1851.] Brief notice of a stone bridge in Zillah Kamrup. 293 



from which I imagine the entrance of each may have been ornament- 

 ed, or there may have been gateways. 



The design and style of architecture of this bridge, evidently belongs 

 to a remote period in the annals of Kamrup, and in its original struc- 

 ture at least must be co-eval with the erection of the ancient Brahmi- 

 nical temples, the remains of which are found so widely scattered 

 throughout the length and breadth of Assam ; the works of its former 

 Brahminical kings, a race long ago extinct in the annals of modern 

 Hinduism, and of whom the present race in Assam know nothing. 



That Kamrup had for a long period a dynasty of Brahminical 

 kings there can be little doubt, on the authority of both Buchanan and 

 the Chinese pilgrim Hwan Tshang who visited India in A. D. 629, 

 642. The former quoting the Yogini Tantra, a work which treats of 

 ancient Assam, states under date that the worship of the Lingas com- 

 menced in the 19th year of £aka, that at an indefinite period after- 

 wards it was further extended by a Brahman of the Korotoya river 

 who became king, by name Nogo Songkar and whose dynasty con- 

 tinued probably until the time of Hwan Tshang's visit as he mentions 

 the name of the then reigning king a Brahman (Vide Captain Cunning- 

 ham's Itinerary of the Chinese Pilgrim Hwan Tshang in the J. A. S. B. 

 for July, 1848, page 40), and that Buddism according to the doc- 

 trines of Sakya or Guadama had not extended into Kamrup, the people 

 of which were heretics, and possessed the doctrines of the Sutarus of the 

 Vedas, by which it is presumed he means Brahmanism or more likely 

 the worship of Iswara as the Supreme Lord, which in these remote 

 times was adhered to by Brahmans, and who had not adopted the doc- 

 trines of Gaudama. This Brahminical dynasty may have continued for 

 a century longer, when the country was overrun, and became disorga- 

 nised by the invasion of Lallitaditya king of Cashmere, and the ancient 

 religion perhaps never got re-established, and about the year 840 

 according to the tradition of the Cassoris (the Racchas of the valley) 

 that tribe assumed the government of the country, and held it until 

 the 10th or 11th century, when they were drawn out by an invasion of 

 a power from India, bringing in its footsteps that modern Brahmanism, 

 which had a century before driven from India the doctrines of >Sakya 

 Muni. 



The accounts by Mohammedan writers of the earliest conquests of 



2 q 2 



