Bishnupriya Manipuri Language - Source and Origin

Source and Origin

The language is known to its speakers as Imar Thar (ইমার ঠার), meaning "Language of my Mother." They call themselves and their language "Manipuri", and use the term "Bishnupriya" to distinguish them from other ethnic races of Manipur. The term "Bishnupriya" is most probably derived from "Bishnupur" along with the suffix "-iya", meaning "people of 'Bishnupur', the old capital of Manipur. Orthodox Bishnupriyas hold that the language was carried over to Manipur by some immigrants from Dvārakā and Hastinapura just after the Mahabharata war. It is further said that these immigrants were led by Babhruvahana, the son of Chitrangada and Arjuna, the third Pandava. Some scholars and history writers came to support the Mahabharata origin of Bishnupriya Manipuri from observation of the morphology, the vocables, and the phonology of the Bishnupriya Manipuri language. They hold that BPM is highly influenced by Sanskrit and Maharastri as well as Sauraseni Prakrits. Dr. K. P. Sinha, who has done considerable research on Bishnupriya Manipuri, disagrees with the theory and is of the opinion that the language was originated through Magadhi Prakrita. It is found from his observations that the language has retained dominant characteristics of Magadhi. According to Dr Sinha, pronouns and declensional and conjugational endings seem to be same as or closely related to those of Oriya, Bengali and Assamese. These forms of Oriya, Bengali and Assamese are, on their parts, derived from Magadhi Apabhramsa coming from the Magadhi Prakrita.

However, the Bishnupriya Manipuri language is certainly not one of the Tibeto-Burman languages, but is closer to the Indo-Aryan group of languages with remarkable influence from Meitei both grammatically and phonetically. At a different stage of development of the language the Sauraseni, Maharashtri and Magadhi languages and the Tibeto-Burman languages exerted influence on it as well. So it was probably developed from Sanskrit, Sauraseni-Maharashtri Prakrit and Magadhi Prakrita.The Sauraseni-Maharastri relation can be traced by observing some characteristics of pronouns. The Magadhi element is also remarkable, as the language retains many characteristics of Magadhi. It can further be noted that Bishnupriya Manipuri retains much of the old (15th century to 17th century A.D.) Meitei sound vocabulary, as the majority of speakers of the language left Manipur during the first part of the 19th century.