Guwahati's name means rows of areca-nut trees
Assam's largest city and the gateway to India's Northeast spreads along the Brahmaputra's south bank with Dispur, the state capital, inside its circuit. Ancient Pragjyotishpura and Durjaya once ruled Kamarupa from here, and temple hills still earn the nickname City of Temples.
Assamese guwa (areca) plus hati (rows) explain the toponym. Myth makes asura king Naraka founder of Pragjyotisha; his son Bhagadatta of Mahabharata fame supposedly dug Dighalipukhuri for a wedding. Kamakhya on Nilachal Hill anchors Shakti and Vajrayana practice; Navagraha watches from Chitrachal. Ambari digs place urban life between the second century BCE and first century CE in the Shunga-Kushana era. Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang described Bhaskaravarman's seventh-century city stretching about thirty li—some fifteen kilometres—and brick finds at Cotton College hint at importance into the ninth–eleventh centuries.
Mughals occupied the area in pulses (1633–59, 1662–69, 1679–81) until the Battle of Itakhuli ended their hold. Ahom governors called Borphukan ran Lower Assam from Fancy Bazaar precincts, with boat yards on Dighalipukhuri and temple building under Gadadhar Singha. After Assam's 1826 cession to Britain, administrators seated the province here until 1874, when headquarters moved to Shillong in the Khasi hills. Early hills peoples—Garos, Karbis, Lalungs, Rabha, Koch-Kachari—preceded later Manipuri, Kalita, and Muslim settlers recorded in later periods.
The municipal corporation covers 523 square kilometres between LGB International Airport westward and Narengi eastward; that airport ranks tenth-busiest in India and busiest in the Northeast. Wildlife still edges the metro—elephants, rhinos, tigers, gaurs, and primates—while the noted Madan Kamdev temple complex lies about thirty kilometres out. River, foothills of the Shillong plateau, and temple ridgelines keep Guwahati both corridor and pilgrimage node for a vast frontier region known as the gateway to North East India.
Source: Guwahati
