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| National Questions: Trajectories & Predicaments |
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Body and Soul in Meitei Worldview: An Ethnographic Interlude
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| THE METAPHORIC UNDERSTANDING OF ‘BODY’ AND ‘SOUL’ IN EVERYDAY LIFE: The Meiteilon (Manipuri) term sha has its meaning nearer to the English word ‘body’—defined as ‘the physical structure… of a person or an animal, whether dead or alive.’(5) However, it is hakchang, which is popularly used exclusively to refer to human ‘bodies’ while sha denotes the bodies of men, animals as well as plants. When combined with a possessive pronoun, it is capable of representing one’s body as well as the mind together i.e. the ‘self’ in isha (my self); nasha (your self); masha (her/his self). The word hakchang has its metaphor in polang i.e. a wicker basket.(6) Like the wicker basket, the body is a ‘vessel’, which contains the soul. Human body is also compared to a lang—a trap or a net. It ‘traps’ the pombi, which is the thawai or the soul of the body. The Meitei term for bird is chekla when it is wild and free, and pombi when domesticated, and also female bird.(7) Thus the thawai is referred to as chekla when separated from the body—thawai cheklana paikhrabada (‘when the bird-like soul flies away’, referring to death). The close association between thawai and hakchang is also appropriated by people when they express feelings of deep emotional attachment and love. So, a parent lovingly refers to his/her child as thawaigi mani (‘the jewel of my soul’), a lover addresses his/her beloved as his/her thawai, and a lover expresses the intensity of the pain felt when the beloved is lost or separated, as thawai yaodraba kannadraba eigi hakchang (My ‘useless’/‘dead’ body without a ‘soul’). |
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| BODY CONSTITUENTS & THE ‘SYMBOLIC ANATOMY’ IN MEITEI MEDICINE: The body is also referred to as polang by the Meiteis. But what is this polang made of? How do the Meiteis explain the material aspect of the body? Apart from the metaphor of polang, Meiteis use the word hakchang to refer to the body in everyday usage. According to Bhagyachandra, the Meitei word hakchang carries significance for knowing how they conceive of the nature of constitution, or the ‘material’ aspect of human body. Hakchang is a combination of two words—hak=heavy/valuable, and chang=quantity or proportion. Illness is the result if there is a temporary disturbance in the proportion between the valuable elements that make up the body; when the disturbance is permanent, death is the result.(8) But what are these ‘valuable elements’ whose proportion has to be kept in balance for a ‘healthy’ body? In Ayurveda, there is the doctrine of the five bhutas, or basic elements of the body. These five elements are ether (akasa), wind (vayu), water (ap), earth (prthvi), and fire (agni or tejas).(9) In Meitei medicine system, the wind element (nungshit) is frequently used by the maibas to refer to illnesses caused by an imbalance in dhatu, which they refer to as dhatu nungshit, and is different from those classes of illnesses called lai oknaba (illnesses caused through the agency of supernatural forces). The maiba reads the pulse of the patient (mihun yengba) to diagnose the nature of the illness, and prescribes treatment after diagnosing whether the illness is a dhatu nungshit or a case of lai oknaba. In fact mihun yengba forms an important part of the Maibarol.(10) Like other systems of folk medicine, Meitei medicine also maps out a ‘symbolic anatomy’(11) of the body. Meitei maibas have accumulated their knowledge about the body and its structure/function from many sources which include their own empirical knowledge/experience which is again passed from the ojha (teacher) to his students; learning from other traditional systems like the Ayurveda and the tantric medicine, and also from what had been written in the Meitei puyas.(12) In Pombi-lang, it is mentioned that there is one main vein inside the body, which has its tail (end) inside its mouth and is guarding the navel where the thawai resides. As long as this position is intact, the thawai will remain ‘trapped’ inside the hakchang—death will be the outcome if this meeting of the head and the tail is broken. This immediately brings into mind the ‘snake imagery’ or paphal of Pakhangba, which also has his tail inside his mouth, indicating that the world starts and ends in him. Hodson feels this as a case of believing in the existence of ‘external soul’ by the Meiteis—the snake being the ‘external soul’ of king Pakhangba that later came to represent the ‘external soul’ of the later kings as well.