Assam
Assam is a north eastern state of India with its capital at Dispur, a part of Guwahati. Located south of the eastern Himalayas, Assam comprises the Brahmaputra and the Barak river valleys and the Karbi Anglong and the North Cachar Hills. With an area of 78,438sqkm Assam currently is almost equivalent to the size of Ireland or Austria. Assam is surrounded by the rest of the Seven Sister States: Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya. These states are connected to the rest of India via a narrow strip in West Bengal called the "Chicken's Neck." Assam also shares international borders with Bhutan and Bangladesh; and cultures, peoples and climate with South-East Asia—important elements in India's Look East Policy.
History
Assam and adjoining regions have evidence of human settlement from all periods of the Stone ages. That the known hills settlements belonged to earlier periods may suggest that the valleys were populated later, or it may reflect sampling bias due to mountainous areas being more likely to remain less disturbed over long stretches of time. Ancient Assam was known as Kamarupa and was ruled by many powerful dynasties. The Varman dynasty and the Xalostombho dynasty led Kamrupa as a strong ancient kingdom. During the rule of the greatest of the Varman kings, Bhaskarvarman, a contemporary of Harshavardhana of Kanauj, the Chinese traveler Xuan Zang visited the region and recorded his travels. Other dynasties that ruled the region belonged to the Indo-Tibetan groups, such as the Kacharis and Chutias.
Tradition and culture
Assamese culture is traditionally a hybrid one, developed due to cultural assimilation of different ethno-cultural groups under various politico-economic systems in different periods of pre-history and history. The roots of the culture go back to almost two thousand years when the first cultural assimilation took place with Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman as the major components. Such an assimilated culture therefore carries many elements of source cultures, of which exact roots are difficult to trace and are matter of research. However, in each of the elements of Assamese culture, i.e. language, traditional crafts, performing arts, festivity and beliefs either local elements or the local elements in a Hinduised / Sanskritised forms are always present.
Festivals
There are several important traditional festivals in Assam. Bihu is the most important and common and celebrated all over Assam. Many of these are celebrated by different ethno-cultural groups (sub and sister cultures). Few of these are:, Me-dam-me-phi, Ali-aye-ligang, Kherai, Garja, Hapsa Hatarnai, Awnkham Gwrlwi Janai, Chojun/Swarak, Rongker, Sokk-erroi, Hacha-kekan, Porag
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