Tripura Hills & Plains · Northeast Hill Massif
People
| Name | Years | Field | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dhanya Manikya | Reigned c. 1490–1515 | Ruler and builder | Built the Tripura Sundari temple at Udaipur in 1501 and put the region's Shakta pilgrimage geography on a permanent footing. The dynastic chronicle, the Rajmala, took its lasting form in Bengali verse under his reign. |
| Bir Chandra Manikya | 1838–1896 | Ruler, photographer and patron | Patron of Rabindranath Tagore from the poet's early career, and an accomplished photographer at a time when the practice was barely two decades old anywhere in India. His patronage is why a Bengali literary relationship with this court exists at all. |
| Radha Kishore Manikya | Reigned 1897–1909 | Ruler and builder | Built Ujjayanta Palace between 1899 and 1901 and continued his father's patronage of Tagore, who named the building. |
| Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya | 1908–1947 | Ruler and planner | Built Neermahal in Rudrasagar lake, laid out the modern plan of Agartala and established its airfield. The region's airport carries his name. |
| Rabindranath Tagore | 1861–1941 | Poet | Visited this court repeatedly across five decades, named Ujjayanta Palace, and set the novel Rajarshi and the play Visarjan in the region's own dynastic history — which is how a hill kingdom entered the Bengali literary canon as a subject rather than as a footnote. |
| Radhamohan Thakur | Late nineteenth to early twentieth century | Grammarian | Wrote Kokborokma, the first grammar of Kokborok, published in 1900, and the foundation of every subsequent attempt to teach and standardise the language. |
| Sachin Dev Burman | 1906–1975 | Composer | Born into this region's ruling family and trained in the folk music of the plain, he carried bhatiali and Bengali folk melody into Hindi film composition across four decades — the region's most widely heard export by an enormous margin. |
| Thanga Darlong | 1920–2023 | Musician | The last accomplished player of the rosem, the Darlong bamboo wind instrument, awarded the Padma Shri in 2019 at the age of ninety-eight. He lived and played in a village in the northern hills for his entire life. |
| Satyaram Reang | Born 1943 | Folk dance | Spent his life teaching and staging the Hojagiri dance of the Reang community, and was awarded the Padma Shri in 2021 — the recognition that moved the form from a village observance to a nationally known one. |
People from Tripura Hills & Plains who shaped its history, arts, science, sport and public life. (9)