Charaideo Moidams: India’s newest candidate to UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites

On Saturday, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma revealed that the main federal government has actually chosen to present the name of Assam’s Charaideo moidams for addition to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites list. He tweeted, “If chosen, 90 royal burials at Charaideo will be the only cultural heritage website in the North East to get the desired status. Assam making it to the election amongst 52 websites in India truly shows our Adarniya PM’s love & regard for the abundant cultural heritage of Assam & NE.” The Charaideo moidams are royal burial websites of the Ahom dynasty which ruled over much of Assam and the North East from 1228 to 1826 ADVERTISEMENT. Found around 30 km from Sivasagar town in eastern Assam, even today, the tumuli in Charaideo are thought about sacrosanct by numerous residents. What are moidams? A moidam is a tumulus– mound of earth raised over a tomb– of Ahom royalty and upper class. While Charaideo solely includes moidams of Ahom royals, other moidams of aristocrats and chiefs can be discovered spread throughout Eastern Assam, in the area in between the towns of Jorhat and Dibrugarh. A common moidam at Charaideo consists of several chambers in a vault. On top of these is a hemispherical earthen mound, increasing high in the air, covered in lawn. Mound, there is a structure, understood as the chow chali. A low octagonal wall surrounds the mound with one entryway. Ahom kings and queens were buried inside these moidams. Unlike Hindus who cremate their dead, the primary funerary technique of the Ahoms, stemming from the Tai individuals, was burial. The height of a moidam is generally a sign of the power and stature of the individual buried within. Other than for those of Gadhadhar Singha and Rudra Singha, a lot of moidams stay unknown. Inside the chambers of the moidam, the dead king would be buried together with products he required for “afterlife” along with servants, horses, animals and even their partners. It is the resemblance of the Ahom burial rites with that of the ancient Egyptians that provide Charaideo moidams the name of “Pyramids of Assam.” Why was Charaideo essential? The word Charaideo has actually been stemmed from 3 Tai Ahom words, Che-Rai-D
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