(13) Pombi-lang mentions about how the first human being was created by Ashiba, represented by the sun, and the universal mother, Leimarel, represented by the moon. After creating Mangang, Luwang, Khuman(14)—the three parts of a day—morning, day and night respectively, Ashiba sent fire, water, wind, earth, ether, and shadow to Leimarel to create human being. Then Leimarel asked Ashiba how she could create man alone to which Ashiba replied that he had already planted something of him in her when he sent the six elements and the ‘light’ to her. As instructed by Ashiba, Leimarel then passed ‘the light’ to thaba, thaba to shajik, shajik to okmapuroi, okmapuroi to taohuireng, all of whom are celestial bodies, and then to the ‘pa’ who keeps it for two months. Then finally, the ‘pi’ receives it in her womb where it stays for ten months. Inside the womb, the watery ‘fluid’ dries up due to the actions of fire and wind. When it becomes a round and hard solid substance, it was flattened to mould into three layers out of which is created ‘twelve rooms and nine doors’ (which is a reference to the different parts of the human body). While the actions of wind, fire and water created the body of the child, the role of the mother is just to nurture it and feed it with her blood. Wind, water and fire then took their places in different parts of the body—water in the left of the eyebrow (kha khong), fire in the right eyebrow (laikhong), and wind in the middle (marong khong). The paths of these three forces meet at the forehead, which is believed to be the abode of Ashiba. This ‘making of the human being’ is what is celebrated in Hakchangshaba jagoi (dance of the creation of the human body) in the Lai Haraoba festival. After the maibis perform sixty-four dance steps in sequence, depicting the creation of the various parts of the body one by one, a ‘final touch’ is put to the body by offering a dance asking Ashiba to put into the body its soul, thawai miren.(15) |
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| THE ‘SIXTH SOUL’: Meiteis believe in the ‘multiplicity of souls’. Besides the five souls formed by the five basic elements, they have a sixth one in the form of mi (‘shadow’). In Meiteilon mi is also used to mean one’s reflection in the mirror, water, etc. It is also used to refer to a photograph, footprints, etc. Many ethnographic accounts reveal the concept of the shadow as one’s ‘double’ or ‘extension’. Shadow is also considered as one’s own soul in many societies.(16) Among the Meiteis, mi is regarded as the most loyal companion of a person (mostly because it never deserts the body till death). But the mi is not just a ‘loyal double’ of the humans; it has a sacred quality about itself as well. In fact, the various senses in which the term ‘mi’ is used by the people transgress its literal meaning of ‘shadow’. For instance, a man dies when the thawai mi comes out of the body. A ‘wise’ man like a maiba can ‘sense’ when a person’s thawai mi is about to come out (even when the latter is unaware of such a thing happening to him). Meiteis believe that one should neither step over others’ shadows nor let others do the same to their own shadows. Besides the shadow of man, the same respect is expected to be shown to the shadow of sacred plants and objects—e.g. tulsi plant. What can be the reason behind such high reverence for the shadow? One version of the creation myth mentions that man was created in the image of god himself—hence, man is also called mee. In another version of the origin myth, when Sanamahi failed to create human forms, he went and asked his father what to do. The latter opened his mouth and Sanamahi saw all living and non-living beings inside his father’s mouth. Then he realised that he need not create everything new but to just transport them to the earth. Here we can see the resemblance between this interpretation of origin of mankind to that which is described in the Mahabharata when Krishna, taking the form of Vishnu, was showing a reluctant Arjuna how everything originates and merges with him finally by showing all the non-living and the living beings inside his mouth.(17) In Pombi-lang, Ashiba was said to be always near the human child when it was being created, but when it was about to go out to the world, Ashiba had to abandon the human baby since he could not be seen in the land of the humans (meeramlel) as he belonged to the land of the death, the spirits, and the souls (lairamlel). When the child refused to go out to the world without him, Ashiba stayed inside the body as soul since as soul (of the body) he could live in this world. Thus the cosmic order is presented as contained inside the human body. When the maibi (traditional priestess, who also acts as a midwife) performs the thawai mi kouba ritual immediately after the birth of a baby, she prays the five souls and ‘…the shadow (mi) to take their place inside the body’.(18) Thus the mi, in Meitei thought, is both inside as well as outside the body. |
