INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED RESEARCH IN ARTS & SCIENCE

Transcription

1 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED RESEARCH IN ARTS & SCIENCE Vol.4 Issue 1 THE CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT OF MANIPURI Khongbantabam Naobi Devi PhD Scholar Department of English Ethiraj College for Women Chennai Abstract Manipur is situated in the northeastern state of India. It is surrounded by Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south, and Assam to the west; Myanmar to the east. During the process of state formation, all the clans or groups merged into one and became the Meitei. This is reflected in the language. Some of the Sanskrit scholars claimed that Manipuri language is an Indo-Aryan language. Some of the English scholars and local scholars classify Manipuri as Tibeto-Burman language. The Manipuri language shared the genetic features of Tibeto-Burman features. However, Manipuri script is nearer to the branch of Brahmi that was spread to Northeast and North India. This paper is an attempt to show the cultural and linguistic development dealing with the land and its people, language and script. Manipuri is the only language among the Tibeto-Burman languages having its own script in India. INTRODUCTION Manipur is situated in the northeastern India. It is surrounded by Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south, and Assam to the west; Myanmar to the east. Manipur is a cradle of human civilization and creativity that has come under the influence of many cultures of many ethnic groups who came at various times and contributed to the growth of the civilization in this small state in India s northeastern frontier. 169

2 In the past Manipuris were known by various names such as Kathe, Meklee, Moglie and Cassey to the neighboring states. The Manipuris also coined many names to identify their neighboring peoples. The three major ethnic group: Meities, Nagas and Kukis are believe to be the descendents of the various ethnic groups such as southern mongoloid group, the Tibeto- Burman, the Indo Aryans and Shans (Pong to Manipuris) who are migrated to Manipur. Some of the Sanskrit scholars claimed that Manipuri language is an Indo-Aryan language. Some of the English scholars and local scholars classify Manipuri as Tibeto-Burman language. The Manipuri language shared the genetic features of Tibeto-Burman features. However, Manipuri script is nearer to the branch of Brahmi that was spread to Northeast and North India. This paper is an attempt to show the cultural and linguistic development dealing with the land and its people, language and script. Manipuri is the only language among the Tibeto-Burman languages having its own script in India. MANIPURI LANGUAGE In the past Manipur was divided into small kingdoms under the the rule of distinct groups known as seven clans. The seven clans of distinct groups such as Khaba, Chenglei, Luwang, Khuman, Moirang, Angom and Ningthouja speaking different dialects. The Ningthouja clan representing the Meitei was the most powerful and reigned in the heart of the valley. During the process of state formation, all the clans or groups merged into one and became the Meitei. This is reflected in the language. Manipuri commonly use double synonyms, technically known as Semantic reduplication for example the word ucek-sawa (bird) pamba- kay (tiger) sha-phi (dress for battle), lan-phi (war dress) etc. Sir George Grierson classifies the Manipuri language as a Tibeto- Burman language in his Linguistic Survey of India. A Linguistic Survey of India was published at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of the Sanskrit scholars objected this and they claimed that Manipuri language is an Indo-Aryan language. Some of the English scholars classify Manipuri as Tibeto-Burman language. Grierson- Konow placed Manipuri in Kuki-Chin Proper. Benedict classifies Manipuri as Kuki-Naga group of Tibeto-Burman languages of the Sino-Tibetan family. DeLancy classifies Manipuri as a part of distinct sub branch in Tibeto-Burman that he calls Mikir-Meitei where both the languages 170

3 Mikir and Meitei are closely related to the Kuki-Naga and Kuki-Chin sub-branches. However, in the opinion of Matisoff Manipuri is close to the Kuki-Chin Naga branch. There are minor differences in their opinions. The Manipuri language shared the genetic features of Tibeto-Burman features. Most of the Tibeto-Burman languages shared Tibeto-Burman characteristics such as phonemic tone, SOV word order, agglutinative verb morphology and tendency to reduce disyllabic forms to monosyllabic forms. The Manipuri does not follow the pronominal marking, which is the original trait of Tibeto-Burman. However, still there is nominal pronominal marker is considered as remnants of Tibeto-Burman pronominal feature. Manipuri has extensive verb morphology, extensive suffix with more limited prefixation. It has no strong strict compartments between morphology and syntax: the idea of a subject is not so distinct i.e. the subject can be omitted or understood; through affixation of the respective markers, different word classes are formed. In word formation, compounding is more productive. During the 18 th century, Maharaj Garibniwaj ( ) orders all the Meitheis of Manipur to follow the Hinduism. Due to the adoption of Hinduism, many loan words from Sanskrit, Hindi and Bengali have come into Manipuri. Meitei script was replaced by Bengali script in writing. The Two groups of Meiteis objected this therefore, this two groups of Meiteis was exiled from the main Manipuri speaking area to the surrounding hill areas. These groups are called Lois in Manipuri who resisted the conversion to Hinduism and the Yaithibis who does not strictly follow the rituals and rules of Hinduism. Ch. Yashawanta Singh says that due to the adoption of Hinduism, the birth of dialects of Manipuri had started- the birth of Kwatha dialect, Andro, Sekmai and Kakching etc. Sanskrit, Hindi and Bengali do not influenced the dialects of the Lois. These dialects have been making stronger due to the geographic and social isolation of these groups. In addition, in an effort to preserve the Meitei identity, the exiled groups have tried to align speech with the written language so that they speak conservative, older form of Manipuri. (Singh,Ch. Yashawanta. Manipuri Grammar P-3). The Lois lexically maintained some of old archaic Manipuri. In the language of Meitei-Hindus, there is an influence of Indo- Aryan languages. The western education was started in Manipur when Manipur was under the rule of British Empire. During the British rule, English medium schools were established in Manipur. 171

