Meitei literature: Difference between revisions

'''Meitei literature''', also known as '''Meetei literature''', refers to the literature written in [[Meitei language|Meitei]], one of the official languages of the Government of India. An institution of learning named the ''Luwang Nonghumsang'', later known as the ''Pandit Loishang'', collected the sources of indigenous Meitei knowledge and philosophy in the 18th century..<ref>{{Cite web|date=2020-06-02|title=Akademi {{!}} Hasta in Manipuri - Part 1|url=https://akademi.co.uk/hasta-in-manipuri|quote=Individual authors of these traditions were not named, as movement was a product of, by, and for the collective.|access-date=2020-11-18|website=Akademi|language=en-US}}</ref> The presence of writing among the Meiteis is assumed to go back to the Kangleipak state under king Loiyumba in the early 12th century.<ref>Naorem Sanajaoba, Manipur Treaties and Documents-Vol I,1993, New Delhi. Book I: "Twelfth Century Meetei Constitution To Pemberton Report".</ref> The [[Meitei script]] is a [[Brahmic]] abugida. It is known only from the ''Puya'' manuscripts discovered in the first half of the 20th century. Manuscripts of the 18th and 19th century used the [[Bengali alphabet]]. The existence of the Meitei script in the 15th-century hinges on the authenticity of an inscription dated to the reign of [[Senbi Kiyamba]].<ref>According to K.B. Singh, The Meiteis of Manipur (1989 [1962]), [https://books.google.ch/books?id=Y0yED5k62TsC&pg=PA157 p. 157], an archaic form of the script had developed by the 11th century, and it was in use until the early 18th century, when it was replaced by the [[Bengali alphabet|Bengali script]]. By contrast, O.Tomba, ''The Need to rewrite Manipuri History'', Imphal, 1993, claims that the script is a development of c. 1930, with all supposedly older documents being deliberate forgeries (Frans Welman, ''Out of Isolation – Exploring a Forgotten World'' (2011), [https://books.google.ch/books?id=iOV8aaGZERQC&pg=PA468 468f.])</ref>