Myanmar

"Enlightenment finds its way even among the outer barbarians."

"Back to , and onward to Athirst for war news; and we heard full soon The loud salute resounding through the bay For Theebaw caught and taken Mandalay."

"By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea, There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me."

"Back to Port Blair, and onward to Rangoon Athirst for war news; and we heard full soon The loud salute resounding through the bay For Theebaw caught and taken Mandalay."

"By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea, There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me; For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say: "Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!""

"Mountains of Burma, the road to Mandalay In the mountains of Burma, light years away..."

"Come back I'd like to find the time Plant a seed and raise a little Cain Come back we'll throw a rope around the moon And pretend that we're in Mandalay Again"

"And the road goes on Seeming ever longer on the way to Mandalay And the road goes on Forever will I wander on the way to Mandalay."

"When I was young and had no sense In far-off Mandalay I lost my heart to a Burmese girl As lovely as the day."

"We have seen that in Burmah the Hindu settlers have a tendency to become absorbed in the Buddhist population around them, but this is not so with the Muhammadans. There are scattered communities of Muhammadans who have been settled in Burmah for several generations and still retain their faith unimpaired. When a Muhammadan marries a Burmese wife he brings up his children in his own religion. The offsprings of these mixed marriages are known as Zerbadis."

"The government of Myanmar denied committing any atrocities against the Rohingyas, asserting that many widely reported incidents had been fabricated, but the media generally brushed aside these denials. Few news outlets reported that the conflict had intensified in the summer and fall of 2017 because of an August 2017 jihad attack on Myanmar police and border posts. And hardly any news reports informed the public about the roots of the conflict: the Rohingya Muslims had actually been waging jihad against the Buddhists of Myanmar for nearly two centuries... In 1942, the British armed the Rohingyas to fight the Japanese, but the Rohingyas instead turned their weapons on the Buddhists, destroying whole villages, as well as Buddhist monasteries. When the British withdrew that same year in the face of the Japanese advance, the Rohingyas set upon the Buddhists of Arakan in force, killing at least 20,000... But for the media, the crisis in Myanmar was simply a matter of “anti-Muslim bigotry”..."

""Manipuri Language" means Meeteilon written in Meetei Mayek and spoken by the majority of Manipur population: Provided that the concurrent use of Bengali Script and Meetei Mayek shall be allowed in addition to English language, for a period upto 10(ten) years from the date of commencement of this Act."

"The beginning of this old Manipuri literature (as in the case of Newari) may go back to 1500 years, or even 2000 years, from now."

"The greatness of Manipuri is thus a reflection of the height of civilisation of its speakers. ... As a speech of a well advanced people, Manipuri has already made notable contributions to the Indian culture and literature."

"Among the various Tibeto-Burman languages, the most important, and in literature certainly of much greater importance than Newari, is the Meitei or Manipuri language."

"In fact, during a private conversation recently, Shah talked about how he felt the Manipuri language was more expressive than even Sanskrit. ... When he learnt about the language during BJP’s campaigns in the state earlier, what captivated him was the ever-developing, easy to create process of Manipuri language that has evolved due to the confluence of several languages and yet owns uniqueness in its usage."

"Manipuri is not a new language like Kokborok and has a rich literary tradition and a change of script will not be easy to adjust to."

"The Meitei language or Meiteilon is much more developed and is widely believed to have had its indigenous script which is now sought to be rediscovered."

"The Meitei Lon or Manipuri language is by far the most developed language of the state. For different hill tribes, as the language of one is not easily intelligible to the other, Manipuri serves as the medium of inter-tribal communication."

"Even the Nagas residing in the Meitei dominated Manipur converse in such a kaleidoscopic variety of languages and dialects that they resort to the Manipuri language as the standard medium of communication."

"The suppression of Meitei language is also a cause for the rise of Meitei nationalism, which PLA represents. It is opposed to the use of the Bengali script."

"The present Manipuri language evolved out of the traditional Meitei language, the speech of the politically dominant group. Legends, songs and manuscripts found in this language evidently prove a long and sustained existence of it. The Aryans considered their language as a manifestation of the divine voice, so did the Meiteis. The early people of this land were enterprising and at the same time gifted with a fertile mind and sensitive temperament. Equally were they endowed with the keen propensity for expressing their experiences, feelings and noble thoughts. All this helped the growth of a rich language."

"Meitei, the state language of Manipur, shows significant points of contact with Kachin as well as with Kuki-Naga, though the affinities are prominently with the latter."

"In this family, Manipuri was perhaps the only language which grew under a highly cultured royal patronage and also which had a long written literature."

