MANIPUR, miVne-p5Or'. A native State of Northeastern India, situated between Assam and Burma, and called by the Burmese Cas say or Kathie (Map: Burma. B 1). Its area is estimated at S300 square miles. It consists chiefly of a deep valley amid the surrounding mountains. The industries are purely agricul tural, the chief products being tea, cotton, rice, tobacco, opium and indigo. The State is admin istered by a raja, hut has been a political de pendency of Assam since 1825. In 1891, during the disputed succession to the throne, the Brit ish Counissioner, Resident. and several officers were treacherously murdered; a punitive ex pedition hanged the ringleaders, settled the sue cession, and resumed the administration under British supervision. Population, in 1881, 221, 070; in 1901, 253,957, chiefly Hindus. Capital, Manipur.
The natives of Manipur consist of Manipuris proper. Sagas, and Kukis, all of whom are by tradition assigned to a common ancestry. The Manipuris call themselves Meithei, and since their conversion to Hinduism in the beginning of the eighteenth century they claim a Hindu origin. They are of the Mongoloid type of fea
ture and do not resemble the Aryan or Aryanized peoples of Hindustan. Their language is closely allied to the Chin, Lushai, and Kuki tongues. Among the Meithei clan worship of tribal deities and peculiar rain ceremonies prevail, and ancestor worship was probably once in vogue. Each tribe seems to have a rain rite of its own. The Kukis are still migratory, but the Sagas live in per manent villages. Terrace cultivation with irriga tion channels occurs in Manipur. The Sagas of Manipur and the mountains to the north are essentially Indonesians, and the Lushai of the south are Sagas mixed with Kyens and Burmese of Arakan. Consult: Crimwood, Three Years in Mani-pur (London, 1891) ; Dalton, Deseriptire. Ethnology of Bengal (Calcutta, 1872); Reid, Chin-Lushai Land (Calcutta, 1883).