Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 1.djvu/156

Rh HE Munipoorees, or inhabitants of Munipoor, a petty sub-Himalayan state, are among the most mixed of any people in India, though no doubt Tibetan and other Indo-Chinese races preponderate. The number of languages which are spoken in this small state of 7000 square miles is almost incredible. " In several directions, but especially in the north-east," writes Captain Gordon, " the languages are so very numerous, that scarcely two villages are to be found in which they are perfectly similar. . . . The language spoken in Champhung is only understood by the thirty or forty families its inhabitants. The majority can speak more or less of Munipooree, or the language of their own immediate neighbours. Dialects where similar, are generally intelligible to the adult male population on both sides. But the women and children, who rarely leave their homes, find much difficulty in making themselves understood. ... I think I can discover a connection (I do not include the Tai) between the languages in this quarter, sufficiently intimate to warrant me in assigning a common origin to the tribes by whom they are spoken. From these tribes, which I imagine to be the aborigines of the country extending E. and S. E. from the Brahmaputra to China, I derive both the Burmese and the Munipoorees."

The Munipoorees almost all profess the Hindoo faith, which, though only introduced into Munipoor towards the close of the last century, numbers among its votaries every family of distinction in the country. The villages are scattered over a large extent of ground, each house being surrounded by a garden, in which vegetables arc cultivated. Almost all the garden produce of Europe has, since the Burmese war of 1826, been introduced into the valley which forms the most important part of Munipoor, by European officers: and the pea and potatoe in particular have proved so acceptable to the people, that they are now almost universally cultivated, and exposed for sale in the bazaars.

Among the products of this little state the ponies held a very conspicuous place: they are now, however, rarely to be met with.—(See Pemberton's Eastern Frontier.)