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Meetei-Mayek is the script which was used to write Meeteilon

(Manipuri) till the 18th century. The script nearly became extinct as a
result of a mass burning of all books in Meeteilon ordered by Ningthau
Pamheiba who ruled Manipur in the 18th century. The main person
behind this atrocity was Shantidas Gosain who had come to Manipur to
spread Vaishnavism, on whose instigation the king gave the order. The
king embraced Vaishnavism, took the name Garibnawaz and made
Vaishnavism the state religion. Subsequently, Bengali script was adopted
to write the language and is being used till date. Recent research has
resurrected this script, and it is now being given its due place.
It is indeed difficult to trace the exact period of the origin of the Meetei
Mayek. The burning of vital historical documents or the Puyas of
Kangleipak (Manipur) written in Meetei Mayek during the reign of
King Pamheiba in the early 18th century, made the effort all the more
difficult. The earliest use of Meetei Mayek is dated between 11th and
12th centuries AD. A stone inscription found at Khoibu in Tengnoupal
district contains royal edicts of Kiyamba - this was the beginning of
Chietharol Kumbaba - the Royal Chronicle of Manipur.
According to the very few Puyas that survived, such as, Wakoklon
Thilel Salai Singkak, Wakoklol Thilel Salai Amailon, Meetei Mayek
comprised of 18 alphabets. Even during the reign of King Pamheiba
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(1709-1748), all documents were written in these 18 alphabets.

Pamheiba embraced Hinduism in 1717. Few years after this, he ordered
the destruction of pre-Hindu places of worship and the burning of all the
Puyas of the Kangleichas or the citizens of Kangleipak. After the
massive destruction of the pre-Hinduism records of Meetei philosophy,
literature and history, the king and his descendents tried taking total
control over the cultural, literary and religious affairs of the people. But
the official effort of the Konung or the Royal Palace to impose a
concoction of Bengali, Devnagri and Gurumukhi script on the people was
not welcomed by one and all. Between 1709 to 1941, Bengali script
replaced Meetei Mayek and subsequently became the official script of the
Konung. During this phase, there were many voices of dissent.
The most strident voice of dissent came from a Meetei scholar,
Laininghan Naoria Phullo (Naorem Phumdrei). Naoria started the
movement to revive Kanglei or Meetei tradition in 1930 from a village
called Jaribon, Laishramkhul in Cachar in Assam. He developed a
script and named it after him. The Naoria Mayek challenged the script
imposed and propagated by the Konung in Kangleipak (Manipur). It
had 24 alphabets. The voice of revivalism and the new script soon spread
to the entire Kangleipak.
An organization called the Meetei Marup was formed in 1947 in
Kangleipak to propagate the Naoria Mayek. Serious debates on the
script began in 1950. A state level committee called the Mayek Lupteen
Committee (MLC) was formed in 1958 to conduct a study. A sub-
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committee of the same group concluded that there are only 18 alphabets in
the Meetei Mayek. Though the effort of Naoria Phullo was appreciated,
another conference on Mayek in 1969 discovered that some of the alphabets
of the Naoria Mayek were Bengali and Devnagri. The same conference
also found out that not a single ancient Meetei Puya was written in
Naoria Mayek. After a thorough study of an original Puya called
"Wakoklon Thilel Salai Amailon Pukok" the participating judges
recommended that the actual genuine Meetei Mayek had only 18
alphabets.
The most significant development in the history of the Meetei Mayek
happened in 1976. During the "Writers Conference" in the same year, all
the groups working towards the development of Meetei Mayek officially
endorsed the 18 alphabets and urged the government of Manipur to
popularize the script. The supporters of the Naoria Mayek did not oppose
the move. Thus the present Meetei Mayek re-emerged with new vigor.
The nine letters called the Lom Eeyek, which are derivatives of the
previous 18 were added so as to incorporate additional phonetic sounds
present in Meeteilon as a result of historical changes. On the 19th of
January, 1983, the Education Department of the Government of
Manipur, prescribed "Meetei Mayek Tamnaba Mapi Lairik" as text
book for students of class VI.
By: Dhiren Sadokpam

sadokpam@yahoo.com

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About the Script

Interestingly, the letters in Meetei Mayek are named after parts of human
body. Meanings of these names are indicated with the letters below. Sounds
which the letters denote are indicated within brackets.