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| THE FINAL SEPARATION OF THE POMBI FROM ITS LANG’: Death marks the end of the body-soul association in this world. Death is sometimes compared to sleep. But in sleep, the thawai goes out for a while and comes back once one is awake. The capability of the soul to go out during sleep is explained by the belief that when a person had a dream where he found himself going to distant places, it is said that he had a bad dream. He is sometimes advised, if this kind of dream occurs frequently, to perform thawai mi koukhatpa (to invoke the thawai not to leave the body).(19) When the thawai fails to come back to the hakchang, death occurs. Hence, it is believed not to frighten a sleeping person but to wake him/her up gently and slowly. Thus the soul has been conceived as a highly delicate, mobile, transferable being, which has an existence of its own even after its separation from the body. Different deities are responsible for causing the ‘separation’ process. Wangbaren, the water god, seated at the south of the body is believed to be responsible for causing flood in the nine doors—the holes through which the breath will escape finally. All the souls guarding the doors came running at the navel and tell the Leimarel seated at the navel that they cannot stay at the doors anymore since it is flooded with water. Marjing asks the mihuns (‘pulse’ is the literal meaning of mihun, however it is used here as equivalent to thawai, the soul) to come along with him at the heart where Thangjing was found burning the twelve fires which make the five souls thirsty (thus explains the extreme thirst that one is believed to feel just before the death occurs). Unable to bear the heat, they come up to the throat where Koubru resides, and finally escape the body as ningsha shwar (breath) through the nostrils. Thus death (as the people believe it) is a result of the works of the various deities associated with the forces of wind, water and fire who reside in different parts of the human body. The presence of these four direction deities—Wangbren (South East), Marjing (North East), Thangjing (South West) and Koubru (North West)—inside the body is a sign which regards human body as metaphor (encodification) of the cosmos or Meitei land. |
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| DESTINY OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH: After death, the thawai is supposed to be heading for the land of the dead—ashilam. The thongak lairembi welcomes the thawai, makes it rest for a while and prepares for the meeting with Ashiba. Thus the soul is conceived of as something of ‘divine origin’, free, wild, distinguishable from the body, which contains and traps it to this worldly existence. It has a life of its own, and the body is ‘dead’ and useless once the soul departs from it. Yet, we also saw that it also acquires some of the qualities of its container, though for a short period. It feels thirst, pain, pleasure, and is very much capable of becoming ‘malicious’ if proper rites and rituals are not executed at the time of its separation from the body, i.e. death. They can reincarnate in another body which can be known through certain signs in the body itself. Sometimes the soul is conceived as identical to the pulse, the shadow, and the breath, and each and every part of the body as having its own soul (as is indicated by the belief in multiplicity of souls). In the creation myth, it is mentioned that the creation of all other things in the universe had its ultimate purpose in making human life possible in this world. If a woman is conceived during the time of death of a relative, or immediately after the death in the family, it is believed that the child is the incarnation of that particular ancestor. It is also believed that the departed soul would prefer to be reborn as the child of someone to whom it had a special bond when it was alive. Certain deaths may result in the soul becoming malicious, as in the case of children who die before attaining maturity. There is a particular class of malicious spirits called Soren who are constituted by the souls of these children. They are capable of coming back to the womb of the mother once more or killing the next child before it attains maturity. Hence the purpose of the rites performed for such deaths is to give the Soren its food and invoke it not to cause immature death again. For other ‘unnatural’ deaths (like deaths resulting from accident, death of unmarried persons, etc.), chupsha moithem is performed so that this kind of death does not happen again in the family or the community as a whole. If ceremonies proper for such kinds of death are not performed in time, the souls of such persons cannot reach its destination, and hence are stuck ‘in-between’ this and the other world. The soul in this state of ‘liminality’ is regarded as ‘dangerous’ to man. Regarding the relationship between the body and the soul, as can be discerned from the beliefs and practices of the people, it is difficult to point out the exact nature of their association. For instance, do they have a hierarchical relationship or are they just the alter of the other? In Khamlangba Puwari, it is mentioned that life in this world is full of pleasure, but ‘life after death’ is the happiest. This seems to envisage a hierarchical relationship between the two—the body, being of this world, is inferior to the soul, which ultimately joins the world of deities and spirits after its separation from the body. However, if we recall the hakchang shaba of Lai Haraoba festival mentioned above, the creation of the body is a time for celebration as well. It was created after a long and hard work and a lot of experiment, too. This seems to contradict the previous view where the ‘life’ after death is regarded as the ‘happiest’. However, if we consider the puyas which contain this view as a later development than the Lai Haraoba festival which celebrates the creation of human beings as the greatest achievement of the gods, then we can safely assume that the belief in ‘after life’ as the happiest state (proposing a hierarchical relationship between body and the soul) is a less ‘authentic’ Meitei belief than the one which celebrates body and soul equally. |
