Maha Manikya Maharaja Founder early 1400s
The first ruler of the dynasty whose place in the sequence is generally accepted. Everything the Rajmala records before him is genealogy rather than history.
Dynasty: Manikya.
Tripura Hills & Plains · Northeast Hill Massif
History
Tripura is the one region in this hill belt with a dynasty long enough to periodise by, and the one whose dynasty kept its chronicle in somebody else's language. The Rajmala is a verse chronicle of the Manikya line composed in Bengali, begun under Dharma Manikya I in the fifteenth century and continued by later hands into the nineteenth — which tells you the essential thing about this kingdom before you read a word of it. Its rulers were Tipra, its subjects in the hills spoke Kokborok, and its court wrote and administered in the language of the delta on its western doorstep. The Rajmala's opening genealogy, which runs the line back through a hundred and eighty-odd kings to a legendary ancestor, is not history and is now generally held to be mistaken in both its descent and its chronology; the securely dated dynasty begins in the early fifteenth century. The second thing that shapes the periodisation is that the kingdom was administratively two things at once from the eighteenth century onward — a princely state in the hills, and a zamindari estate, Chakla Roshnabad, held under British Bengal on the plain. Its risings come from the first of those and its literature and revenue from the second.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
Ancientprehistory – c. 1400
What survives from before the Manikya record is carved into rock and cannot be dated by anything written on it. The relief panels at Unakoti, cut into a hillside in the north of the region, are placed by different scholars anywhere between the seventh and the twelfth centuries; no inscription fixes them and no text names their patron. The Kokborok-speaking communities of the interior belong to the Bodo–Garo branch of Tibeto-Burman, which links them to the Boro of the Brahmaputra foot and the A·chik of the Garo hills rather than to anyone in the delta below them, and the date of their settlement here is not recoverable. Meanwhile the western plain — geologically part of the Meghna floodplain, not of the hills — sat within the political reach of whichever power held eastern Bengal. That double orientation is older than the kingdom and outlasted it.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| dating uncertain, variously placed between the 7th and 12th centuries | The rock-cut relief panels at Unakoti are carved into the hillside. There is no inscription and no recorded patron; the attribution to a period rests on style alone. |
| undated | Kokborok and its relatives settle in the hills and valleys. The language belongs to the Bodo–Garo branch of Tibeto-Burman, and its nearest relatives are in Assam and the Garo hills rather than in the plain immediately west. |
| through the early historic period | The western lowland lies within the orbit of successive powers of eastern Bengal, while the ridges remain outside any of their revenue systems. |
| legendary | The Rajmala opens with a long line of kings descended from a legendary ancestor. Modern scholarship treats this section as genealogical construction rather than record, and holds the chronicle mistaken on both descent and chronology before the fifteenth century. |
Medievalc. 1400 – 1761
The dynasty that can be dated begins in the early fifteenth century with Maha Manikya, and reaches its widest extent in the sixteenth under Dhanya Manikya and Vijaya Manikya II, when its writ is described as running from the Garo hills in the north towards the Bay of Bengal in the south. This is the period in which the kingdom acquires its permanent double character. Dhanya Manikya built the Tripura Sundari temple at Udaipur in 1501, a Shakta shrine in the classical Bengal idiom raised by a Tipra king over Kokborok-speaking country; the Rajmala was composed in Bengali verse; and the court's revenue, literature and administration all ran west. When Mughal authority reached eastern Bengal in the early seventeenth century the Manikyas came under its suzerainty for the plains portion while continuing to rule the hills, and the split between a hill kingdom and a plains estate — which the British later formalised as Hill Tippera and Chakla Roshnabad — dates in substance from then.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| early 1400s | Maha Manikya establishes the dynasty; the securely dated line of the Rajmala begins here. |
| c. 1464–1489 | The reign of Ratna Manikya I. Tradition holds that the title Manikya was conferred on the line by the Sultan of Bengal in this period. |
| 15th century | The Rajmala is begun in Bengali verse under Dharma Manikya I — the only dynastic chronicle of this region composed in the language of the neighbouring plain rather than in the court's own speech. |
| 1501 | Dhanya Manikya builds the Tripura Sundari temple at Udaipur, which becomes the kingdom's principal shrine. |
| 1532–1563 | The reign of Vijaya Manikya II, the kingdom's widest extent, with campaigns north towards the Garo hills and south towards the coast. |
| early 17th century | The Manikyas come under Mughal suzerainty for their plains territory while continuing to rule the hills, beginning the long division between a hill kingdom and a plains revenue estate. |
