Meitei literature
literature written in the Meitei language
Meitei literature, also known as Manipuri literature, is literature written in the Meitei language of Manipur. An ancient institution of learning, the Luwang Nonghumsang, later known as the Pandit Loishang, collected sources of indigenous Meitei knowledge and philosophy until the 18th century. Writing by Meiteis is assumed to go back to the Kingdom of Kangleipak in the early 12th century. 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 centuries were written using 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. The first printed Manipuri book, Manipurer Itihas, appeared in 1890 from the Baptist Mission Press, Calcutta. Though the kings of Manipur had established contact with the British from the middle of the eighteenth century onward the real impact of the contact came much later. Johnstone Middle English School, based on the western system of education, was started in 1885 at Imphal, and in 1891 Manipur lost its independence to the British.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Meitei literature” as literature written in the Meitei language. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as literature written in the Meitei language. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10978685. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1890, 1885 and 1891.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Meitei literature” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.