Assam’s Charaideo Maidam to Bag UNESCO World Heritage Site Tag Next Week

Assam’s 700-year-old mound-burial system of the Ahom dynasty, the Maidam, is expected to get the UNESCO World Heritage Site tag next week.

The nomination will be filed at the 46th session of the World Heritage Committee (WHC) that will start in New Delhi on Sunday.

This is the first nomination from the northeastern state in the cultural category, the state already boasts of two world heritage sites in the natural category – Kaziranga National Park and Manas National Park.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the 46th session of WHC on July 21. The event is being held in India for the first time.

The event, to be held at Bharat Mandapam from July 21 to 31, brings together culture ministers, representatives and stakeholders from around the world to discuss the preservation of shared cultural, natural and mixed heritage.

The nomination dossier for the Moidams was sent more than a decade ago and is presently on the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is the first step towards the monument becoming a part of the final list.

It is among 28 sites proposed for inscription on the List, to be examined according to category: natural, mixed and cultural.

The committee will also discuss the state of conservation of the 124 sites already inscribed on the World Heritage List, 57 of which are also on the list of World Heritage in Danger.

Currently, the World Heritage Committee has inscribed 1,199 sites in 168 countries on the list. India has 44 of its sites on the list.

What is the Charaideo Maidam?

The Maidam of Choraideo, located at the foothills of the Patkai range, demonstrate the Tai-Ahom culture’s reverence for their kings and their funerary practices. Charaideo is situated 28 km east of Sivasagar.

The first king of the Ahoms Chau-lung Siu-ka-pha was buried at Charaideo after his death observing all the Tai-Ahom religious rites and rituals. Since then, it turned into a norm to bury the Tai-Ahom Kings, Queens and Princes and Princesses at Charaideo. During their six hundred years of rule, this place became a venerated and sacred place.

The exterior of the Maidam is hemispherical in shape and their sizes vary from a modest mound to a hillock of twenty meters or so in height, depending upon the power, status and recourses of the person buried.

A Maidam consist of three major features, a vault of Chamber, a hemispherical earthen mound covering the chamber with a brick structure (Chaw-chali) for annual offering over it and an octagonal boundary wall around the base of the mound having an arched gateway on its west. However, the smaller Maidam did not have all the above features.