कला और शिल्प परंपरा

Manipuri (Raas Leela)शास्त्रीय

One of India's recognised classical dance forms, and the most restrained of them. There is no percussive footwork, no sharp stop, no direct address; the body moves in continuous curves with the feet placed softly, and the expressive weight sits in the torso, the hands and the eyes. Its themes are Krishna and the gopis, its principal repertoire the Maha Raas, Kunja Raas, Basanta Raas and Nitya Raas, and its codification is credited to the court of Bhagyachandra in the later eighteenth century. The costume is part of the technique, not an addition to it.

कौन करता है: Trained dancers, historically temple and court. मौका: Raas nights on full moons, temple festivals, concert stage

Pung Cholomशास्त्रीय

Drum dance — the performer plays a barrel drum slung at the waist while leaping, spinning and dropping to the floor without breaking the rhythm. It opens most Raas and Sankirtana performances, and the physical demand on the player is the point of the form.

कौन करता है: Men. मौका: Sankirtana, Raas, festival

Thang-Ta (Huyen Langlon)युद्धकला

Sword and spear — thang and ta — with an unarmed component and a ritual component. It is taught in three registers: as a ritual performance with its own invocation, as a demonstration form, and as actual combat practice. The circular footwork and the body mechanics are recognisably the same system that underlies the dance.

कौन करता है: Men and women. मौका: Practice, ritual, demonstration

Lai Haraobaअनुष्ठान

"The pleasing of the gods" — a ritual festival, days long, in which a maibi enacts the creation of the world and the making of a human body through a fixed sequence of gestures, accompanied by the pena fiddle. It is older than Vaishnavism in the valley and it is where much of the classical dance's gesture vocabulary can be seen in its ritual form.

कौन करता है: Maibi priestesses and the community of a locality. मौका: April–June, at the Umang Lai grove of each locality

Thabal Chongbaलोक

A moonlight circle dance in which participants hold hands and move to a simple stepped rhythm, held in open ground in every locality. It is one of the few occasions with an explicitly social, courtship function, and it now runs to amplified music.

कौन करता है: Young men and women. मौका: Yaoshang, the five nights of the spring festival

Khamba-Thoibi jagoiलोक

A duet danced before the deity, drawn from the Moirang epic of Khamba and Thoibi. Its steps are simpler and more grounded than the classical repertoire, and it belongs to the pre-Vaishnav layer.

कौन करता है: A paired male and female dancer. मौका: Lai Haraoba and Moirang festivals

Nata Sankirtana

Ritual singing, drumming and dancing performed in the courtyard of a temple or a home to mark births, marriages and deaths — the performers stand in a defined arrangement, the pung and cymbals carry the structure, and the congregation is inside the performance rather than watching it. Inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013.

Pena and pena eshei

A one-string fiddle with a gourd resonator and a horsehair bow, played with the instrument held against the shoulder. It accompanies Lai Haraoba and the narrative ballads, and it is the oldest continuously used instrument in the valley. The number of trained pena players is small enough to be counted.

Moirang Sai

Solo narration with pena of the Khamba-Thoibi story — the performer sings, speaks and acts all parts in turn across several nights, a full epic delivered by one voice.

Khongjom Parva

A ballad form with dholak accompaniment that recounts the battle of Khongjom of 1891. It grew after the event it describes and became a general narrative genre — a case of a single historical episode producing a whole musical form.

Khunung Eshei

The village song repertoire — work songs, boat songs, lullabies and courting songs sung outside the temple and outside the court, and the layer from which most of the rest was built.

Shumang Leela

Courtyard theatre, performed in the round on open ground with no set and almost no props, an audience on four sides, and all roles taken by one gender — traditionally male troupes whose nupi shabi actors specialise in female roles, alongside all-women troupes. It is the valley's mass popular form, running to hundreds of performances in a season.

Modern Manipuri theatre

A body of work built from the 1970s that took the movement, drumming and martial vocabulary of the local traditions into contemporary staging. Ratan Thiyam's Chorus Repertory Theatre and the work of Heisnam Kanhailal and Sabitri Heisnam made this one of the most internationally programmed theatre traditions in India.

Moirang Parva

Dramatised narration of episodes from the Moirang Kangleirol cycle, the valley's indigenous epic literature, performed with pena and with minimal staging.

Handloom weaving — Moirang Phee, Wangkhei Phee and Shaphee Lanphee जीआई पंजीकृत Across the valley

Household weaving on a scale that makes it the valley's largest craft occupation, almost entirely women. Moirang Phee, Wangkhei Phee and Shaphee Lanphee are the three registered products within it.

सामग्री: Cotton, mulberry and eri silk. तकनीक: Back-strap loin loom for narrow ceremonial cloth and border work; frame and throw-shuttle looms for phanek and innaphi lengths. Border motifs are woven in as supplementary weft or embroidered afterwards.

Longpi (Nungbi) pottery जीआई योग्य Ukhrul — Tangkhul hills, not the valley floor

A Tangkhul Naga craft of the Nungbi villages, not a Meitei one, and it must be attributed that way even though most of it is sold in Imphal. The wheel-less method and the stone content make the vessels unusually heat-tolerant, which is why they are used as cookware and not only as display pieces. Machihan Sasa of Nungbi received the Padma Shri in 2024 for the tradition.

सामग्री: Weathered serpentinite rock and clay. तकनीक: The rock is ground to powder and mixed with clay in a fixed proportion, built up entirely by hand and with a wooden paddle — no wheel is used — then fired in an open pit and rubbed while hot with the leaf of a local plant, which gives the finished black surface its sheen.

Andro and Chairel pottery जीआई योग्य Imphal East (Andro); Thoubal (Chairel)

The valley's own pottery, made by the Chakpa communities of the fringe villages. Andro's potters produce cooking and ritual vessels; the wheel never displaced the paddle here, which is why the forms are rounder and thinner than wheel-thrown work of the same size.

सामग्री: Local clay. तकनीक: Hand-built without a wheel, using coiling and a paddle-and-anvil technique, worked by women, and fired in open bonfires.

Kauna reed craft जीआई योग्य Bishnupur, Thoubal, Imphal West

Mats, cushions, baskets and now furniture, made from a reed that grows only in standing water. The craft is entirely dependent on the wetland's condition, which ties a household industry directly to the lake's hydrology.

सामग्री: Kauna — a water reed cut from the Loktak marshes. तकनीक: Cut, sun-dried, flattened and hand-woven or coiled over a frame.

Bamboo and cane work Across the valley and the fringe

Baskets, fish traps, winnowing trays, umbrella frames and the conical fishing gear used on Loktak, plus the light bamboo structures used at festivals.

सामग्री: Bamboo, cane. तकनीक: Split-and-plait work without fixings.

Brass and bell-metal work Imphal

Sustained largely by the Sankirtana repertoire, which needs cymbals of particular weights and tones and re-fittings for the pung.

सामग्री: Brass, bell metal. तकनीक: Casting and beating of ritual vessels, cymbals and drum fittings.