Ahom people

The Ahom (Pron: /ˈɑːhɒm/) or Tai-Ahom is an ethnic group from the Indian states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. The members of this group are admixed descendants of the Tai people who reached the Brahmaputra valley of Assam in 1228 and the local indigenous people who joined them over the course of history. Sukaphaa, the leader of the Tai group and his 9,000 followers established the Ahom kingdom (1228–1826 CE), which controlled much of the Brahmaputra Valley in modern Assam until 1826.

The modern Ahom people and their culture are a syncretism of the original Tai and their culture and local Tibeto-Burman people and their cultures they absorbed in Assam. The local people of different ethnic groups of Assam that took to the Tai way of life and polity were incorporated into their fold which came to be known as Ahom as in the process known as Ahomisation.

Many local ethnic groups that came in contact with the Tai settlers, including the Borahis who were of Tibeto-Burman origin, were completely subsumed into the Ahom community; while members of other communities, based on their allegiance to the Ahom kingdom or the usefulness of their talents, too were accepted as Ahoms. Currently, they represent the largest Tai group in India, with a population of nearly 4.6 million in Assam. Ahom people are found mostly in Upper Assam in the districts of Golaghat, Jorhat, Sibsagar, Charaideo, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia (south of Brahmaputra river); and in Lakhimpur, Sonitpur, Bishwanath,and Dhemaji (north) as well as some area of Nagaon, Guwahati.

Even though the already admixed group Ahom made up a relatively small portion of the kingdom's population, they maintained their original Ahom language and practised their traditional religion till the 17th century, when the Ahom court as well as the commoners adopted the Assamese language.