‘Burnt Offering’ -Town, Manipur From Meitei: andu, ‘burnt offering’, ‘charcoal, ‘sacrificial fire’; and changba/chingba, ‘to make/perform.’ This fits the village’s long role as a custodian of Meitei ancestor-fire traditions and its association with ritual...
‘City of Vishnu’ —Town/District, Manipur From Vishnu and Sanskrit: pur, ‘town’, ‘(fortified) settlement’. Manipur Valley turned to Vaishnavism in the fifteenth-century. Bishnupur, is named after its Vishnu temple built under the patronage of Ningthouja kings as...
‘Crossroads -Town/District, Manipur Named after Maharaja Churachand Singh, but known locally as Lamka (‘crossroads’), this frontier town grew where Kuki-Zo, Hmar, Paite and Thadou routes converged. In the late nineteenth century it became central to Kuki resistance...
‘Cluster of Houses’ -City/Capital/District, Manipur From Mei: yum, ‘house’; and Mei: phal, ‘together’. This implies a collection of houses or villages surrounding a royal enclosure at a time when most of them would be buried in a jungle of bamboo and plantain trees....
‘Kakching People’ – Town/District, Manipur Kakching’s identity is bound to its community and dialect, a branch of Meitei with its own ancestral deity, Ebudhou Khamlangba. Oral traditions credit him with founding the region’s early iron industry, establishing...
‘Hill Fort’ —-Town, Manipur From Old Meitei: kangla, ‘prominence’, ‘hill’ Kangla Fort, sited 394m above the valley, was the ritual and political centre of Meitei kingship — a palace, citadel and sacred landscape in one—for over a thousand years. Successive...
‘Abandoned Stream’ –Lake, Manipur From Meitei: lok, ‘stream’; and takpa, ‘empty’, ‘deserted’, ‘abandoned’. Loktak is the largest freshwater lake in Northeast India (500km2 in the monsoon season) and is famous for the phumdis (heterogeneous mass of vegetation,...
‘Southern Plain’ –Town, Manipur Kuki-Chin roots: mo(u), ‘south’; and reh(-e), ‘plain’, ‘clearing’ A bustling border town linking Manipur with Tamu in Myanmar, Moreh has always been a frontier town: Meitei to the west, Burmese to the east. Traders once carried...
‘Military Command’ –Town/District, Manipur From Sanskrit: sena, ‘army’; and pati, ‘commander’ The name entered Meitei during the 18th–19th centuries. The site where the modern town now stands was designated the “post of the Senapati” — the military command(er)...
The ‘Seven Sisters’ are a family of seven states on the North Eastern Region (NER) of India: Arunachal Pradesh (ArP), Assam (Asm), Manipur (Man), Meghalaya (Meg), Mizoram (Miz), Nagaland (Nag), Tripura (Tri). Sikkim is usually included as a brother state....
‘Flooded rice-plain’ — Town/District, Manipur From Meitei: thou/thau, ‘paddy’, ‘rice’; and bal/p(h)al, ‘wetland’, ‘flooded field’, ‘marsh’ The name matches the district’s landscape: fertile floodplains along the Thoubal River ideal for rice cultivation, Attempts...
‘Summit Village –Town, Manipur Tangkhul Naga: uk, ‘head’, ‘top’, ‘summit’ (high, above); and h(r)ul/khul, ‘village’, ‘settlement’ High above the valley, Ukhrul is the spiritual and cultural centre of the Tangkhul Nagas, whose villages once commanded ridge-top...
