Patkai

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

patkai, 1908

This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS.

Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.

A range of hills lying to the south of Lakhimpur District, Assam, between 26 30' and 27 15' N. and 95 15' and 96 15' E. The general height of the range is about 4,000 feet, but it contains .summits nearly 7,000 feet in height. The hills are composed of Upper Tertiary rocks, and their sides are clothed with dense forest. The pass over the patkai is the recognized route between Burma and the Assam Valley, though, as it entails a long mareh through wild and hilly country, there is little intercourse between the two Provinces. It was by this route that the Ahoms entered the valley of the Brahmaputra in the thirteenth century ; and it was used by the Burmese when they were summoned to Assam at the beginning of the nineteenth century to assist Chandra Kanta, one of the last of the Ahom Rajas. In 1837 Dr. Griffiths crossed the Patkai into the Hukawng valley, and in 1896 a railway survey party traversed the range. The construction of a line from Ledo in Lakhimpur District over the Patkai and down the Hukawng valley to Taungni station in the Mu valley was estimated to cost 383 lakhs for a total length of 284 miles. The line, if made, would be carried through the summit of the Patkai in a tunnel 5,000 feet in length and situated 2,750 feet above the level of the sea. The rocks in that neighbourhood consist of an indurated rawdstone. The hills are inhabited by Naga tribes. Those who live on the Hukawng side of the watershed are subject to Singpho chiefs. They are armed with daos, muskets, and -cross-bows, and their villages are usually well situated for defence. An account of these people is annexed to the teport of the railway survey party.