The Ahom Documents are kept at the Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies (DHAS) of the state of Assam at Guwahati, at the Tai Museum of Sibsagar, Institute of Tai Studies and Research, Moranhat and at houses of the common people, mainly those of the priestly class. The members of this priestly class have inherited these manuscripts since the period of the Ahom kingdom. The members are concentrated at the villages of Patsaku and Akhoya, Laichelleng, Lachaohabi, Jajali, Maniki in the Sibsagar district of Upper Assam. The majority of the manuscripts deal with cosmogony, the earth and history. There is a custom to copy these manuscripts by hand. The manuscripts are sacred books to be handed down to descendants o preserve. Other kinds of manuscripts are astrology books, calendars, and books on rituals, omens and the ways to ward off bad omens, prayers in offerings to spirits, prayers in the calling of life essence lik khaek lik faa, lik rik khwan. These manuscripts are important handbooks for daily living for all from the king down to the common people. There are also a few more recent literary writings which relate to the past lives of Lord Buddha.
The numbers of the Ahom manuscripts is not certain as it is not known how many of the manuscripts have survived till date. At the DHAS there are 300 Tai manuscripts. At the Tai Museum in Sibsagar around 30 manuscripts are in Tai Ahom. There are a good number of Tai-Ahom manuscripts in the Institute of Tai-Studies and Research, Moranhat. However, there has not yet been a full survey of the Ahom manuscripts still kept in private homes. These manuscripts were written on sheets of tree bark. Some pages have only a few pages, but some stretch to more than 300 pages.
The Tai Ahom people are trying to study these ancient manuscripts with translation help from experts on the Tai language from other Tai groups. The important translators of Ahom documents working at the DHAS Ahom section are Chao Nabin Shyam Phalung, an Aiton Tai, and Nang Ye Hom Buragohain, a Tai Phake. Both read the Tai AHom language very well. Since 1995, Ahom scholars have compiled several dictionaries to aid the study of Ahom documents:
1. Bar Amra (1795) compiled by Tengai Pandit.
2. Ahom- Assamese-English Dictionary (1920) by Rai Sahib Golap Chandra Barua
3. Ahom Lexicons (1964, 1991) compiled by B Barua and N N Deodhai Phukan
4. The Assamese-English-Tai Dictionary (1987) by Dr. Nromal Chandra Gogoi.
5. The Online Ahom-English dictionary by Dr. Stephen Morey.
Besides these Tai Ahom dictionaries, one has to use Shan and other Tai dictionaries. Each year the Ban Ok Pup Lik Muang Tai arranges a large cultural meeting among various Tai groups, attended by several hundreds of people. The Association issues a yearly commemorating journal Souvenir in three languages (Tai, Assamese and English). At present the knowledge of Ahom language is advancing. Ahom authors have published short stories which have been published by the Association as pamphlets Kham Seng (1992), and in book form Moang Fi (1993). It can be regarded as the first Ahom literary work of a new era.
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