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Manipuri/Meiteilon: An Introduction
Manipuri (also called Meiteilon, Meiteiron, Meetei and Meithei; Meithei in
Linguistic literature) is the official language of the state of Manipur, India.
It is the mother tongue i.e. the first language of the ethnic group Meitei
(Meetei). However, apart from Hindu Meiteis and the Meiteis following the
traditional religion of Sanamahi, Meitei Pangals, i.e., Manipuri Muslims
also return Manipuri as their mother tongue.

Linguistic affinity
Manipuri belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. The Sino-Tibetan
family branches out into the Siamese-Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman sub
families based on the word order – the Siamese-Chinese has SVO word order
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while the Tibeto-Burman has SOV pattern, where S stands for Subject, V
stands for Verb, and O stands for Object.
A schematic diagram of the Sino-Tibetan language family is given below:

Manipuri falls in the geographically determined group Kamarupan.

Kamarupan is further sub grouped into Kuki-Chin-Naga, Abor-Miri-Dafla
and Bodo-Garo subgroups. Although it has been generally acknowledged that
Manipuri does not readily fit into any of these subgroups (along with Mikir
and Mru), the traditional classifications put Manipuri in the Kuki-Chin-
Naga subgroup. However, within Kuki-Chin-Naga, Manipuri is classified as
a distinct group on its own (Grierson: 1903-28) under the heading Meithei, on
the basis of the facts that it was already a major literary language of the
Kuki-Chin-Naga group and that it had characteristics that differentiated it
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from both the Kuki-Chin languages proper as well as the Naga languages.
There is still a need of collection of more data from other languages to determine
the exact position of Manipuri within Kamarupan.

Although Manipuri native speakers mostly reside in the state of Manipur, there
are native speakers in the neighbouring northeastern states of India, notably in
Assam, Tripura, Nagaland, and West Bengal. In India, the total number of
people who returned Manipuri as their mother tongue numbers 1,270,216 out of
which 1, 110, 134 speakers reside in Manipur (census of India, 1991).

There are Manipuri speakers in Bangladesh and Myanmar as well. The

Manipuri population was 6000 in Myanmar in 1931 and 92800 in
Bangladesh in 1982 as reported in http://www.ethnologue.com/.

Some Issues
Meiteilon has been recognized as the Manipuri language by the Indian Union
and has been included in the list of scheduled languages. Manipuri is taught as
a subject upto the Post-graduate level (Ph.D.) in Universities of India, apart
from being a medium of instruction upto the undergraduate level in Manipur.

There is a need to distinguish Manipuri (Meithei/Meitei/Meiteilon) from

Bishnupriya -- a language spoken in Assam and parts of Bangladesh, which
has a dominant Indo-Aryan character, especially since the speakers of this
language claim that they are the erstwhile aborigines of Manipur. This claim
seems far-fetched since for one reason, none of the neighbouring tribes of the
Meitei have a reference to the Bishnupriyas in their folklore, whereas the
Tangkhul, and the Kabui, among others, mention the Meitei in their folklore.
Moreover, both the Tangkhul and Meitei folklore mention that the Tangkhul
and the Meitei are of the same descent.
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Moreover, the Bishnupriyas claim their descent from the legendary

Mahabharata character Babruvahana, the son of the Pandava Arjuna. It may
be worth recalling that the mother of Babruvahana was supposedly a princess of
Manipur in the epic. However, there is neither Archaeological nor historical
proof that the Manipur of the Mahabharata is the same as the present state of
Manipur. Also, the official name of the state became Manipur only after it
had been incorporated as part of the British Empire, and the Meitei called
their kingdom Meitrabak or Kangleipak before the current name of Manipur
came into use. So, the Bishnupriya intelligentsia need to re-check their facts
before making such a far-fetched claim of lineage and descent.

It may be worthy of mention that Hinduism was introduced as a state religion

only in the reign of Meidingngu Pamheiba (Garibniwaj) in the late eighteenth
century, while pre-Hindu Meitei chronicles can be dated back to 33 AD.
The advent of Hinduism in Manipur had a considerable influence on the
language, in that a lot of Indo-Aryan elements entered the language as
borrowings. The Standard dialect, which is based on the Imphal dialect
(Grierson 1903) is significantly different from the dialects spoken in Kakching,
Andro, Sekmai and the Yaithibi dialect. The latter dialects are comparatively
not influenced by Bengali or Sanskrit. The Pangal dialect is another main
dialect of Manipuri.

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Radhabinod Aribam Sharma