Khuman Salai
Meitei
At a glance
- Called a
- Salai
- Community
- Meitei
- Found in
- Manipur
About
Khuman is one of the seven Meitei salai of Manipur, with Mangang, Luwang, Angom, Moirang, Kha Nganba and Sarang Leishangthem. The Khuman once ruled a principality of their own, whose seat Meitei accounts place at Mayang Imphal, before it came under the Ningthouja kings. Hodson wrote the name Kumul in 1908, when the clan's head, the Kumul Ningthou, lived at Ningthoukhong. 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, pp. 99-100) recorded that the tribal deity of each clan was its ancestor, called for this clan Khuman pokpa, 'ancestor of the Khumans', and named Thangaren as its deity; elsewhere (p. 108) he wrote that the Kumul Ningthou worshipped the tribal deity, there called Okparen, on behalf of the clan whenever rain was needed. Hodson also quoted McCulloch (1859) that tradition brought the Koomul into the valley from the east, the direction of the Maring (p. 6). The Kumul and the Luang were held to be connected 'in some remote manner', and in the Kumul text Hodson cites, the Luang king Punsiba became king of the Kumul and his sons divided the two lines (p. 75).
Historical Journey
McCulloch, quoted by Hodson (1908, pp. 5-6), wrote that of the peoples who first held the valley 'for a time the Koomul appears to have been the most powerful', before the Moirang and then the Meithei rose. The Khuman ruled their own principality, with its seat at Mayang Imphal in Meitei accounts, until it came under the Ningthouja kings; a modern account dates this to about the thirteenth century, and the Khuman-lon, a Meitei text, records their rule. In Hodson's time the head (piba) of the Kumul clan, the Kumul Ningthou, lived at Ningthoukhong with officers of his own in order of precedence, among them a Senapati, a Khullakpa, a Luplakpa and a Mantri, and the same offices existed at Khangabok (p. 72). The number of Khuman yumnaks differs by source: 103 in the 1901 list printed by Hodson, 67 in the account of the Manipur Science and Technology Council, and 176 to 204 in recent Meitei compilations (N. Monihar 176, Khomdon Lisam 199, the Manipur Mirror list 204).
How the Salai Is Kept
The Meitei are exogamous by salai, so a Khuman may not marry another Khuman. Hodson (1908, p. 75) recorded that the Luang were forbidden to take wives from the Kumul, and gave the tradition offered for it: a Kumul minister once saved the life of a Luang man who had been sentenced to death. Each Meitei clan held some object namungba, forbidden on pain of a mysterious death; for the Kumul it was a fish (p. 118). The 1901 list printed by Hodson (Appendix I) heads the clan 'Salei Khoomon' with a Hindu gotra whose name is not fully legible in the scan used. No kuldevi or kuldevta in the Hindu sense is named in the sources checked.
Presence Across Regions
Mayang Imphal
Meitei
Given in Meitei accounts as the historic seat of the Khuman principality.
Ningthoukhong
Meitei
Seat of the Kumul Ningthou, the head of the clan, in Hodson's time (1908, p. 72).
Stories and Legends
Khamba of the Khuman line
In the version of the Moirang tale that Hodson printed (1908, pp. 134-135), Yoithongnai, king of the Khumal (Khuman), had three sons. The youngest killed the eldest over a necklace, and the second fled to Moirang, where his grandson Purenba won honour from the king of Moirang by killing five tigers. Purenba's children were Khamnu and Khamba, the hero who loved Thoibi, daughter of the heir to the throne of Moirang. The tale was sung to the pena, and Hodson found it supremely popular.
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 Kumul came from his liver. In the version a Bengali clerk wrote for him, the clans came from the eyes, ears, nostrils and teeth, the Kumul from the left nostril. Hodson thought the neatness of the second version suspect. Meitei texts give each clan its own ancestor.