period.[9] The details in the Buranjis regarding the Ahom-Mughal conflicts agree with those in the Mughal chronicles such as Baharistan, Padshahnama, Alamgirnamah and Fathiyyah; and they also provide additional details not found in these Mughal chronicles.[10]

  1. ^ Hartmann 2011, p. 227: "The Tai-Ahom term buran is cognate with the Standard Thai word boran (ancient). Buranji, then, are ancient writings."
  2. ^ "With the coming of the Ahoms, begins a procedure of keeping records of all events of the time, in a class of documents called Buranjis which are so numerous and voluminous that they overshadow the other primary sources like archaeology and numismatics." (Baruah 1986:43)
  3. ^ (Barua 1953:132)
  4. ^ Goswami & Tamuli 2007, p. 436.
  5. ^ "The oft-repeated complaint of the absence of any historical literature in India has to be qualified not only by Kalhana's Rajatarangini in Kashmir but also by Assamese historical literature." (Sarkar 1992:1)
  6. ^ "The established fact is that the buranji tradition bore a marked similarity with the Southeast Asian tradition of historical chronicles." (Saikia 2008:477)
  7. ^ "A number of Buranjis written in Assamese have been published by the Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies, Assam." (Baruah 1986:45)
  8. ^ "(T)he primary sources of information of medieval Assam from the thirteenth century onward may broadly be classified under the heads: Ahom and Assamese Buranjis, contemporary chronicles, memoirs and farmans in Persian, letters in Assamese in Persian, archaeological, epigraphic and numismatic sources, accounts of foreign travellers and East-India Company's reports and records." (Sarkar 1992:1)
  9. ^ "However, the question of traditions of history writing in eastern India is complicated by the presence of a distinctly north-eastern genre called the buranji...Yet it is present not only in Assam, where it has become a central source for the writing of the history of pre-colonial Assam." (Chatterjee 2008:6–7)
  10. ^ (Sarkar 1992:4)