On the concept of Meitei patriotism : A perspective
- Part 2 -

Dr Mangsatabam Jitendra Singh *

Therefore, it is of first importance to study the religious beliefs and practices of the Meiteis for the institutions and beliefs that we find today in Manipur are only the developments of those of an earlier age. We must seek the roots of them in the distant past. It was at an epoch more ancient without date that the worship of fire and the burial places due to the ancestors were formed. By the said fire we are to understand the sacred fire of the hearth.

Until recently, as we have seen with our own eyes,in the house of every Meitei, there was a hearth, locally called phung-ga. It was a sacred obligation for the master of the house to keep the fire up day and night. The fire ceased to glow upon the hearth only when the entire family had perished.

The sacred fire was the god/ancestor that the Meiteis believed controls their lives and the things that happened to them, usually in a way that protects them. It was a religious precept that this fire must always remain pure, which means, literally, that no filthy object ought to be cast into it, and figuratively, that no blameworthy deed ought to be committed in its presence.

Before eating, they placed beside the hearth the first fruits of the food; before drinking, they poured out a libation of water. It was a sacred ceremony, by which they held communion with each other.

Assuredly the Meiteis did not borrow this religion from the Hindus, nor the Hindus from the Meiteis. The religion of sacred fire dates from the distant and dim epoch when there was no Hindus, no Meiteis.

In a very distant past, the ancestors of Meiteis and the Hindus probably lived in Central Asia – a region of Turkestan extending from the Caspian Sea to the Gobi Desert and divided by Pamir and Tien Shan Mountain systems into western Turkestan, comprising the Kazak, Karghiz, Tadzikh, Turkmen Uzbek (Also called Soviet Central Asia). Today, ethnicity had also been used to define Central Asia.

Using this methodology, Afghanistan, part of Pakistan and Siberia and the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region of China are also considered to be a part of Central Asia, because their people are of Eastern Turkic, Eastern Iranian or Mongolian ethnicities. When they separated, they carried the fire with them.

Fire was first utilised not unlikely for cooking fish, which must be recognized as the first kind of artificial food. Upon this species of food mankind became independent of climate and of locality; and by following the shores of the sea and lakes, and the courses of the rivers could, while in the savage state, spread themselves over the greater portion of the earth's surface. In reliance upon fruits and spontaneous substance a removal from the original habitat would have been impossible.

As an ancient legacy, the Meiteis preserved the religion of fire which they had known and practised in the cradle of their race. The grammarian Servious, who was very learned in Greek and Roman antiquities, says it was a very ancient usage to bury the dead in the houses. This expression established clearly an ancient relation between the worship of the dead and the hearth-fire.

The Meiteis, when they speak of the hearth-fire, recall the name of the ancestor, Phunga-gaApokpa. The sacred fire, which was so intimately associated with worship of the dead, belonged, in its essential character, properly to each family. It represented the ancestors; it was the providence of a family, and nothing in common with the fire of a neighboring family, which was another providence.

The whole of this religion was enclosed within the walls of each house. The hearth was never placed either outside the house or even near the outer door. The Meiteis concealed it in the interior of the house to protect it from the contact, or even the gaze of the strangers.

Thus, this religion of fire of the Meiteis dwelt not in temples, but in the house. We may say that the religion taught the Meiteis to build their houses, yumsarol, a treatise on the fundamental principles of the construction of traditional Meitei house.

The tent covers the Arab, and the wagon the Tartar; but the family that has domestic hearth has need of a permanent dwelling. And indeed, the Meiteis, who were fixed by their religion to one spot, which they believed it their duty not to quit, would soon begin to think of raising in that place some solid structure.

Between this religion of fire and soil there is a religious relation and belief that cannot be explained or historically proved. The hearth, phung-ga, is the symbol of a sedentary life. It must be placed upon the ground; once established, it cannot be removed. The god/ancestor of the family wishes to have a fixed abode.

When the Meiteis established the hearth, it is with the thought and hope that it will always remain in the same spot. The phung-ga is not for a day, not for the life of one man merely, but for so long a time as this family shall endure and there remains anyone to support its fire by sacrifices. Thus, the sacred fire takes possession of the soil and make it its own. It is the god's/ancestor's property in the soil.

And the family, which through duty and religion remains grouped around its hearth, is as much fixed in the soil as the Phunga-ga or hearth itself. This idea of domicile follows naturally. The family is attached to the hearth, the hearth is attached to the soil; an intimate relation, therefore, is established between the soil and the family.

Like the hearth, it (family) will always occupy this spot. This spot belongs to it, is its property. The property not simply of a man, but of a family, whose different members must, one after another, be born and die there.

The sacred enclosure, which the Meiteis call ingkhol, was a somewhat spacious enclosure in which the family had its house, its flocks and the small field it cultivated. Even the confederation of several families and tribes and the dwellings are brought nearer together,the sacred enclosure still exists, but is of small proportions; oftenest it is reduced to a low wall, a ditch, a furrow, or to a mere space, a few feet wide.

The small wall could not be common to two families. It is of little account to seek the cause which determined several neighbouring tribes to unite. Sometimes it was voluntary; sometimes it was imposed by the superior force of a tribe. What is certain is that the bond of the new association was still a religion. The tribes that united to form a country or state never failed to light a sacred fire in every house and to adopt a common religion.

The country was a confederation. Hence it is obliged till today to respect religious independence of the tribes and families. In our opinion, it is the traditional religion that constituted the Meitei family, consecrated the right of property.

The same religion, after having enlarged and extended the family, formed a still larger association in the state or country, and reigned in that as it has reigned in the family. From it came all the institutions of the Meiteis. A result of this, religious rule was that a community of property was never established among the Meiteis.


(To be continued....)