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NOTES & REFERENCES: 4. Sircar made a distinction between two categories of maibas, whom I prefer to address as ‘traditional knowledge experts’ of the Meitei society—the first category functions as ‘traditional priests’; the second ‘… variety of specialist…are not traditional priests, but act as Shamans and curers’. For details see, Manjusri Chaki Sircar, Feminism in a Traditional Society, (New Delhi: Shakti Books), 1984, p. 119. 5. As defined by The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. 6. Parratt & Parratt, The Pleasing of the Gods, (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.), 1997, p. 49. 7. We can observe a kind of Meitei patriarchal concept of male as ‘wild, independent, free’, and female as ‘docile, domesticated’ in the use of ‘chekla’ for male bird, and ‘pombi’ for the female. 8. L. Bhagyachandra Singh, A Critical Study of the Religious Philosophy of the Meiteis Before the Advent of Vaishnavism in Manipur, (Imphal: The Paradise Publishing House), 1991, p. 79. 9. Obeyesekere, ‘The impact of Ayurvedic ideas on the Culture and the Individual in Sri Lanka,’ in Leslie and Charles (ed.), Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study, (London: University of California Press). 10. Literally meaning, ‘language of the maibas’, which younger people learn from the elder ojha maibas during their ‘training’. Also available in written forms, they serve as ‘texts’ for the younger maibas 11. The term refers to‘…models of the body’s structure and function,’ which usually form ‘… part of much wider cosmologies, linking the individual body to greater forces in the universe.’ 12. These are the books believed to have been written by the ‘Meitei ancestors’ long time in archaic Meiteilon using the traditional Meitei scripts. Although they are claimed to be existing since the beginning of the Christian era itself, their date of origin is still under controversy. 13. T.C. Hodson, The Meitheis, (Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation), (first published 1908) 1986, p. 100. 14. They are also the names of the seven clans of the Meitei society—the other four are Moirang, Khaba-Nganba, Chenglei, and Angom. 15. The ritual of Thawai mi happa or ‘asking for the soul to enter the body’ is also performed by the traditional priestesses, maibis when the mother reaches her fifth month of pregnancy during the ceremony of kokthok chamthokpa (kokthokpa=to shave off; chamthokpa= cleansing). 16. E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, (London: George Allen & Unwin), 1976, p. 242. 17. The two versions of the origin myth represent Sanamahi in different lights—the first version (given in the Pombi-lang, for instance) sees Sidaba Mapu as the active creator of the human body, while the second tries to represent Sanamahi as the one who had actually acted (on behalf of the Sidaba mapu) and created the world, and all its living and the non-living inhabitants. If we interpret the prime liquid Sidaba had given to Leimarel as ‘the golden liquid’, then Sanamahi is nothing but this liquid—Sana=gold; mahi=liquid. The later version personifies the thing that was the first seed of human beings. This version also addresses the relationship of father-son (Sidaba’s test to see who knows him the most from among his sons, and giving his throne to the one who knows him i.e. to Pakhangba), mother-son (Leimarel’s special liking for her younger son Pakhangba), incest (Sanamahi taking his mother, Leimarel as his consort, and his remorse at doing this), brother-brother relationships (competition and enmity between the two brothers), and also that of the avoidance relationship between the husband’s elder brother and the younger brother’s wife (Pakhangba was saved from his elder brother Sanamahi by his seven wives who kept him surrounded so that Sanamahi, could not harm him). 18. N. Bijaylakshmi Brara, Politics, Society and Cosmology in India’s North East, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), 1998, p.158. 19. This is also performed when someone just had a frightening experience, which shows that the soul, like the body, has also been attributed the capacity to ‘feel’ and ‘experience’ things. This is found frequently performed whenever a child has mashashagatpa (high fever). The ‘weak’ body of the child is particularly vulnerable to the interference of the spirits. |
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