Ninety Moidams at Charaideo, Where the Tai-Ahom Buried Their Kings for 600 Years, Became India's 43rd UNESCO World Heritage Site on 26 July 2024

On 26 July 2024 the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, meeting at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, inscribed “Moidams, the Mound-Burial System of the Ahom Dynasty” on the World Heritage List. It is India’s 43rd property. The Ministry of Culture’s release says it is the third from Assam, after Kaziranga National Park and Manas Wildlife Sanctuary (both inscribed in 1985), and the first cultural one.

The property is a cluster of 90 earthen burial mounds in the foothills of the Patkai Ranges in Charaideo district, eastern Assam, where the Tai-Ahom buried their kings for about 600 years. UNESCO’s statement of Outstanding Universal Value calls it “a physical space where Tai-Ahom royals became gods”.

What a moidam is

UNESCO’s text gives the meaning of “moidam” as “home-for-spirit”. Each one is an earth mound (a Ga-Moidam) built over a hollow vault of brick, stone or earth, called a Tak. A small shrine, the Chou Cha Li, stands on top at the centre of a low octagonal wall called a Garh. UNESCO says the shape stands for the Tai universe, and that the shrine is the Mungklang, a middle space pictured as a golden ladder between heaven and earth.

ICOMOS, the advisory body that evaluated the nomination for the Committee, describes a grave pit inside the vault for the embalmed body or the cremated remains of the king. UNESCO lists food, horses and elephants among the grave goods, and says the vaults sometimes hold queens and servants too. The vault was believed to be a temporary resting place. ICOMOS writes that after 21 days the spirit travelled to heaven and became a Phi, and the mound then became a focus for rituals honouring ancestors.

The mounds sit in a planned setting. Sacred trees were planted and water bodies were created, UNESCO says, with banyan trees and the trees used for coffins and bark manuscripts among them. Streams were channelled to fill the water bodies, and ditches were cut to sharpen the natural ups and downs of the ground, in ICOMOS’s description.

Why Charaideo

UNESCO’s text says the Tai-Ahom, led by Prince Siu-kha-pha, migrated into present-day Assam in the 13th century and chose Charaideo as their first capital and the place for the royal necropolis. Their origin, in the advisory body’s account, was Mong-Mao, an area on the border of today’s Myanmar and China.

Edward Gait’s 1906 History of Assam, which draws on the Ahom chronicles known as buranjis, spells the prince’s name Sukapha. Gait treats the chronicles as dependable history from 1228, the year Sukapha became king, and dates the building of the city at Charaideo to 1253. In ICOMOS’s account the tradition that kings, queens and nobles should be buried at Charaideo held through all six centuries of the dynasty.

Six hundred years, or seven hundred

UNESCO and ICOMOS both give 600 years, from the 13th to the 19th century. At the press briefing after the inscription the Union Minister of Culture and Tourism spoke of a “700-year-old” mound-burial system, according to the Press Information Bureau release. The sources also differ on where Ahom rule ends. Britannica says the Ahom ruled much of Assam from the 13th century until the establishment of British rule in 1838, with power peaking under King Rudra Singh (1696 to 1714). Gait records the Treaty of Yandabo of 24 February 1826, under which the king of Ava agreed to stay out of Assam’s affairs, and says Purandar Singh, put in charge of Upper Assam in 1832 on condition of paying tribute, was deposed and pensioned in October 1838. Britannica’s entry on the treaty says Myanmar renounced all its claims in Assam. ICOMOS says the royal burial ritual ceased with the arrival of British rule.

Charaideo had a place in the dynasty’s wars as well as its funerals. Gait records an Ahom king going there after a victory to offer oblations to the dead and sacrifices to the gods. The 1671 victory over a Mughal army at Saraighat, won during this period, is told in the article on Lachit Borphukan and the Battle of Saraighat.

From wood to brick, and from burial to cremation

The Ministry of Culture’s explainer says the mounds were first built with wood and later with stone and burnt bricks, and that the process is described in the Changrung Phukan, which it calls the Ahoms’ canonical literature. The property shows two types of Ga-Moidam and the change in materials over time, ICOMOS says. Two chronicles, the Chang-Rung Phukonar Buranji and the Ahom Buranji, record the funeral rituals and the materials and labour the mounds took.

