Kha Nganba Salai
Meitei
At a glance
- Called a
- Salai
- Community
- Meitei
- Found in
- Manipur
About
Kha Nganba is one of the seven Meitei salai of Manipur, with Mangang, Luwang, Khuman, Angom, Moirang and Sarang Leishangthem. Its name joins two older clan names, Khaba and Nganba, and Hodson in 1908 called it a composite clan. It is the smallest salai: the lists made for the 1901 census, which Hodson printed, give it 17 yumnaks. It is a Meitei clan in its own system, not a Vedic gotra.
What “Salai” means for the Meitei
A salai (also called a yek) is one of the seven clans of the Meitei of Manipur. Hodson (1908) glossed salei as 'tribe' and yumnak as 'household': each salai is made up of yumnaks, the family names used as surnames, and belonging follows the father's line. Marriage within one's own salai is forbidden.
Every salai of the Meitei, with how the clan system works: the Meitei page.
Name and Origin
Hodson (1908, p. 73) wrote Khabananba and recorded that the small clan was said to be composite; in his later book on the Naga tribes of Manipur (1911, p. 72) he explained it as the joining of two clans, Khaba and Anganba, into one. The yumnak list of 1901 that he printed calls it Salei Ngangba. He named Khamdingou as its tribal deity (p. 100), and wrote that Panthoibi, a goddess of birth and death to whose service Pamheiba appointed Brahmins, was said to be the wife of Khaba, 'probably the divine ancestor of the Khaba tribe' (p. 97).
Historical Journey
Hodson (1908, p. 73) recorded a tradition that the Meitei once had ten clans, of which two or three had died out, and linked it to the 'ten kings of the land' in the ballad Numit Kappa; in 1911 he suggested that the two clans lost were the Atum and the Kasu, names still found at the Tangkhul village of Nungbi. The Khaba name survived in the organisation of the state: one of its six pannas, the divisions in which men served, was Khabam, which Hodson glossed as 'belonging to Khaba, or bitter', and its great house, the Khabam Sanglen, had officers who sat on the Chirap, the chief court (pp. 58, 62). The number of Kha Nganba yumnaks differs by source: 17 in the 1901 lists that Hodson printed, 21 in the account of the Manipur Science and Technology Council, and 37 to 43 in recent Meitei compilations (N. Monihar, Khomdon Lisam and the Manipur Mirror list).
How the Salai Is Kept
The Meitei are exogamous by salai, so a Kha Nganba may not marry within the salai. Hodson (1908, p. 75) recorded further bars: the Angom were not allowed to marry the Khabananba, and the Moirang were not permitted to either. He also recorded the general rule that a man may not marry a woman of his mother's clan, for one generation. The lists of 1901 also give each salai a Hindu gotra; the name written against Kha Nganba is not legible in the scan used here. The name Khaba is also found as a clan name in two Tangkhul villages (Hodson 1911, p. 72). No kuldevi or kuldevta in the Hindu sense is named in the sources checked.
Stories and Legends
The clans born from one body
Hodson (1908, pp. 100 and 182) printed two versions of a genealogy that, in his words, 'the Hindu friends of the people' had found for the seven clans, in which they spring from the body of a sage or Guru. In the version a former court officer gave him, the Khabananba came from his eye. In the version a Bengali clerk wrote for him, the clans came from the left and right eyes, ears and nostrils and the teeth, the Khabananba from the left ear. Hodson thought the neatness of the second version suspect. Meitei texts give each clan its own ancestor.