The Tai polity
Möng Mao was a Tai state on what is now the China–Burma frontier, powerful in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and known in Burmese and Assamese sources as Pong. It sat at the junction of the Chinese, Burmese and Indian spheres and its history is recorded in all three traditions, not always compatibly.
Its importance to India is that Sukaphaa, who crossed the Patkai range into the Brahmaputra valley in 1228 and founded the Ahom kingdom, came from this Tai world — traditionally as a prince of Möng Mao's line. The Ahom state that resulted ruled Assam for six hundred years, kept its chronicles in the Tai Ahom language and script for much of that time, and gave the region its name.
Möng Mao was broken up by Ming Chinese campaigns in the fifteenth century and absorbed into the Shan state system. It is included in a census of Indian kingdoms only because of what came out of it, which is a good deal.
Further reading
- Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Behrendt, Kurt A. The Art of Gandhara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007
- Bodhi, Bhikkhu. In the Buddha's Words. Wisdom Publications, 2005
- Bronkhorst, Johannes. Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India. Brill, 2007
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.