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Tales of the Gods
In Manipur the god lived inside the fort. Not on a hill outside town - inside Kangla, where the kings sat.
In Manipur the god lived inside the fort.
Not in a temple on the edge of town, and not on a hill outside it. Lainingthou Sanamahi, held in the tradition's own books, the Leithak Leikharon and the Sanamahi Laihui, to be the creator of the universe, had his temple inside Kangla Fort on the bank of the Imphal river, which was where the Meitei kings sat.
That tells you how the faith and the kingdom were arranged. Not side by side. Inside one another. The king and the priest worked within the same frame, and each held the other up.
Beside Sanamahi stood something stranger and much larger.
The Umang Lai are guardians of particular places, a grove, a stretch of ground, a valley. They are not great gods who happen to be worshipped locally. Each one belongs to its own patch of earth and answers for it.
There are more than three hundred and sixty-five shrines to them across Manipur.
Think about that as a map. Every valley in the kingdom had a resident protector. Families knew which shrine their own ancestors had founded, and the genealogies came down through the generations along with the names.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.