Place · Kamarupa capital · India
Pragjyotishapura / Guwahati
Also known as Prāgjyotiṣapura / Guwahati, 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 withinUmananda & 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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