© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden,  | doi:./- Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient  () – brill.com/jesh From Bhauma to Vārāha: The Shifting Lineage Identity of the Kāmarūpa Rulers in Northeast India, 7th–12th Century Jae-Eun Shin Research Collaborator, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo saktishin34@hotmail.com Abstract To show how a frontier power of pre-modern South Asia defined its history and identity in different ways in changing political contexts, this article presents an analysis of the unusual asura lineage of three lesser-known dynasties between the seventh and twelfth centuries in succession: the Varmans, the Mlecchas and the Pālas, who sequentially all ruled Kāmarūpa, a historical region located in the present state of Assam. Examination of three distinct phases of genealogical claims enables us to understand the ways in which the peripheral rulers negotiated with dominant supra- regional discourses, challenged political tradition of their predecessors, and carved out their own space in a new world of regional sovereignty. Keywords early medieval India – Northeast India – Kāmarūpa – inscriptional genealogy – lineage identity – Naraka Asura Introduction India’s northeast is one of the least understood regions in the subcontinent because of its marginality in terms of both geography and politics. In the ancient period, it formed the eastern extremity of the Gupta empire and then subsequently emerged as an early medieval kingdom on the periphery of both the Puṣpabhūti and Pāla imperial formations. After that, the region was sub- sumed into the larger space first of the Mughal and then of the British empires, Downloaded from Brill.com06/03/2022 07:31:40AM via University of Tokyo