Assamese people Assam" by Europeans till 1821, when the Ahom kingdom became part of the Burmese Empire. After Assam became part of British India, the newly constituted province came to be known by its new anglicised name Assam after its largest constituent, and the name "Assamese / Asamiya" came to be associated with the Assamese language which was erstwhile known as Kamrupi. According to Yasmin Saikia, "the group that now identifies as Tai–Ahom were historically seen as the Assamese people. However, the term ethnic Assamese is now associated by the Indian government at Delhi with the Assamese speaking Indo–Aryan, Tibeto-Burman and Austric
Assamese alphabet said to develop proto-Assamese shapes by the 13th century. In the 18th and 19th century, the Assamese script could be divided into three varieties: "Kaitheli" (also called "Lakhari" in Kamrup region, used by non-Brahmins), "Bamuniya" (used by Brahmins, for Sanskrit) and "Garhgaya" (used by state officials of the Ahom kingdom)—among which the "Kaitheli" style was the most popular, with medieval books (like the "Hastir-vidyrnava") and sattras using this style. In the early part of the 19th century, Atmaram Sarmah designed the first Assamese script for printing in Serampore, and the Bengali and Assamese lithography converged to the present standard that