ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Kamarupa has been imagined in the dominant historiography of Assam, and it delineates the process of how it emerged in the early medieval period. Kamarupa, the ancient past of Assam, has complicated implications, due to the importance given to it by the group of nationalist historians of Assam from the early twentieth century. For them, the redefinition of the past constituted a fundamental part of the regional identity formation. By locating the function and purpose of Sanskrit records in the socio-political context of early medieval eastern India, this chapter reconsiders the controversial issue of Kamarupa history, especially its temporal, spatial and social aspects. It delineates the two different historical processes, that is, the imagination of the region in the modern historiography on the one hand and the formation of the region in the early medieval period on the other.
