Correct Answer - Option 1 : forced labourers
The history of Assam is the history of a confluence of people from the east, west, south, and the north; the confluence of the Tibeto-Burman (Sino-Tibetan), Indo Aryan and Austroasiatic cultures.
The Ahom state depended upon forced labour.
- Those forced to work for the state were called Paiks.
- A census of the population was taken.
- Each village had to send a number of Paiks by rotation.
- People from heavily populated areas were shifted to less populated places.
- Ahom clans were thus broken up.
- By the first half of the seventeenth century, the administration became quite centralised.
Hence, in medieval Assam, Paiks were forced labourers.
