Page:Bengal and Assam, Behar and Orissa.djvu/501

 there is no record of silver coinage by other rajas or of any gold coinage whatever. Indian coins have now almost entirely ousted the sel, as the bell-metal coins are called, but the latter are still current in some bazaars in the valley.

History.—The court chronicler keeps a record of events which purports to go back to the thirtieth year of the Christian era. The early portion, however, is unreliable, and has probably been committed to writing in comparatively recent times. The writings are in the dead language, and in an almost obsolete character which has been replaced in modern times by the Bengali character. Our certain knowledge of early times is confined to the fact that Manipur was tributary to the kings of Pong, the great Shan kingdom of Upper Burma. In 1475 we find the united forces of Pong and Manipur conquering Khumbat, with the result that the Kabaw valley was annexed to Manipur.

From 1714, the accession of Pamheiba, or Gharib Nawaz, the narrative is fairly continuous and authentic. His reign and those of his successors up to the First Burmese War are a long record of struggles between the Manipuris and the Burmese, with varying fortunes. Gharib Nawaz actually reached the walls of Ava, the Burmese capital, but patched up a peace and returned to Manipur owing to the alarm wrought in his suspicious mind by the fall of his standard in a gale. Subsequently, however, the Burmese were almost uniformly successful and made periodical invasions of the valley. It is said that on their final withdrawal from the State in 1824, the adult male population did not exceed three thousand souls.

The eighteenth century was also marked by revolting and treacherous internal wars. Previous to the reign of Gharib Nawaz, himself a younger son concealed by his mother, who came to the throne owing to the principal rani being barren, it had been the pleasant custom of the royal house to kill all sons born to the raja by his minor wives. Gharib Nawaz abolished this custom, with disastrous results to himself, as he and his eldest son were surprised and killed, while operating in Burma, by a force sent by a younger son who had cast covetous eyes on the throne. The remainder of the century is one long record of pretenders, civil war, and murder in the royal house, brother killing brother, father destroying son, and son the father, without the least compunction. The rajas of the nineteenth century, supported as they were by the British Government, and assisted with grants of guns and money, were stronger and more secure, and though this period was not without its pretenders, they were all over-thrown.

The relations of the Manipur State with the British Government date from 1762, when a treaty was concluded whereby the Government undertook to assist the Raja Jai Singh against the Burmese. A force was dispatched from Chittagong, but disease and difficulties of transport prevented it from penetrating beyond Cachar. In 1823 Government opened communications with Raja Gambhir Singh, helping him with guns, ammunition, and money, the raja in his turn supplying a contingent to co-operate with the British troops in Cachar against the Burmese. In 1833 the Manipur Levy, which since 1825 had been commanded by British officers, and armed, accoutred, and paid by Government, was discontinued, but arms and ammunition for the reduction of refractory hill tribes were supplied to the raja. In 1833 a treaty was concluded between the raja and the Government, defining the boundary between Cachar and Manipur, agreeing on mutual alliance and assistance in the event of another war against Burma, and arranging for trade between Manipur and British territory. In 1834 another treaty was signed by which the raja ceded the Kabaw valley to the Burmese in return for an annual grant from Government of Rs. 6,270. In 1835 a Political Agent was placed in Manipur by the Government for "the preservation of a friendly intercourse and as a medium of communication with the Manipur Government, and, as occasion may require, with the Burmese frontier, and more especially to prevent border feuds and disturbances which might lead to hostilities between the Manipurians and the Burmese" (Lord William Bentinck's Minute, dated February 7, 1835).

For the next fifty-six years the relations of Manipur with the Government are uneventful, save for the participation of a Manipur contingent in the first expedition against the Lushais in 1871 and the relief of Kohima by a Manipuri force under the Political Agent, Colonel Johnstone, in 1879, when that station was besieged by Angami Nagas, subsequent to the murder of the Deputy Commissioner, Mr. Damant, at Khonoma. In 1891 the treacherous murder of the Chief Commissioner of Assam, Mr. Quinton, together with the

Political Agent and three other officers and of two telegraph officers, was a blot on the modern history of the State. Five years previously Raja Sir Chandra Singh had died after a reign of fifty-two years. His eldest son and successor, who was deposed by his younger brothers in