Lainingthou Sanamahi

In the southwest corner of a Meitei house there is a low wooden bench under a small canopy, turned to face north. A set of men’s clothes lies folded on it. Beside them, folded smaller, is a set of women’s clothes for a wife almost nobody can name, and a length of cloth is wrapped around the two of them together. There is no idol. There is no face. That is the god, and in the Imphal valley he is the most important one there is.

His name is usually read as liquid gold, from sana and mahi, and the gold is not decorative. In one account the divine couple Salailel Sidaba and Leimarel Sidabi came upon a three-day-old infant lying in an earthen pot filled with water inside their house, and the water gave the child the colour of pure gold, and they raised him as their own. Another reading takes the name from the way he spread, endlessly and everywhere, like something poured.

Because in the older telling he is not a foundling at all. He is the eldest son of Tengbanba Mapu, the formless Supreme Lord, and the work of building the universe was handed to him, which is why the Leithak Leikharol calls him Asiba, the one who was given the job. He raised the drowned earth out of the water. He stacked the levels of heaven and hung the lights in them. He flattened the hills into ground a person could live on, with nine male deities and seven divine women made out of his own body to help him, and when the last of it was finished he spoke the word Hungshet, burst into flame, and sank into every layer of the sky and the soil. He is in the ground you are standing on. That is the claim, and the Meitei have not let go of it.

Then his father set a test. Circle the cosmos seven times, and the first son home takes the throne. Sanamahi went. He set off from the southern side of Kangla and walked the whole rim of creation, seven times, exactly as instructed. His younger brother stayed where he was, because their mother had leaned close and told him something: your father’s throne is the universe. So the boy walked around the seat seven times and sat down to wait.

He lost on a technicality.

When Sanamahi came back from the edge of the world and saw his brother crowned, named Pakhangba for having understood who his father actually was, he did not argue. He caught fire. The stories say Pakhangba fled and hid himself among the goddesses, and Sanamahi swore, into the burning air, that whoever had given that advice would be killed if a man and married if a woman. The adviser was his mother. This is how the Meitei explain the strangest fact in their theology, that Leimarel Sidabi, who had been the wife of the Supreme Lord, ended as the wife of her own son, and why she is worshipped in the house at his shoulder and almost never apart from him.

His parents talked him down. The Supreme Lord told him he would rule over all the other gods and preside over every family once people existed, and then said the line that settles the whole quarrel: I myself am you, and you are me, there is no greater god than you. Fold the humans in your arms at nightfall, he said, and unfold them in the morning.

There were no humans yet. Sanamahi made six kinds of creature and did not like them and let them go, and then he looked at his father’s reflection and made a thing in that shape and brought it to him, and the Supreme Lord breathed and the thing woke up. Sanamahi makes the body. Only the Supreme Lord can put anything inside it. That limit is the whole architecture of the religion, and it is why the Meitei rarely pray to the Supreme Lord directly: he is unreachable, and the god who made your hands is sitting in the corner of your kitchen.

The daily worship is small and unbroken. Incense is burned and a beeswax lamp is waved before the canopy in the southwest corner, the Sanamahi Kachin. Raw food goes to him before the family’s own priest, the Piba, is allowed to cook it. Nearby stands his mother’s pot, a lidded clay eshaipu of water resting on a coil of cloth, dressed in a woman’s clothes and jewellery, refilled only on the permitted days, watched anxiously, because if the water in it ever dries out that is a very bad sign.

He is the sun and Pakhangba is the moon, which is a way of saying the younger brother shines on borrowed light. He is the soul and Pakhangba is the body. He is the eternal one. People pray to him for life and energy and the removal of disease, and they are careful with him, because he also has a face called Sanamahi Apoiba, the destroyer, and the god who burned when he was cheated has never been described as gentle.

The honest history complicates the antiquity. The name Sanamahi does not appear in the Cheitharol Kumbaba, the royal chronicle, until the reign of Garib Nawaz in the early eighteenth century, by which point Vaishnavism already had the kingdom, so the god was very probably worshipped for centuries under other names, Asiba among them. His formal deification as a state god is dated to the reign of Khagemba, a hundred years earlier. Manipuri scholars have also noticed for a long time that the race around the universe is the race Ganesha runs against Kartikeya in the Shiva Purana, circling the parents instead of the world, and they have argued about which way that borrowing ran without settling it.

What did not move is the corner. In 1729 Garib Nawaz had the puyas, the old Meitei scriptures, burned at Kangla, an event still mourned every year as the Puya Meithaba. Two centuries of Vaishnava dominance followed, and the Meitei went on placing their raw rice on a bench in the southwest of the house every single day, Hindu households included. When a revival began, with Naorem Phullo founding the Apokpa Marup in Cachar in 1930 and the Meitei Marup forming at Imphal in 1945, it did not need to reintroduce him. It only had to say his name out loud. The religion is now called Sanamahism, after the god of the house rather than the god of the throne, and around eight percent of the valley claimed it at the last census.

The throne his brother won belongs to a titular king now. The corner is still in every house.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Lainingthou Sanamahi?

Lainingthou Sanamahi is the household god of the Meitei people of Manipur and the king of the gods in Meitei religion. In the creation texts he is the eldest son of the Supreme Lord Tengbanba Mapu and the earth goddess Leimarel Sidabi, and he is the deity who built the universe and shaped the first human body. The traditional Meitei religion, Sanamahism, is named after him.

Why did Sanamahi lose the throne to Pakhangba?

Their father promised the throne to whichever son circled the cosmos seven times and returned first. Sanamahi set out and completed the journey, but his younger brother, advised by their mother Leimarel Sidabi that the father’s throne was itself the universe, simply walked around the throne seven times. He was named Pakhangba, meaning he who knows his father, and was crowned; Sanamahi was compensated with kingship over every household.

Where is Sanamahi worshipped in a Meitei house?

He is worshipped in the southwest corner, called the Sanamahi Kachin, where a canopied wooden bench holds a folded set of men’s clothes representing him. His mother Leimarel Sidabi is honoured beside him, represented by a lidded earthen pot filled with water and dressed in women’s clothing. Incense and a lamp are offered daily, and raw food is presented to him before the household cooks it.

What does the name Sanamahi mean?

It is usually translated as liquid gold, from sana meaning gold and mahi meaning liquid. The name is linked to the story of the infant god discovered lying in an earthen pot of water, whose skin had taken the colour of pure gold. Another tradition reads the name as a reference to the way he spread endlessly through every layer of the sky and the earth.

Is Sanamahi the same as the religion Sanamahism?

Sanamahism is the traditional pre-Vaishnava religion of the Meitei, and it takes its name from Sanamahi because he is the deity worshipped in every household. The revival movement that made the name current began in 1930 with Naorem Phullo’s Apokpa Marup in Cachar and continued with the founding of the Meitei Marup at Imphal in 1945.

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Pakhangba, Leimarel Sidabi, Kangla Sha, Poubi Lai, Keibu Keioiba, Uchek Langmeidong, Helloi, Chareng, Langmeidong, Ganesha, Shiva, Domovoi, Zashiki-warashi, Hestia, Vesta