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 language from the Kamarupi script. It very closely resembles the Mithilakshar script of the Maithili language, as well as the Bengali script. There is a strong literary tradition from early times. Examples can be seen in edicts, land grants and copper plates of medieval kings. Assam had its own system of writing on the bark of the "saanchi" tree in which religious texts and chronicles were written. The present-day spellings in Assamese are not necessarily phonetic. "Hemkosh" ( ), the second Assamese dictionary, introduced spellings based on Sanskrit, which are now the standard. The Assamese language has the following characteristic morphological