The Kamata Kingdom was a medieval polity centred on Kamatapur, identified with present-day Gosanimari in the Cooch Behar district of West Bengal. Its origins and early political history are uncertain. Later genealogical and hagiographical traditions connect the rulers of Kamata with earlier rulers of Kamarupa, and some twentieth-century historians consequently proposed that Sandhya transferred his capital from Kamarupanagara to Kamatapur after the defeat of Malik Ikhtiyaruddin Iuzbak in 1257."Kamarupa was reorganized as a new state. 'Kamata' by name with Kamatapur as capital. The exact time when the change was made is uncertain. But possibly it had been made by Sandhya (c1250-1270) as a safeguard against mounting dangers from the east and the west. Its control on the eastern regions beyond the Manah (Manas river) was lax." This reconstruction is not confirmed by contemporary epigraphic or numismatic evidence. The name Kamata or Kamatapura is associated with the court of Durlabha Narayan in early Assamese literary works, although the chronology and territorial extent of this ruler remain disputed. Maheswar Neog observed that the political history of the period has to be reconstructed principally from literary evidence and that the extent and nature of the rule of the kingdom called Kamata or Kamata-mandala remain conjectural. A Chutia copperplate issued in 1428 describes Ratnanarayana as a king of Kamatapura; Maheswar Neog identifies him with Satyanarayana of the Sadhayapura grants and interpreted the records as indicating a dynastic connection between Sadhaya and Kamatapura.
Modern historians have sometimes used the expression Kamarupa–Kamata for the political transition between the earlier Kamarupa formations and the later polity centred at Kamatapur. The territory controlled from Kamatapur varied over time. Later historical reconstructions associate the polity at its greatest extent with parts of present-day North Bengal, western and central Assam and northern Bangladesh, but the boundaries and intensity of control during its poorly documented early phases remain uncertain. The last rulers were the Khens, who were later displaced in 1498 by Alauddin Hussain Shah, the ruler of the Bengal Sultanate. Though Hussain Shah developed extensive administrative structures, he lost political control to a confederation of Baro-Bhuyan within a few years.
In 1515, Biswa Singha removed the Baro-Bhuyan confederacy and established the Koch dynasty."The kingdom again passed on to the rule of the Bhuyans till the rise of the Koches in about 1515 AD." The Koches were the last to call themselves Kamateshwar (the rulers of Kamata), but due to the far-reaching extensive influence and expansions, the kingdom is sometimes called the Koch Kingdom. In the following century, the kingdom split into Koch Bihar and Koch Hajo. The eastern kingdom, Koch Hajo, was absorbed into the Ahom kingdom in the 17th century. The western portion of the Kamata kingdom, Koch Bihar, continued to be ruled by a branch of the Koch dynasty and later merged with the Indian territory after the independence of India from the British domain. The boundary between Koch Bihar and Koch Hajo is approximately the boundary between West Bengal and Assam today.
Rulers of Kamata Kingdom
The political history of the Kamata kingdom region before the rise of the Koch dynasty remains uncertain and is largely reconstructed from traditions and scattered sources. Historians have relied on limited epigraphic evidence alongside later literary works, genealogical traditions, and retrospective chronicles, resulting in reconstructions that remain tentative."The political history of Kāmarūpa of the times immediately preceding the age of Śaṅkaradeva remains a virgin field of research...For a reconstruction of the history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we have to depend upon the scanty evidences afforded by some copperplate and stone inscriptions, the political works of several pre-Śaṅkaradeva poets and of Śaṅkaradeva himself, the guru-caritas, the rāja-vaṁśāvalīs of the Koch kings of Kāmarūpa; and have also to refer in some instances to Muhammedan chronicles"
K. L. Barua, whose 1933 work provided one of the early attempts to reconstruct this chronology, explicitly acknowledged these limitations. In the preface to Early History of Kamarupa, he described the history of Kamata as obscure, noted that no epigraphic records of its kings were then known to him, and stated that in preparing a chronological list he had been "left, more or less, to conjecture", adding that some of his conjectures might be unfounded."In [an] attempt to prepare a chronological list of these kings ... I have been left, more or less, to conjecture. Some of my conjectures may be unfounded."
Traditional genealogy and proposed origin
The origin of Kamata and the identity of its earliest rulers remain uncertain. A later genealogical tradition, preserved in accounts connected with the ancestors of Sankardev, traces Durlabha Narayan through Pratapadhvaja, Singhadhvaja, Rup Narayana, and Sindhu Rai to a ruler named Sandhya. In the version discussed by K. L. Barua, Sandhya is described as having become Gaudesvara; the tradition does not clearly identify the territory over which Sandhya and his immediate successors ruled.