4 Until today the affairs of the state is carried out in English. Therefore, the English language influences the Manipuri. English educated person started using English words in conversation. English language is started becoming important in education. In 1949 when Manipur merged into the Indian Territory Hindi is becoming important besides English. Many loan words of English are coming to Manipuri. MEITEI MAYEK OR MEITEI SCRIPT The Meitei language had its own script that has a seeming likeness to that of the Tibetan. Concerning the origin of the script, some English officers give their opinions: G. H. Damant (1875), Brown (1873) and Dun (1981) have the same views that the script was brought from Bengal by 1700 A.D., T. C. Hodson claim that the Chinese migrants introduce the Meitei script. The view of G.H. Damant is worth a little attention because Manipuri character too is like that of Bengali in Brahmi style, written from left to right. Brown and Dun view is that the written character of Manipuri is a modification of the Nagari. T. C. Hodson s view is very wrong because Manipuri and Chinese systems of writing is very different. Due to the lack of scientific studies, Meitei script is very controversial. Some of the Indian scholars claim that the Manipuri script is a modified form of Devanagari or Bengali script. However, they did not give appropriate evidence. The scholars from Manipur present two opinions: one group is saying that it is their own creation and another group saying that it is derived from Brahmi. The royal chronicle Cheitharol Kumbaba supports the first view. The Manipuri Sanskrit scholars support the second view. To discuss the origin of Manipuri script we may examine the origin of scripts of languages close to Manipuri. The three main languages of Tibeto- Chinese family are Chinese, Tibetan and Burmese. The earliest written record of Chinese goes back to 200 B. C. Tibetan got the alphabet in the 7 th century while the Burmese inscription dated 1113 A.D. The Burmese adopted Mons script that was modeled after that of a south Indian script. In 632 A.D., Tomni- Sam-Bhota adopted the alphabet of Tibetan from the Lanca form of the Indian Letters. Therefore, the Manipuri script evolved out of Brahmi is quite evident. The Brahmi has four sub-branches, two of which spread to Northeast and North India. The Bengali script is 172

5 spread to northeast in 1390 A. D. Other scripts are such as Oriya, Maithili, Assamese, Keithi Gujarati and Bihari in this group. Each script has different vowel forms. Like the vowel forms of the present day Hindi of Wadha, Manipuri vowels are formed by adding the signs to the root vowel a. In this circumstance, the Manipuri script is close to Tibetan. The Tibetan has only one root vowel. The other sub-branches of Brahmi was spread to North India is the Gupta. The Tibetan, Sidhamatraka and the Sarada character are developed from the Gupta. The important Indian script, Devanagari, make use for Sanskrit is developed from the Sidhamatraka. In this context, Manipuri script is nearer to the branch of Brahmi that was spread to Northeast and North India. Some of the British scholars claim that the Manipuri script may developed at the 16/17 century. However, a local scholar W. Y. Singh points out that the Manipuri scripts was developed during the 3 rd century (Yashawanta: Manipuri Grammar. 4). Sadly, there is no historical evidence to proof his view. Learning and production of manuscripts were started during the reign of King Khagemba ( A.D.) and upto the close of 17 th century i.e. before the conversion of Hinduism. Manuscripts written in the old alphabet covering different subjects collected now number more than one thousand, and they cover a varied subjects as traditional faith, mythologies, rituals, administrative codes, chronicles, genealogies, description of different hills found in manipur and also valuable stones, study of clouds, predictions, astrology, description of nature, ballads and other imaginative works of pure literature (Ch. Manihar Singh. A History of Manipuri Literature. P ). An important point that comes out from the study of old manuscripts is that before the conversion to Hinduism there were completely free from any loan words. The loan words from Sanskrit and Bengali is found in the manuscripts that were produced from 1709 onwards. For naming the letters different opinions was emerged. One group of people like to read the letters as Hindi, another likes to read kok for \k\, sam for \s\, lay for \l\ etc. taking the names of the body parts kok head, sam hair and lay forehead (Yashawanta, P. 4). There are mainly existing works by British officers, which provides many useful list of conversational sentences and list of idioms. Grierson provides brief described the vowels, consonants, word categories etc. in his Lingiustic Survey of India. This work is lack of 173

6 application of linguistic science. There are Sanskrit scholars who applied Sanskrit grammatical rules in the study of Manipuri. This also lead to the incorrect analysis of the Manipuri. There are various works by local scholars as well as non- Manipuri linguists writing in English. These works provides many valuable ideas that are very useful for the study of language. Due to the establishment of Department of Language in manipur University in 1986, linguistic studies of the language is gradually increasing. Reference /books.google.com/books/about/a_history_of_manipuri_literature.h A history of Manipuri literature, ISBN