In the meadows of gold: Telling tales of the swargadeos at the crossroads of Assam

by Sayeeda Yasmin Saikia

On the history of Assam, from the earliest time to the early nineteenth century.

Paperback

Published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Ronit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Translation of a court chronicle from Assam called Satsari Assam Buranji. The author has also contextualized the work by adding copious footnotes and two chapters at the end analyzing the text. She studies Assam as a crossroad at the periphery of various polities and culture; which comprise "Indic and South-East, along with Inner Asian; Brahmanist and Buddhistic belief systems”, where all these different traditions mix together. She particularly attempts to show how these various traditions helped bring about the identity of the Ahoms as a separate ruling community. While her analysis is rigorous and interesting, her translating ability does not match it. She skips sentences in her translation and even mistranslated paragraphs. They were not small mistakes. In one paragraph she made the Ahom army, which in the original actually lost the battle and retreated from an expedition against a recalcitrant tribe, the victorious party who lured the enemy into a cunning strategy where the Ahoms pretended to retreat. It would be more rewarding to use it as a tool to help translate the original while reading it.