Gait’s narrative of the 18th century shows the custom changing as Hindu practice spread at court. He reports that some said Rudra Singh was cremated on the Mani Karnesvar hill, but that the Ahom chronicles state his remains were buried like those of his forefathers. For Rajeswar Singh, Gait writes, the body was cremated on the bank of the Brahmaputra and the ashes were interred at Charaideo. The Deodhais, the Ahom tribal priests, later pointed to that cremation as a departure from ancestral custom. According to Gait they made a clay effigy of Rajeswar and buried it with the rites used for an Ahom king. Gait adds that Gaurinath Singh, on becoming king, ordered his father’s body cremated and the ashes entombed at Charaideo after Hindu rites. UNESCO’s own wording, “buried or cremated remains”, covers both practices.

What the survey counted

ICOMOS reports that the State Party documented 319 moidams across the Brahmaputra Valley. Not all are protected, and many are overgrown. Ninety lie inside the inscribed boundary, which ICOMOS describes as the densest and most complete cluster and the only place where the remains of Ahom kings and other royals were entombed. It links the more than 90 moidams there with 42 Tai-Ahom kings and other royals.

Five moidams (numbered C002, C038, C077, C078 and C090) have been excavated or conserved at some depth. The ASI and the Assam Directorate of Archaeology have recorded the site with methods that include drones, 3D scanners and LiDAR, and the rest of the mounds are monitored and maintained, according to ICOMOS. Excavation shows each vaulted chamber has a raised central platform where the body was laid, the Ministry of Culture’s explainer says. Treasure hunters damaged the site in the early 20th century, and the ASI and the state archaeology department have since restored it.

Who looks after it

The Ministry’s release credits the ASI and the Assam government for preserving the mounds. ICOMOS sets out the division. The Group of Four Maidams, 18.87 hectares under the ASI, is an Ancient Monument of National Importance. The other 76.13 hectares form the Charaideo Archaeological Site, an Ancient Monument of State Importance under the Assam Directorate of Archaeology. UNESCO lists three laws: the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (Amendment and Validation) Act of 2010, the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act of 1972, and the Assam Ancient Monuments and Records Act of 1959.

No development is allowed inside the property. ICOMOS adds a prohibited zone of 100 metres around it and a regulated zone of a further 200 metres. Three committees coordinate the work, according to UNESCO: a state-level apex committee, a local committee for maintenance and a ministerial committee for works and projects. A Site Management Plan covers 2023 to 2030. ICOMOS says the ASI and the state use traditional techniques and craftspeople trained in them to repair the brickwork and lime plaster, and that local people often volunteer for maintenance and cleaning. Around the site, ICOMOS found tea gardens, rice fields and homesteads, and about 4,017 residents in the buffer zone (2011 figures).

The path to the list

The site joined India’s Tentative List on 15 April 2014, ICOMOS notes, and its evaluation mission visited from 5 to 11 October 2023. India had proposed criteria (iii), (iv) and (v). ICOMOS recommended (iii) and (iv) and found (v) not demonstrated, and the Committee’s Decision 46 COM 8B.16 inscribed the property on (iii) and (iv). Criterion (iii) rests on 600 years of Tai-Ahom royal funerary architecture and customs. Criterion (iv) rests on the moidams as an outstanding example of a Tai-Ahom necropolis.

The session ran from 21 to 31 July 2024 and was the first the Committee held in India. The Ministry of Culture reported on 31 July that it had inscribed 24 new sites, among them the Moidams. Tim Curtis, director of UNESCO’s South Asia office, said the site holds immense value for the local communities who continue to hold ceremonies there. The ASI’s Director General said he hoped the inscription would encourage communities to keep preserving their heritage.

The two UNESCO pages give slightly different areas. The list entry gives 96.5 hectares for the property and 793.7 hectares for the buffer zone. ICOMOS evaluated 95.02 and 754.511 hectares.

Rituals still performed

The Tai-Ahom rituals of Me-Dam-Me-Phi (ancestor worship) and Tarpan (a libation of consecrated water) are practised at Charaideo, UNESCO says. Annual festivals draw large numbers of participants, and local communities regard the moidams as sacred burial sites and actively protect them, according to ICOMOS. Citing the State Party’s information, it adds that visitor numbers were moderate, that most visitors were Assamese or of Tai-Ahom descent, and that international visitors were negligible.

What the Committee asked for next

In its decision the Committee recommended that India consider six steps: removing the boundary wall between the ASI’s and the state’s areas, carrying out the research plan with academic partners, finishing state protection for Ahom sites in the buffer zone, developing a sustainable tourism strategy and interpretation plan, building formal community participation into management, and managing the property, its buffer zone and the wider setting as one area. ICOMOS had found the site’s interpretation under-developed when it visited, with a small site museum closed for renovation and a visitor centre not yet fitted out inside. Heavy rain, soil erosion and vegetation growth were the main pressures it named, and Assam has heavy rain for at least four months a year. The Site Management Plan has a larger review due in 2029.