Place · Ahom royal palace · India
Kareng Ghar, Sivasagar
Also known as Ahom capital, Garhgaon, Kareng Ghar, Kareng Ghar — Garhgaon, Sivasagar
The 1696 Kareng Ghar at Garhgaon in Sivasagar district, Assam — the main Ahom royal palace at the capital Garhgaon (established 1540 by Chaolung Ahom king Suklenmung). The seven-storey palace was built by king Gadadhar Singha and expanded by his successors through the 1750s. Kareng Ghar is the oldest surviving Ahom palace and the architectural model for the subsequent Rang Ghar amphitheatre (1744) and Talatal Ghar palace (1769). The three-storey main palace has 2.3-metre-thick walls built from brick bonded with duck-egg mortar and rice-lime cement — a distinctive Ahom construction technique. The palace was partly destroyed in the 1817 Burmese invasion; the surviving three storeys have been preserved. ASI protection since 1951. UNESCO tentative list since 2014 as part of the Ahom monuments serial nomination.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Patron dynasty
- Ahom
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 26.972, 94.750
Connections (2)
- Same capitalTalatal Ghar
The Ahom royal seat moved from the Kareng Ghar at Garhgaon to the Talatal Ghar at Rangpur at the end of the seventeenth century, and both palaces survive within about fifteen kilometres of each other. The capital moved several times over six centuries — Charaideo, Garhgaon, Rangpur, Jorhat — which is normal for the Ahom state and part of why its monuments are scattered across upper Assam rather than concentrated.
- Site withinSivasagar
The Kareng Ghar main Ahom palace sits within Sivasagar in upper Assam, together with the Rang Ghar amphitheatre, the Talatal Ghar subterranean palace and the Shiva Dol temple. The 1696 royal complex established by Rudra Singha became the Ahom political centre from 1699 and remained in use until the 1826 British annexation. The four Ahom structures together form the UNESCO-tentative Sivasagar royal complex.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Kareng Ghar”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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