Assamese literature its roots in the Eastern dialect. The modern Assamese period began with the publication of the Bible in Assamese prose by the American Baptist missionaries in 1819. The currently prevalent standard Asamiya has its roots in the Sibsagar dialect of Eastern Assam. As mentioned in Bani Kanta Kakati's "Assamese, its Formation and Development" (1941, Published by Sree Khagendra Narayan Dutta Baruah, LBS Publications, G.N. Bordoloi Road, Gauhati-1, Assam, India) – " The Missionaries made Sibsagar in Eastern Assam the centre of their activities and used the dialect of Sibsagar for their literary purposes". The American Baptist Missionaries were the first
Assamese language literary language. In the past, it was the court language of the Ahom kingdom from the 17th century. Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Assamese evolved at least before 7th century CE from the middle Indo-Aryan Magadhi Prakrit, which developed from dialects similar to, but in some ways more archaic than Vedic Sanskrit. Its sister languages include Koch Rajbongsi, Mymensinghiya, Sylheti, Hajong, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Nokhailla, Chittagonian, Rohingya, Chakma, Bengali, Maithili and Angika. It is written in the Assamese script, an abugida system, from left to right, with a large number of typographic ligatures. Assamese originated in Old Indo-Aryan dialects, though