On the basis of this genealogy, the association of Durlabhanarayana with Kamata in early Assamese literature, and a chronology calculated backwards from the conventional 1449 birth date of Sankardev, Barua proposed that Sandhya transferred the seat of government from Kamarupanagara to Kamatapur after the defeat of Malik Ikhtiyaruddin Iuzbak. Barua presented the proposal tentatively, describing the Guru Charitra account as “rather confused” and stating that the resulting chronology could only be tentatively suggested. Barua also acknowledged the obscurity of Kamata's political history and envisaged its rulers as exercising a loose suzerainty over numerous Bhuyan chiefs, who may have administered much of the country in practice. The traditional succession is not independently corroborated by contemporary inscriptions, coins or chronicles for Sandhya and most of the intermediate rulers. Baniprasanna Misra has questioned the historical use of the progressively elaborated biographical traditions concerning Sankardev, noting that the earliest biographies did not provide the fixed birth chronology later accepted by historians and that supernatural, genealogical and chronological details accumulated in later works. Consequently, the identification of Sandhya as the founder of Kamata and the conventional foundation date of about 1257 represent modern historical reconstructions rather than conclusions directly established by contemporary evidence. The later traditional genealogy names Sandhya, Sindhu Rai, Rup Narayana and Singhadhvaja among the predecessors of Durlabhanarayana. Their identification as successive rulers of a kingdom called Kamata has not been independently established.
In the 14th century, Sultan Shams al-din Ilyas Shah conquered Kamata-Kamrup at the very end of his reign, and his son Sikandar Shah made an expedition in the very first year of his reign, i.e. 759 AH/1360 AD, and struck silver coins from Chawlistan Urf Arsah Kamru, which has been identified by scholars like Abdul Karim as the Kamrup mint. Since a coin of no other date of his has so far been reported bearing Kamrup mint, it is difficult to surmise whether he could keep Kamrup under his control for a considerable time or not. Some historians have associated this campaign with the Yavana or Bangal invasion recorded in the Gachtal stone inscription from Dabaka in the Kapili valley, dated to the year 1362 AD. The inscription indicates that the invading forces had penetrated eastwards as far as the Davaka region and records that nearly three thousand enemy troops were trapped and driven downstream through the coordinated use of riverine warfare and seasonal floods. On this basis, it has been suggested that the Kamata king, together with the Kachari ruler Mahamanikya, resisted Sikandar Shah's advance into the Kapili valley around 1362 AD. The inscription found at Boko, Kamrup of Sultan Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah (1389-1410) indicates that the region was occupied by the Sultanate for at least a few years during his reign.
Durlabhanarayana and Indranarayana
Early Assamese works associated with the court of Durlabhanarayana provide the clearest literary evidence for a monarchy identified with Kamata or Kamatapur. In the Vavruvahanar Yuddha, Harivara Vipra praises Durlabhanarayana as a ruler of Kamata and states that he became king at Kamapura, interpreted by Maheswar Neog as a probable reference to Kamatapura. Hema Saraswati similarly associates Durlabhanarayana with Kamatapura. Kaviratna Saraswati identifies Indranarayana as the son of Durlabhanarayana and praises him as the succeeding ruler. Neog nevertheless cautioned that the political history of the period lacks reliable chronicles and comparable copperplate evidence, and that the extent of the kingdom called “Kamata or Kamata-mandala” remains conjectural. He further stated that nothing definite is known about the nature of the rule or other political activities of these Kamata kings.
Traditions concerning Chandivara
Later biographies of Sankardev state that two rulers named Dharmanarayana and Durlabhanarayana divided their territories and that Durlabhanarayana received or settled several Brahmin and Kayastha families, including Chandivara, an ancestor of Sankardev. The surviving versions differ regarding the identities of the rulers, their titles, the direction in which the families were transferred, and the territories assigned to them. K. L. Barua noted that the version in the Guru Charitra by Ramcharan Thakur reverses the more commonly repeated account of the transfer. S. C. Rajkhowa rejected K. L. Barua's reconstruction that Dharmapala and Durlabha Narayana had fought and subsequently partitioned the kingdom between them, arguing that this interpretation depended on a misreading of Ramcharan Thakur's account and lacked corroborating evidence. Rajkhowa considered only the possibility that Dharmapala may have been a ruler of eastern Kamarupa contemporary with Durlabha Narayana, rather than accepting him as a securely established participant in such a partition. Earlier historians dated this migration by calculating backwards from the conventional 1449 birth date of Sankardev. Barua explicitly followed this method in placing Durlabhanarayana in the fourteenth century. Baniprasanna Misra subsequently questioned the reliability of the conventional birth chronology and the expanding body of later biographical traditions on which such calculations depend, and places Shankardeva's birth year in the 1480s.
Chutia connections
A copperplate issued in 1428 by the Sadiya-based Chutia ruler Durlabhanarayana names him as the son of Dharmanarayana and grandson of Ratnanarayana. Ratnanarayana is described in the record as king of Kamatapura after defeating the enemies of Kamadeva."Ratnanãrãyana is called the king of Kamatãpura, and his grandson Durlabhanãrãyana is described as giving lands under the administration of the Governor of Häbunga province." The grant contains a verse concerning Ratnanarayana, deciphered by Maheswar Neog with the assistance of Sanskrit scholars:
An Assamese translation published in Chutia Jatir Buranji renders the verse as stating that Ratnanarayana became a king in Kamatapura, was honoured by other rulers, and was victorious over one lakh enemies of Kandarpa (Kamadeva).