The Ahom Army consisted of cavalry, infantry as well as naval units based on the

Paik system The Paiks or Paik people worked in various system on which the economy of the Ahom kingdom & Mallabhum kingdom of medieval Assam & Bengal depended. In Paik system, adult and able males, called ''paiks'' were obligated to render service to the s ...

militia of the Ahom kingdom (1228–1824). The kingdom did not have standing army units of professional soldiers till late 18th and early 19th centuries, when Purnandan Burhagohain raised one after noticing the effectiveness of Captain Thomas Welsh's sepoys in subjugating the

Moamoria rebellion The Moamoria rebellion (1769–1805) was an 18th-century uprising in Ahom kingdom of present-day Assam that began as power struggle between the Moamorias (''Mataks''), the adherents of the Mayamara Sattra, and the Ahom kings. This uprising ...

. The Ahom Army had various confrontations, the most significant ones were against the west, from Bengal Sultans and the

Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an Early modern period, early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to ...

; and against the south from the

Konbaung dynasty The Konbaung dynasty (), also known as the Third Burmese Empire (တတိယမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်), was the last dynasty that ruled Burma from 1752 to 1885. It created the second-largest empire in history of Mya ...

(Burma). Its won decisive victories against the forces led by Turbak (1532), the Mughal Empire in the

Battle of Saraighat The Battle of Saraighat was a naval battle fought in 1671 between the Mughal Empire (led by the Kachwaha raja, Ram Singh I), and the Ahom Kingdom (led by Lachit Borphukan) on the Brahmaputra river at Saraighat, now in Guwahati, Assam, ...

(1671), and the final Battle of Itakhuli"In the Battle of Itakhuli in September 1682, the Ahom forces chased the defeated Mughals nearly one hundred kilometers back to the Manas river. The Manas then became the Ahom-Mughal boundary until the British occupation." (1682) that expelled the Mughal forces from Assam. Its major failures were against the army of

Chilarai Sukladhwaja (popularly known as Bir Chilarai; 1510–1571 AD) was the 3rd son of Biswa Singha, founder of the Koch Dynasty in the Kamata Kingdom and younger brother of Nara Narayan, the second king of the Koch dynasty of the Kamata kingdom in t ...

(1553), the forces led by

Mir Jumla II Mir Jumla II (12 February 1591 – 30 March 1663), or Amir Jumla, also known as Ardistānī Mir Muhammad, was a military general, wealthy diamond trader, a ''Vizier'' of Golconda sultanate, and later a prominent subahdar of Bengal under the ...

(1662), and finally the

Burmese invasions of Assam There were three Burmese invasions of Assam between 1817 and 1826, during which time the Kingdom of Assam came under the control of Burma from 1821 to 1825. Locally, this period, called the ''manor din'' ( Assamese: "The days/period of the Burmes ...

(1817, 1819, 1821). Though the Ahom kingdom withstood all invasions from the west, it fell to the single significant challenge from the south and was destroyed.

Organization

The Ahom Army was based on compulsory participation from members of its

, a

corvée Corvée () is a form of unpaid forced labour that is intermittent in nature, lasting for limited periods of time, typically only a certain number of days' work each year. Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state (polity), state for the ...

labor system the Ahom kingdom followed. Paiks formed groups of 4 (and later 3) called ''gots'', and at least one paik from each ''got'' was in military or public services at any given time. Each paik received state land for agriculture, and during the time of his paik services, the other members of his ''got'' tended to his land. Male subjects between the ages of fifteen and fifty are compulsory members of the Paik system. Therefore the entire population formed a trained militia on which the Ahom Army was based; and even at times of wars agricultural and other economic activities continued.

Notes

References

* {{refend Ahom kingdom Military history of India