your bridge home
True Valor
He arrived as a migrant with no claim to the country he entered, and mostly did not conquer it.
In 1228 a prince came over the Patkai hills with a few thousand followers and founded a state that lasted 598 years.
That is longer than the Mughal empire, longer than the Delhi Sultanate, longer than the British in India by a factor of three. It is one of the longest continuous dynasties anywhere in the world.
And it was founded by a man who arrived as a migrant, with no claim to the country he entered.
Chaolung Sukaphaa was a Tai prince from Mong Mao, in what is now the border country between Myanmar and Yunnan. He left it around 1215 with a body of followers. The accounts include his own people, elephants, horses, and the priests who carried the ritual knowledge.
He spent thirteen years moving. Then he crossed the Patkai range into the Brahmaputra valley in 1228.
He was not conquering an empty country. The valley held Morans, Borahis, Chutias, Kacharis and others, in settled communities with their own rulers.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.