"Pettigrew's fascination with Meetei culture went beyond even this. As early as 1896 he had cooperated with Grierson in the section on Manipuri in the latter's multi-volume Linguistic Survey of India. In the early 1920s Grierson, having examined Hodson's version of Numit Kappa in 'old Manipuri' as well as some of Damant's papers, suggested to Pettigrew that he investigate, in cooperation with some Meetei scholars, the archaic Manipuri language and script, since no other Tibeto-Burman language was known to have a literary corpus."

"With no sister-flower No companion Why are you blooming Looking for whom?. ... . O flower of the olden days Your sweetness still lingers. Pity is your fate, for Your beauty can't reach the royal hearts."

"A language poor they call it, By those who are ignorant. Doubt not, the Meetei poet is coming."

"This language is very rich in morphology and also highly agglutinative in nature. Currently, the language is represented using Bengali script as well as Meetei Mayek."

"Chaoba too, in his poem Meetei Kavi gave expression to his profound regret for the lost glory of Manipur which may be compared to 'a gem of purest ray serene', which shone unseen and a flower born to blush unseen'. His love for Manipuri language and literature is articulated in the three lines of great import : Poor is our language This is said only by the ignorant Meetei poet shall emerge. (Meetei Kavi)"

"The vernacular teacher in my previous school used to read loudly in class the Meetei language epic love poem 'Khamba Thoibi' by the famous poet Hijam Anganghal though it was not our textbook. The poet attributed the love and relationship between Khamba and Thoibi to the divine relationship between their souls."

"This is a common feature of the Manipuri language - a whole sequence of events can be encoded in a single word. But translating the crispness into English while maintaining the rhythm of the dialogue was not easy."

"My language is called poor, Because of ignorance, Meitei poet will come. ("Meetei Kavi")"

"They are the only Northeast Indian Tibeto-Burman speaking people with a literate tradition that predates the colonial period. Their language, known as Meitei, Meithei or Meitheilon (or, often, as 'Manipuri') shows some lexical resemblances to Kuki-Chin languages and some to Tangkhulic."

"Meithei represents the language of the original settlers in Manipur, and Chin that of the southern migration. In these southern seats the language rapidly developed, partly by its own natural growth and partly owing to contact with the Burmese. The development of Meithei, the language of the Manipuris, has, on the other hand, been slow and independent. The Manipuris are mentioned in the Shan chronicles so early as A.D. 777, and probably owing to the fact that it has in later times developed into a literary language, their form of speech gives the impression of possessing a peculiarly archaic character. Although they have become thoroughly Hinduised, they have not adopted any Aryan tongue; Meithei is the official language of the State, which all other tribes have to use in dealing with their rulers."

"Thadou, Kom, Chiru, Gangte, Lamgang, Anal and Paite are spoken by dwindling numbers of speakers in Manipur, where these communities are being linguistically assimilated to the Meithei speaking majority."

"Manikchand expressed his opinion that historical association of the early Meiteis with the Chinese, who where the first literate people on this earth and who invented paper, writing etc., could have induced the Meiteis to enter into the literate civilization centuries ahead of their other brethrens in India."

"According to him, Prof. James Matisoff, has excluded Meitei language from the Tibeto-Burman group. He is firmly of the opinion that the North-East people of India who speaks various branches of Tibeto-Burman main group migrated from far east. The exception is the Khasis and the Meiteis. According to him, the Meitei language was self-generated and self-organized in the long evolutionary process and the Meitei alphabet is the only of its kind in the world."

"The Meithei language is rich in its history and literature unlike the Nagas or Mizos."

"Manipuri literature is most emphatically an advanced Modern Indian literature, and cannot be described as the backward literature of a so-called Adivasi and primitive people-the Manipuri writers are already in the front line of modern Indian writing and translation."

"Manipuri is a very beautiful and expressive language, and the present language also helps us understand and identify other languages, showcasing the long history of our language. Such unique is our language that it can create and produce new words from the present one."

"The unity between India and Burma was not less fundamental. If unity is to be of an abiding character, it must be founded on a sense of kinship, in the feeling of being kindred. In short, it must be spiritual. Judged in the light of these considerations, the unity between Pakistan and Hindustan is a myth. Indeed, there is more spiritual unity between Hindustan and Burma than there is between Pakistan and Hindustan."

"I cannot but bring to your mind those days when the whole of Eastern Asia, from Burma to Japan was united with India in the closest ties of friendship..."

"The Buddhism of Burma is probably the purest now extant, and its monks often approach the ideal of Buddha; under their ministrations the 13,000,000 inhabitants of Burma have reached a standard of living considerably higher than that of India."

"There was considerable missionary sympathy for Karen separatism, and not an insignificant part of the troubles that Burma had to face after her independence may justifiably be attributed to the favouritism with which the Christian elements among the Karens were treated by the West."