Place · Kamarupa capital · India
Prāgjyotiṣapura / Guwahati
Also known as Pragjyotishpura, Kamarupa, Guwahati, Bhaskaravarman
The capital of Kamarupa on the Brahmaputra, where Bhāskaravarman ruled in the seventh century as Harṣa's ally and where Xuanzang was summoned in 643 — the furthest east any of the Chinese pilgrims reached in India, and the only eyewitness account of the kingdom.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 26.145, 91.736
Worth knowing
Xuanzang records that the king was not a Buddhist but treated the monks well, that the country was wet, forested and full of elephants, and that people there had heard of China. Bhāskaravarman's copper-plate grants and Harṣa's alliance with him are most of what is known about early Assam as a state.
Connections (2)
- Court associationHarshavardhana
Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa was Harsha's ally against the Gauda king Shashanka, and the two courts competed for Xuanzang: Bhaskaravarman summoned him east and Harsha then summoned him back west for the Kanauj assembly. A Chinese monk being passed between two Indian kings as a prestige possession is the clearest measure of what the journey had become by 643.
- Site withinUmānanda & Navagraha, Guwahati
The Umananda island Shiva temple on the Brahmaputra and the Navagraha planetary temple on Chitrachal hill both sit within Guwahati (ancient Pragjyotishpura). Umananda occupies the Peacock Island — the smallest inhabited riverine island in the world at 0.57 hectares — and Navagraha served as the Ahom court astronomical observatory from the 18-century, both completing the Guwahati ritual landscape around the central Kamakhya pitha.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Kamarupa”. Xuanzang, Da Tang Xiyu Ji, book X, trans. Samuel Beal; the Nidhanpur copper plates of Bhāskaravarman.
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