Modern1761 – 1947
Company intervention in a succession dispute in 1761 turned Tripura into a protected state, and from then on the kingdom is administered as two things: Hill Tippera, a princely state whose ruler governed, and Chakla Roshnabad, a zamindari on the Bengal plain where he was a landholder under British revenue law. Almost every rising of the next two centuries came out of how the hills were taxed. The state did not govern its hill subjects directly; it worked through sardars, chowdhuries and a dewan, and their exactions — the house tax, the titun obligation to carry officials' baggage without payment, discriminatory assessment — are named in the record as the cause of the Tipra rising of 1850, the Jamatia rising of 1863 and the Reang rising of 1942–43. Alongside that runs a quite different story on the plains side. Bir Chandra Manikya, who reigned from 1862, built a municipality at Agartala in 1871, took up photography seriously enough to join the Royal Photographic Society, and recognised Rabindranath Tagore early — a connection continued by his successor Radha Kishore, whom Tagore visited repeatedly, and out of which came the play Visarjan of 1890 and the novel Rajarshi, both drawing on the Manikya dynastic history. The last ruler, Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya, reigned from 1923 to his death on 17 May 1947, built Neermahal in the middle of Rudrasagar lake in 1930, founded a college and an airfield at Agartala, and reserved land in the hills for the indigenous communities.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1761 | East India Company intervention in a Manikya succession dispute. Tripura becomes a protected state, and its plains territory is henceforth held as the Chakla Roshnabad zamindari under British Bengal. |
| 1850 | The Tipra rising against the revenue collection of the dewan Balaram Hazari, led by Kirti and Parikshit. |
| 1860–1862 | A rising on the northern frontier led by Ratan Poea, involving raids on villages in northern Tripura and Sylhet in which villagers were killed. The state afterwards instituted a system of payments to the frontier communities. |
| 1863 | The Jamatia rising under Parikshit against the titun obligation — carrying state officials' baggage without payment — and against increased assessment. It was put down, villages were burned and Parikshit was captured and imprisoned. |
| 1871–1901 | Bir Chandra Manikya establishes the Agartala municipality in 1871 and remodels the administration; Umakanta Academy opens in 1890; the Ujjayanta Palace is completed in 1901 under Radha Kishore Manikya. |
| 1942–1943 | The Reang rising under Ratanmani, against assessment that fell more heavily on Reangs than on others, exactions by the chowdhuries and wartime increases. It was suppressed, villages were burned and Ratanmani was killed. |
| 17 May 1947 | Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya dies. His son Kirit Bikram being a minor, a Council of Regency headed by Kanchan Prava Devi governs the state; the merger agreement with the Indian Union is signed in 1949. |
Rulers and commanders
Ratna Manikya I Maharaja Ruler c. 1464–1489
The reign to which tradition assigns the conferring of the title Manikya on the line by the Sultan of Bengal, and with it the dynasty's turn towards a Bengali-language court.
Dynasty: Manikya.
Dhanya Manikya Maharaja Ruler 1490–1515
Built the Tripura Sundari temple at Udaipur in 1501 and extended the kingdom northward. The temple is the clearest single object of the kingdom's double character — a classical Bengal shrine raised by a Tipra king in Kokborok-speaking country.
Dynasty: Manikya. Seat: Udaipur
Vijaya Manikya II Maharaja Commander 1532–1563
Campaigned north towards the Garo hills and south towards the coast, taking the kingdom to its widest recorded extent. It did not hold; Mughal authority reached the plains portion within two generations.
Dynasty: Manikya.
Balaram Hazari Dewan Administrator mid-19th century
Revenue officer of the Manikya state whose collection in the hills is named in the record as the immediate cause of the rising of 1850. The state governed its hill subjects through officers of this kind and through appointed sardars and chowdhuries, not directly — which is why its risings were directed at intermediaries rather than at the palace.
Bir Chandra Manikya Maharaja Ruler 1862–1896
Remodelled the administration on British lines, created the Agartala municipality in 1871 and opened Umakanta Academy in 1890. A serious photographer who kept a working studio in the palace and belonged to the Royal Photographic Society, he recognised Rabindranath Tagore early and began the connection between the Manikya court and Tagore that lasted two more reigns.
Dynasty: Manikya. Seat: Agartala
Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Maharaja Ruler 1923 – 17 May 1947
The last reigning Manikya. Built Neermahal in Rudrasagar lake in 1930, founded a college and an airfield at Agartala, and reserved land in the hills for the indigenous communities.
Dynasty: Manikya. Seat: Agartala
Kanchan Prava Devi Regent Regent 1947–1949
Headed the Council of Regency for her minor son Kirit Bikram after Bir Bikram Kishore's death in May 1947, and signed the agreement merging Tripura with the Indian Union in 1949.
Dynasty: Manikya. Seat: Agartala
The history of Tripura Hills & Plains from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)