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Walk with the kings :: Translating Cheitharol Kumbaba
The Hindu | Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty | February 25, 2012
Eighty-one-year-old Nepram Bihari can't stop smiling. This is his first ever media interview. The long retired bureaucrat has reason to feel joyous. He has just completed translating Cheitharol Kumbaba, the royal chronicle of Manipur, into English. An effort that took 17 years. It was worth it. What nobody knows is that unlike other royalty, the Manipuri kings had a strong tradition of writing history.
So Cheitharol Kumbaba chronicled each and everything that involved their kings from 33 A.D. till its last Maharaja Bodhchandra's rule that ended in 1955.
“When I saw a packed auditorium at the launch of the book in New Delhi the other day, I really felt that the years I spent on it was worth it; I always wanted to do something worthwhile for the State,” says Bihari, who lives in Imphal.
Cheitharol Kumbaba gives an insight into a protracted bout of cultural imperialism foisted on the people of Manipur. Like, king Pambeiba banning their original religion, Sanamahism, in 1729 after he was converted to Vaishnavism by guru Shanti Das Gosain, from present-day Bangladesh. He ordered the burning of over 123 holy treatises belonging to Sanamahism to help Vaishnavism set root in Manipur. Like proscribing the people's script, Meitei Mayek — in practice till the 18th Century — to bring into use the Bengali script.
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* This Post is uploaded on February 25, 2012
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