Westward shift
As the old Kāmarūpa kingdom broke up after 1100, authority in the valley moved west to a new state centred on Kāmatāpur, near modern Cooch Behar. Its rulers took the title Kāmateśvara, and the extensive earthwork ramparts of the capital survive.
The kingdom faced the Bengal Sultanate to its west throughout, and the frontier moved back and forth. Ghiyasuddin Iwaj Khalji and later sultans campaigned into the region; Kāmatā's Khen dynasty rulers held it off for a century.
Destruction
Alauddin Hussain Shah of Bengal took Kāmatāpur in 1498 and installed his son as governor. Ahom and local resistance drove the Bengal forces out within a few years, but the kingdom was not restored: its territory passed to the rising Koch dynasty under Biswa Singha in the early sixteenth century.
The Koch kings styled themselves Kāmateśvara in turn, so the name persisted as a claim long after the state had gone.
Further reading
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Dimock, Edward C. The Place of the Hidden Moon. University of Chicago Press, 1966
- Eaton, Richard M. The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier. University of California Press, 1993
- Jackson, Peter. The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. Cambridge University Press, 1999
- Richards, John F. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge University Press, 1993
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.